My Hutterite Life

By Lisa Marie Stahl Foreword and photography by Michael Crummett, Farcountry Press, Helena, Montana, 2003, 160 pages, Softcover.
$20.00
Cover of My Hutterite Life
Cover of My Hutterite Life
Lisa Marie Stahl holds up the three dresses she made to wear for her shivarees and wedding ceremony.
Women on kitchen duty at Gildford Colony bake "schneki," a moderately sweet German cookie.
Women and children from the Surprise Creek Colony return home after taking the menfolk coffee and snacks.
The Paul Stahl, Jr., family, encompassing four generations, comes together for a barbecue.

The Germans from Russia Heritage Collection is pleased to provide this new book about the life of the Hutterite community. Lisa Marie Stahl, a young Hutterite woman who grew up at the Gildford Colony near Havre, Montana, tenderly shared details about the Hutterite lifestyle in this unique collection of first-person articles. Originally appearing in the Great Falls Tribune, Lisa's "On the Colony" column gave readers a rare public glimpse of this communal Anabaptist group with colonies in the upper Midwest, Northwest, and Canada. Her articles, collected and bound in this special volume, cordially welcome readers into the colony to discover what it's like to be a Hutterite.

Michael Crummett writes in the Foreword: "With her pen, she has clarified issues of importance. Instead of having to turn the other cheek, she has truck down rumors that propagate misconceptions and repulsed fallacies that breed prejudice. With her keyboard, she has spread cultural understanding, greater acceptance, and brotherly/sisterly love. Through her eyes, then her words, she has yielded a clear vision of the special, spiritual, communal world of Hutterites, rare among today's cultures of the world where sacred meaning, community fulfillment, and the value of human life are conspicuously absent."