A mission planted in Victoria, TX

I enjoyed reading this blog post by Cometh at Midnight on All Saints Orthodox Mission in Victoria, Texas opening the doors to their new building.

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T-minus 6 hours 45 minutes and I’ll be blasting off for a day trip down to Victoria, Texas, to visit All Saints Orthodox Mission. It’s an OCA mission that’s managed to put down deeper roots in 4 short years then many parishes accomplish in 10. In the last year they’ve built a brand new Orthodox-style church in a growing area of town, and planted 100 olive trees and pastured a flock of 150 sheep on their 90 acre church property. That is absolutely amazing, and I’m not just talking about the sheep. (Clarification – the church itself owns 17 acres of the 90 acre property; the remainder is owned by a parishioner.)

Tomorrow’s trip is a parish lenten retreat for members of St. Anthony’s to join our brothers and sisters as they celebrate the official entry into their new church, called the “opening of the doors” or Thyranexia. It is a blessing and prayer service, kind of a dedication service. And of course we’ll have a lenten lunch afterwards. Nothing is really “official” in the Orthodox Church unless it’s finalized with a pot luck and lots of coffee. All Saint’s priest, the Very Rev. Fr. Dimitri Cozby, was actually the priest who received me into the Orthodox Church almost 20 years ago. He was St. Anthony’s longest serving priest for more than 20 years, then left and started this mission. You couldn’t ask for a more wonderful and godly priest to serve a new mission...

...I was not prepared for how obvious and visible the new church was from the highway. I was looking for the big water tower – a handy landmark when you’re trying to find the church – but it was the starkly white and unusually shaped (for Victoria) church building that got my attention. You just can’t miss it as you drive into town on Hwy. 87. As I posted last time, Victoria has never had an Orthodox church. It has a large percentage of Roman Catholic churches, but mainline Protestant and non-denominational are equally present. There’s even been a Muslim mosque for several years, but never an Orthodox church. Corpus Christi, 50 miles away, had the closest Orthodox church...

Read complete posts here and here.