Reflecting on 150 years

By Anna Noel

Yorktown News-View

In October of 2022, St. Paul Lutheran Church of Yorktown will be celebrating its 150th anniversary. A special meal is planned for the celebration, where there will be recognition of members and a congregational group picture, among other things.

“We had started talking about it, I guess five years ago,” Pastor Tim Muehlbrad said, “and were just getting started in our planning when COVID hit, and that kind of shut everything down. So we’re somewhat low-key in what we’re going to do, but we’re still going to have something.

“A part of the celebration is, we wanted to do a mission project, a mission gift. What we’re doing is supporting the Oromo Lutheran Church of Houston, which is an immigrant group from Ethiopia, and they started a church, I think about in 2007, 2008. We have been supporting them through the years, but we wanted to give them a major gift because they have had no place of their own for worship. They were worshiping in another Lutheran church in downtown Houston, and that was about 30 minutes away from their community, so it was hard for them to travel there. They had recently bought some property, they’ve been saving their money up for the last ten or eleven years, and they had enough for a good down payment. With our gift then, they are able now to pay off the property.”

Another part of the celebration will be an exhibit of original furniture and other items from when St. Paul first began in 1872.

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