JOURNEYS Mennonite Stories of Faith and Survival in Stalins Russia, John B. Toews, 1998

rrived. They not only brought needed spiritual encourage¬ ment but material goods as well. They provided an abundance of food and supplied money to buy a cow. We suffered no want. They even seeded our crops for us. Except for changing circumstances we might have lived a normal life. After a few days the older brethren from the church came and asked me to take over the leadership. I felt inadequate for the task. MEMOIRS OF ARON WARKENTIN 155 Collectivization exerted increasing pressure upon the life of the church. Though not prohibited, Sunday services faced competing agendas [organized by the collective]. The older ministers languished in north¬ ern and eastern concentration camps and the majority never returned. Others, unable to find work locally, labored in the coal mines of the Don Basin and other regions. The soviets rarely provided appropri¬ ate travel documents and if they did the individual was designated as disenfranchised. This simply meant “don’t give these people work!” Membership in the agricultural artels was also out of the question. Disenfranchisement usually applied to the entire family, including adult members. No place of refuge existed in our vast land where people might find work. Amid such circumstances people do what they must to survive. A person possessing a broad conscience, a person who knew how to behave and adapt in special times, who earlier made friends, in short, a person who was cunning yet upright, survived more easily. Many pastors became cattle herders for German and other villages. Previously they spent precious time shepherding humanity, now they shepherded the cattle of the artel members. On occasion not even that was possible .... I worked energetically on our farm and so the question of our survival was less critical following the first months of my release. A few days after my return I was called into the village office. I knew all of the people who worked there. They inquired about my well-being and took credit for the fact that I had not been subjected to northern exile. They felt I should petition the district committee for the return of my voting rights and of course relinquish my ministerial office. I was unable to make that promise even though it was becoming in¬ creasingly difficult and even impossible to hold services in Suvorovka. Yet I was not prepared to sacrifice my family’s freedom for my faith and the integrity of my conscience. Contrary to what I already expe¬ rienced I still hoped that, thanks to basic human decency, things would fall into place. The cow we had purchased supplied us with milk and butter. We also managed to purchase an old horse — but no more. We looked after our garden as well as the grain which the good people of Suvorovka planted for us. We too were subjected to the plan demanding forced grain deliveries right after harvest. In those days they assessed not only the seeded land but the total acreage. The plan demande