The fall of 1922 was an exciting time for Rev. David M. Stoesz and his family. They, together with one hundred Sommerfelder families from southern Manitoba, decided to move to Mexico with their bishop, Abraham Doerksen. An amendment to Manitoba’s Public Schools Act in 1916 mandated the teaching of English in public schools, which allowed for only a limited amount of religious instruction. Attendance at these schools (or private English language schools that met the provincial standards) became compulsory with the passage of the School Attendance Act at the same time. Mennonites had established private schools to teach lessons in German and to provide a significant amount of religious content. This right was taken away. Almost 6,000 people, 5,400 from the Reinlaender community and 600 from the Sommerfeld Church, moved to Mexico between 1922 and 1926.¹

In 1891, Stoesz, son of Chortitzer Bishop David Stoesz, and his wife, Agatha (Kehler), moved from the East Reserve to the West Reserve, settling in Gnadenfeld.² In 1912, Stoesz was ordained a Sommerfelder minister. He served in that capacity for ten years before moving with Bishop Doerksen to Mexico. Stoesz preached an average of thirty-eight times per year from 1912 to 1918 in Manitoba.³ His preaching increased to forty-four times per year from 1922 to 1923, when he was in Mexico.

From Manitoba to Mexico

Stoesz was the only Sommerfelder minister from southern Manitoba to join Bishop Doerksen on this trek to Mexico. Because of this planned move, Bishop Doerksen held an election for a new Sommerfeld bishop on October 6.⁴ Rev. Heinrich J. Friesen was elected with a 71.5 percent majority vote (226 out of 316 votes).

As Stoesz prepared for his trip, he continued to serve the Sommerfelder community in Manitoba. The autumn Thanksgiving holiday was celebrated in Manitoba on October 1, 1922.⁵ Rev. Stoesz preached on Jeremiah 5:22–24 in the village of Waldheim. Jeremiah chides the people of Israel for not being thankful enough for what God has provided. On October 8, Rev. Stoesz prepared the Sommerfeld members of Silberfeld, Manitoba, for communion. The text for that morning was 1 Corinthians 11:28.⁶ The passage underlines the importance of examining oneself before partaking of the elements of bread and wine. Bishop Doerksen preached on Revelation 3:20 at Schoenthal that Sunday.⁷ Revelation 3:20 speaks about Jesus standing at the door and knocking. Jesus invites believers to open the door and eat with him. What a wonderful text for communion preparation!

On the next Sunday, October 15, Bishop Doerksen ordained Friesen as the new bishop of the Sommerfeld Church of Manitoba. Bishop Friesen would serve in that capacity for the next seven years (1923–1930).⁸ Rev. Stoesz and the newly ordained bishop assisted Bishop Doerksen on the same Sunday in serving communion to 353 members in Sommerfeld, Manitoba.⁹ Only a bishop was allowed to bless the elements of bread and wine.

A train for Mexico departed the next day, arriving in Mexico on October 22.¹⁰ Rev. Stoesz was part of this initial wave of emigrants. Stoesz preached his first sermon on November 5 at an unspecified location.¹¹ He preached another sermon on November 12 in San Antonio, Mexico. The next train carrying Mennonite immigrants from Manitoba left on Saturday, November 11, and arrived in Mexico the following Saturday.

Matthew 9:9–13 and John 14:6 were the basis of Rev. Stoesz’s first two sermons in Mexico. In Matthew 9:13, Jesus used his time with tax collectors to let people know that he had “come to call sinners, not the righteous.” Jesus told his disciples in John 14:6 that he was “the way, the truth, and the life.” “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Stoesz preached two or three times a year on these two texts during his twenty-two years of ministry (1912–1934). He likely borrowed the Matthew passage from Bishop Doerksen, who preached twenty-eight times on this text from 1893 to 1922.¹²

Bishop Doerksen’s Trip

Bishop Doerksen continued to bless and distribute communion elements to church members in Manitoba during of the week of October 15–21.¹³ He served a total of 1,183 church members from the villages of Sommerfeld, Schoenthal, Rudnerweide, Reinland, Rosenbach, Grossweide, Kronsweide, and some in private homes.

A week later, on October 29, Doerksen was in Herbert, Saskatchewan.¹⁴ He preached on Psalm 73:23–24, in which King David declares that he is continually with God. God “holds my right hand.” God guides him with God’s counsel. On November 5, Doerksen preached in Star City, Saskatchewan. The text for the morning was Luke 18:8, in which Jesus declares that God will grant justice to the chosen ones. He also asks whether the Son of Man will find people of faith on earth. Doerksen preached twenty-three times on Psalm 73 and twenty-eight times on Luke 18 during his ministry in Manitoba (1894–1922).¹⁵

Doerksen would preach two more times before leaving for Mexico. He preached his one and only sermon on Luke 17:10 in Sommerfeld on November 19. Luke 17 speaks about having “done one’s duties” as a servant of God. Abraham Doerksen gave his farewell speech on December 3 to the people of Altona.¹⁶ The text for the morning was Revelation 22:12. Revelation speaks about the Lord coming back soon.

As Doerksen’s first sermon in Mexico was preached on December 17, 1922, he must have boarded the third train that left Manitoba after December 3.¹⁷ Doerksen would preach on a regular basis in the new Mexican villages of Agua Nueva, Sommerfeld, Neuanlage, and Silberfeld.¹⁸ These villages were located in the Santa Clara region, about 140 miles north of San Antonio. Rev. David Stoesz would preach all of his sermons in Halbstadt. This village, and the village of Bergthal, were located farther south, just north of the Mexican settlement of the Manitoba Old Colony (Reinlaender) Church and closer to the town of Cuauhtémoc.

Life in Mexico

Historian Adolf Ens makes several comments about Sommerfeld church life in Mexico. Olga Martens was the lone person baptized in 1923. An average of twelve baptisms were performed during the next five years. Communion was celebrated in two locations twice a year, in June and again in October. There were an average of one hundred attendees at each communion service. Twenty-one weddings took place and thirty-three deaths occurred between 1923 and 1928.

Return to Manitoba

During the fall of 1923, Rev. Stoesz preached on the same texts he had used in Manitoba: Jeremiah 5:22–24 for the occasion of Thanksgiving, 1 Corinthians 11:28 for communion preparation, and 1 Peter 2:24 for communion thanksgiving. But within two weeks of his thanksgiving sermon, Stoesz and his family (his wife and son, David A.) were back in Manitoba. They had decided that life in Mexico was not for them. Similar to his first Sunday in Mexico (November 5, 1922), Rev. Stoesz preached on Matthew 9:9–13 on his first Sunday back in Manitoba (November 4, 1923). The location was Schoenthal, Manitoba. It was almost a year to the day when he had first preached in Mexico. Upon his return from Mexico in 1923, Stoesz and his family settled in the village of Kronsthal.

Ministerial Leadership in Mexico

To replace Stoesz, Jacob Abrams of Neuanlage was ordained as a Sommerfelder minister on February 24, 1924, in Mexico.¹⁹ This represents a four-month gap between the time Rev. Stoesz left (November 1923) and when Abrams inaugurated his ministry. There were presumably others, perhaps deacons as well as Bishop Abraham Doerksen, who were called to serve during this time.

Abrams was elected and ordained as a Sommerfelder bishop on January 19, 1930. This ceremony took place almost a year after Bishop Doerksen died on January 26, 1929.²⁰ Bishop Cornelius Hamm of the Bergthaler Church in Saskatchewan officiated at the ceremony. The grandson of Abraham Doerksen, Jacob G. Doerksen, also became a Sommerfelder bishop in Mexico.²¹

David Stoesz’s preaching assignments demonstrate a rhythm to the church year that is representative of Mennonite ministers’ use of Scripture. Luke 21:25–27 and Romans 13:11–14 were used for Advent. 2 Corinthians 5:20 and 1 Peter 1:22–23 were preached on Sylvester Evening and New Year’s Day. Romans 10:10 represented the signature text for catechism. 1 Corinthians 11:28 and 1 Peter 2:24 were commonly used for communion. Jeremiah 5:22–24 represented the standard text for Thanksgiving.

Classic biblical texts were used for high holidays: Luke 2 for Christmas and Mark 16 for Easter. Hortatory Scripture passages such as Matthew 9, Luke 15, and Romans 2 were used for evangelism. Matthew 15, Luke 18:15, and Ephesians 4 were used to speak about faith. Matthew 18, Matthew 20, and Galatians 5 were used for preaching on discipleship. Prayers of supplication were based on Psalms 88 and 102.

Rev. David M. Stoesz preached forty-four times on these passages of Scripture when he was in Mexico. He used these forty-four sermons 798 times during the course of his ministry (1912–1934). This represents 90 percent of the total number of sermons that he preached (887).

The collected records of sixteen other Canadian Prairie Mennonite ministers indicate they preached 663 times on these forty-four texts. These numbers represent 26 percent of the total number of sermons preached by these ministers (663 of 2,506).²²

Conclusion

Rev. David M. Stoesz showed loyalty to his bishop, Abraham Doerksen, by moving with him to Mexico in 1922. Further evidence of this loyalty is shown by Stoesz’s use of Doerksen’s sermon texts. Doerksen preached fifty-two times on five passages of Scripture (John 19:16–18, 30; 1 Corinthians 11:28; Colossians 3:12–18; Hebrews 3:12–14; 1 Peter 1:22–25). Stoesz replicated this pattern by preaching seventy-nine times on these same Scripture passages.²³

In spite of his loyalty, David M. Stoesz decided that life in Mexico was not worth it. He continued his ministry in Manitoba for another eleven years (1923–1934), serving under Sommerfelder bishops Henry J. Friesen (1923–1930) and Peter A. Toews (1931–1951). He would preach twelve times during the last year of his life (1934).²⁴ His preaching assignments started on New Year’s Day with the text from 1 Peter 1:22–23. They ended on May 27 with a communion preparation sermon, based on 1 Corinthians 11:28. David M. Stoesz died on May 30, 1934, at the age of sixty-four.

1. These statistics are taken from table 15 in Frank H. Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940: A People’s Struggle for Survival (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1982), 122. Compare with the statistics in table 1:2, Donald Stoesz, Canadian Prairie Mennonite Ministers’ Use of Scripture: 1874–1977 (Victoria: Friesen Press, 2018), 16–17. Reasons for the Mennonites’ move to Mexico are documented in Adolf Ens, “Sommerfeld Mennonites at Santa Clara, Mexico,” in Church, Family and Village: Essays on Mennonite Life on the West Reserve, ed. Adolf Ens, Jacob E. Peters, and Otto Hamm (Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 2001), 181–182, and Epp, Mennonites in Canada, 1920–1940, 94–128. ↩︎
2. A short biography of David M. Stoesz is included in Stoesz, Mennonite Ministers’ Use of Scripture, 138–139. ↩︎
3. Tables 6:2 and 6:3, Stoesz, Mennonite Ministers’ Use of Scripture, 146–148, 153–168. ↩︎
4. Peter Bergen, History of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church (Altona, MB: Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, 2001), 78; Jacob E. Peters, “Ältester Abraham Doerksen (1852–1929),” in Ens, Peters, and Hamm, Church, Family and Village, 122. ↩︎
5. Abraham Doerksen’s worship schedule, which covers the period 1894–1922, indicates that Canadian Thanksgiving was celebrated on the first Monday of October, Bergen, History of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, 75. Canadian Parliament in 1957 declared that Canadian Thanksgiving was to be celebrated on the second Monday of October. ↩︎
6. Donald Stoesz, Mennonite Ministers’ Use of Scripture, 166. 1 Corinthians 11:28 was used 35 times by David Stoesz and another 34 times by three other ministers. Ibid., 86. ↩︎
7. Bergen, History of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, 76. Three other ministers preached 29 times on Revelation 3:20, Stoesz, Mennonite Ministers’ Use of Scripture, 86. ↩︎
8. Bergen, History of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, 98–106. ↩︎
9. Bergen, History of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, 83. ↩︎
10. Ens, “Sommerfeld Mennonites at Santa Clara,” 184. ↩︎
11. Stoesz, Mennonite Ministers’ Use of Scripture, 168. ↩︎
12. Bergen, History of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, 69–77. ↩︎
13. Bergen, History of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, 83. ↩︎
14. Bergen, History of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, 78. ↩︎
15. Stoesz, Mennonite Ministers’ Use of Scripture, 81–82. ↩︎
16. Bergen, History of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, 70, 77. ↩︎
17. For the date of Doerksen’s first sermon in Mexico, see Ens, “Sommerfeld Mennonites at Santa Clara,” 184–185. Adolf Ens’s suggestion that Rev. Doerksen left on one of the first two trains is not possible, given the record of four sermons preached in Manitoba and Saskatchewan between October 29 and December 3. ↩︎
18. Ens, “Sommerfeld Mennonites at Santa Clara,” 185. ↩︎
19. Ens, “Sommerfeld Mennonites at Santa Clara,” 186. ↩︎
20. Ens, “Sommerfeld Mennonites at Santa Clara,” 187. ↩︎
21. Ens, “Sommerfeld Mennonites at Santa Clara,” 188. ↩︎
22. Taken from tables 3:2, 3:6, and 3:7, Stoesz, Mennonite Ministers’ Use of Scripture, 53–54. ↩︎
23. David M. Stoesz’s loyalty is also evident in his consistent use of lectionary texts. Of the seventeen ministers studied, he used 28 Scripture passages from the Lutheran lectionary. Only Bishop Peter Regier from Saskatchewan was more consistent, using 38 lectionary texts during the course of his ministry. Ibid., 93. ↩︎
24. Ibid., 139. ↩︎