Brief Book Review: Bread to Share

Bread to Share… Stories about Saskatchewan’s early Lutheran pastors and their wives: Volume 1

Author: Lois Knudson Munholland

Publisher: Three West Two South Books

351 pages, paperback

Bread to Share… Stories about Saskatchewan’s early Lutheran pastors and their wives: Volume 2

Author: Lois Knudson Munholland

Publisher: Three West Two South Books

338 pages, paperback

Reviewed by Rev. Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson

Pastor Lois Knudson Munholland is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church In Canada, serving in the Saskatchewan Synod. She is also an enthusiastic researcher, historian and storyteller—which is quite clear when one reads these two volumes.

Pastor Knudson Munholland has obviously expended significant time and energy in researching the stories and history of the pioneering Lutheran pastors, their wives and families in Saskatchewan. Drawing from a wide array of sources—everything from archives, parish and community history books, diaries, memoirs, interviews and correspondence with family members, newspapers, etc,—she has done a great service to the larger church for the present generation and generations to come.

Over and again, there are several themes in these volumes that come to the fore: sharing bread (in its various manifestations, as the title and introduction suggest), travelling to country churches by horse and sleigh in violent blizzards, living in homes without modern conveniences, being innovative in times of illness because of lack of access to medical resources and personnel, serving during the Great Depression and being paid with whatever food parishioners had to spare, spending more time travelling to serve multi-point parishes and very little time at home, adjusting to the pioneer way of life after immigrating from well-established places in Europe, devoting time, energy and resources to mission work and starting new congregations and institutions, to name a few.

In reading these stories of pioneering Lutheran pastors, their wives and families, one becomes most grateful for the seeds of faith that they have sown for future generations of Lutherans in Canada, and to Pastor Lois Knudson Munholland for authoring and publishing these volumes. Pastor Lois ends each story with brief comments on the children of these families, many of whom went on to receive an excellent education and develop their careers and make significant contributions to society in the fields of ministry, politics, education, science, health, etc.

Perhaps there are others, like Pastor Lois who, after reading these volumes, might be interested and inspired enough to author and publish similar volumes for the other Canadian provinces.

I hope every Lutheran seminarian and pastor in Canada reads these volumes and learns from them.