Page 68 - Senior Link Magazine Summer 2026 - Online Magazine

Exceptional

SENIORS

A GOD-CENTERED

Immigrant

Dave Neufeld

by Vickie Walters

avid Neufeld was born on
August 12, 1959, in Colonia
Dde Obregon, Chihuahua,
Mexico. He is one of 11 children of
Russian Mennonite immigrants,
who first migrated to Canada, then
to Mexico because the Mexican
government agreed to a 75-year
contract with the Mennonites that
they would not have to join the
military and could have their own
private schools. Dave left school
at the age of 11 to work for his
father’s equipment business and
his mother’s farm business. That is
also when he met 11-year-old Judy,
whose Mennonite family came to
Mexico every winter. At 15, Dave left
Mexico to be near Judy, who lived had not realized how dry west Texas by their third anniversary, had three
in Canada most of the year. His dad was, and they had produced no boys, David, Ramon, and Billy. They
put him on a plane in El Paso, and crops. The farmer took all the land moved to Kansas for a while, where
he flew to Toronto where he found back, and many Mennonites had a friend taught Dave how to lay
work on a tobacco farm. to go back to Canada and Mexico. siding, and their daughter, Jennifer,
Some neighboring farmers wrote was born.
In 1977, some deceptive men told a letter to President Carter, who
the Mennonites if they bought ten replied that whoever showed up on In 1988, they moved back to Texas—
acres of land, they could become a certain day could pay $25 and get not to Seminole, but to Wolfforth. At
American citizens. So, Judy’s family their green card. Dave received his that time, Sears was hiring anyone
and many other Mennonites sold green card and continued working with a truck and a hammer, so he
everything they had to buy land for that farmer for another year. was hired to lay siding. After two
in Seminole, TX. The immigrants years, Sears closed and wanted Dave
cleaned the land and prepared it for In 1978, when Dave and Judy were to move to Oklahoma, which he did
farming, but, two years later, the both 18, they married in a small not want to do. He decided to start
farmer forced them out because they town outside of Seminole. They his own siding business.
could not make the payments. They started a family immediately and,

68 Lubbock Senior Link