Rev. Christie Manisto, Pastor of First Lutheran Church, has served in the ELCA as pastor
for the past fifteen years. Prior to arriving in International
Falls, she served with ELCA Global mission accompanying the people
of St. Andrew’s United Church of Cairo as pastor and St.
Andrew’s Refugee Service as both chaplain and director on the
co-leadership team. She and her wonderful husband Steve arrived in
Cairo, Egypt August 2019 and finished their service there on 21 July
2023. Just prior to Pastor Christie’s service in Cairo she
spent one year as an ACPE chaplain resident at Portland Providence
Hospital in Portland, Oregon USA. Palliative care, coping mechanisms
in trauma and bereavement through an interfaith lens was a special
focus of her residency. She served two other wonderful congregations
prior to that in Princeton, MN and Vancouver WA. Pastor Christie
attended seminary at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
where she received her master’s in divinity. She also holds a
master’s degree in education from the University of Illinois
at Chicago. Her thesis was on educational leadership and Second
Language Learners. Prior to her service as a pastor, Christie spent
ten years as an elementary school teacher in urban public schools in
the USA. During that time, she and her colleagues created
educational curriculum and interactive learning seminars for
students and staff on special education inclusion, multicultural
awareness, white privilege, and in partnership with local tribal
leadership, Minnesota history from an Indigenous perspective.
Christie’s husband Steve is a Special Education teacher newly
employed at the Northland Learning Center where he will teach at the
elementary level. They have two lovely daughters, Winter who lives
in Minneapolis and Sunday who lives in New York. Both born and
raised in Cloquet, Minnesota Christie and Steve are thrilled to be
back “home.” In their free time they love drinking
coffee, fishing, hiking, snowshoeing, canoeing being near pine trees
and playing cribbage.