A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

the Mennonite Brethren Church of Chortitza. Already in 1892 Neufeld had become an itinerant minister of the Mennonite Brethren Conference, and he continued this work for twenty-five years. His ministry took him on four extensive trips to the congregations in Siberia and Turkestan. He was ordained as elder in 1903 and became an outstanding leader of the Mennonite Brethren Church, serving as moderator of the conference and on various important committees. In 1923 he emigrated to Canada where he established his home in Winkler, Manitoba. Older ministers will remember his booklet, Handbuch fuer Prediger (Handbook for Preachers). During Neufeld's prolonged absences from the congregation in Ignatjewo other ministers carried on the work of the church." 15) Terek. A Mennonite settlement in the southeastern part of European Russia on the Terek river, which flows into the Caspian Sea in the Eastern Caucasus, was founded by the Molotschna Mennonites in 1901. Of the projected seventeen villages only fifteen had been established by 1904. Because of severe drought, which resulted in repeated crop failures, irrigation was introduced — a practice perhaps 92 HISTORY OF THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH unique in Mennonite settlements in Russia. With the Revolution of 1917 a new period started. The Tartar tribes who inhabited the surrounding mountainous terrain, swept down from their hideouts, pillaging and plundering Mennonite villages. In February, 1918, long caravans of settlers abandoned the Terek colony, leaving everything behind that they had built up in seventeen long years. The "Terek" chapter constitutes one of the most tragic episodes in Mennonite colonization experiments. A Mennonite Brethren Church was established here during the first year of settlement. Jacob Doerksen, elder, and Christian Schmidt were two of its early leaders. The congregation became independent in 1910, and two years later erected a church building in the village of Talma. During the Civil War the Terek refugees found a temporary home among their brethren in the Kuban and Molotschna colonies. 12 (6) On the Volga. In the nineties Mennonite settlements were extended toward the Northeast into the region of the middle and upper Volga. Two colonies had been established here earlier, with immigrants coming directly from Prussia: Trakt (1853), and Alexandertal (Alt-Samara) 1861. In the latter colony an M.B. church was organized in the late sixties. Very little is known of the history of this church which had its center at Hahnsau. Of greater significance were the congregations in the newer settlements of Neu-Samara (1891), Orenburg (1893), and Ufa (1894). In Neu-Samara the Mennonite Brethren Church had its center at Lugowsk, where it erected a fine church building in 1901, the year it ceased to be a subsidiary. Some prominent Christian laymen have their spiritual roots in this congregation, among them C. F. Klassen (1894-1954), outstan