Reflections gathered by Eva Wasseen, member of Mount of Olives Lutheran Church, Rock Springs, Wyoming, and formatted by Deacon Mary Stoneback, Synod Minister for Strategic Communication and Events

ROCK SPRINGS, WYOMING — Mount of Olives Lutheran Church in Rock Springs describes itself as “a community centered in the gospel of Jesus Christ,” with a mission to share God’s love and saving grace “with our members, our community, and the world.” But if you ask the people who know this congregation best, they are likely to describe it with a different word.

Family.

That word comes up again and again in the stories members tell about Mount of Olives’ first fifty years. Not because the congregation has had an easy life together, but because through joy and heartbreak, new beginnings and painful transitions, they have kept finding ways to be church for one another.

For Eva Wasseen, that story began when her family moved to Wyoming from North Carolina in 2010. At first they attended White Mountain Presbyterian, but when that congregation closed, they began visiting other churches. Some of the people they had known there also found their way to Mount of Olives. Eva remembers that season as a kind of church shopping, but one place kept drawing them back.

At Mount of Olives, Pastor Martha offered a positive, welcoming message each week. The members invited them to return and to join in. There were families, young people, and activities that made it easy for their own young family to step in. The welcome did not feel polite or distant. It felt personal. Members treated them like family, and with that came something Eva says they deeply needed: renewal. In a new place, far from relatives, they found a church that made them feel positive about life again and renewed in their spiritual life.

That same kind of welcome shaped Jim Wasseen’s first memory of the congregation too. When the family moved to the area in 2009, they were looking for a church that would help teach their children about God’s love. Their children were just six and four. Jim remembers taking them to church on Sundays while his wife worked, a rhythm that had become part of family life. When they found Mount of Olives, the first person they encountered was Pastor Martha Atkins, smiling broadly at the door. Inside, the congregation was just as glad to see them. Everyone greeted them warmly and hoped they would come back. The next Saturday, Jim asked the children if they wanted to return. They were excited to go back and see their new friends.

That first welcome turned into a way of life. Over time, many of their children’s birthdays and graduation parties were celebrated with their “MOO family.” Eva says the congregation became involved in every important event in their children’s lives. Their annual rhythms began to revolve around Mount of Olives events: camping in July, birthday parties, skiing trips, hikes, parades, Super Bowl parties, Christmas Eve get-togethers, Fourth of July fireworks and picnics, annual summer picnics, days at the Gorge, potlucks, women’s retreats, Vacation Bible School, and ecumenical services during Thanksgiving, Lent, Advent, and Holy Week with Holy Communion Episcopal and the United Church of Christ in Rock Springs. Without that love and support, she says, their family circle would have been much smaller.

For Eva, Mount of Olives did more than provide companionship. It reshaped her understanding of faith. She says that the ELCA’s mission to welcome and accept all people was new to her and deeply refreshing. She had grown up in churches where conversations about LGBTQ people, and especially whether they could serve as pastors, created division or were simply not spoken aloud. She had been taught that such things were wrong in the eyes of God. But somewhere along the way, something changed. She began to notice it in her daughter.

Her daughter was growing into someone confident and grounded in faith, someone who believed every person had equal value and deserved full participation in community. Eva realized that her daughter’s openness, her strong convictions, and her easy acceptance of others were showing the family something they themselves had missed. Watching that faith take root caused Eva to rethink how she understood neighbors, community members, friends, family, and pastors. She came to see more clearly what it means to love all of one’s neighbors. Along with that came another gift she says felt new: grace. At Mount of Olives, she heard again and again, from ordained pastors and lay leaders alike, that people really are forgiven, really are loved, and still belong to the kingdom of heaven even in all their humanity and sin. Others tell the story of Mount of Olives with different details, but the same core truth.

Mark and Linda Kot both came with Lutheran roots, and after Pastor Stoffregen married them at Mount of Olives on August 7, 1999, they soon became members. For them, the heart of the congregation is found in both constancy and care. There is worship every Sunday. There is fellowship after services. There are campouts, bowling, adult dinners, picnics, parties, and men’s and women’s groups that help people know each other beyond Sunday morning. There is also practical care: visiting members in need, helping through WELCA, and reaching outward through local food bank drives, hygiene supplies for babies and women, St. Christopher’s Highway, and Lutheran World Relief. Their faith, they say, has been shaped through their interactions with other members and other Christians in the community, and they understand sharing the good news through worship, council leadership, fellowship activities, and relationships with other churches in communion with them.

Cindy Huebner’s memories stretch back nearly to the beginning. She joined Mount of Olives in 1979 with Don McDowell and their three children—Travis, Trenton, and Taryn—not long after moving to the area with Lutheran roots in Minnesota. One day, while outside with her children, she met Carma Johnson, another recent transplant from Minnesota, now living in Green River. Their conversation turned to church, and Carma invited Cindy to the newly established Mount of Olives Lutheran Church in Rock Springs. That invitation changed the course of decades.

Cindy remembers first attending worship in what she believes was a community recreation building, a space rented and used for many purposes. Sometimes there had been a celebration there the evening before, and Sunday morning meant setting up the room all over again for church. It was not polished. It was not permanent. But they made it happen. Since then, she says, the church family has shared in the highs and lows of her family’s history. Tom later joined Mount of Olives after marrying Cindy in 2001 and has now been part of the congregation for twenty-five years himself.

When Cindy describes the heart of Mount of Olives, she points to the warm greeting newcomers receive when they walk in for Sunday worship, the open invitation to the Lord’s Supper, and the encouragement to stay for fellowship coffee. Her faith has been strengthened, she says, by seeing that even through the many trials this church has experienced, God has somehow carried them through. The challenges are “too many to count,” but the testimony remains simple: they are still here. Her prayer now is that a pastor will choose to lead them, because while many wonderful members continue to step up and make the church function, they are getting tired.

Ann Maria Mattila’s story reaches even further back, to the founding era of the congregation. Growing up in Rock Springs, the only Lutheran church available to her family was Missouri Synod. Two things wounded her there. One was that her father was not allowed to receive communion because he had been confirmed in the Finnish Lutheran Church in Butte, Montana, and that confirmation was not recognized. The other was that, as a girl, she was not allowed full participation. Girls could not even serve as acolytes.

Then came another loss. When she was in seventh grade, the beloved Pastor Maleske—whose ministry had begun to include more ecumenical activity with other local churches—was urged by the board of elders to accept one of the many other calls he had been receiving. Ann Maria says her heart was broken. A friend whose family had also left Trinity when Pastor Maleske departed told her about a new Lutheran congregation just getting started. Ann Maria began attending confirmation classes there and was confirmed at Mount of Olives in June 1976.

Her summary of what that meant is powerful in its simplicity: at Mount of Olives, she was allowed to take communion. That sentence says as much as any formal congregational history could say about what kind of church Mount of Olives was becoming.

Others speak of the congregation’s ministry through the lens of grief and the way the church held them in it. Marlene and Rich Kramer first came to Mount of Olives around 2006 or 2007 after Marilyn Tangen, who worked at the same school as Marlene, invited them. They were looking for a church with a Sunday School program that coincided with worship and that could feel like a spiritual home across Marlene’s Methodist and Rich’s Catholic backgrounds. From the first service, Mount of Olives felt like a good fit. They always felt welcome, and even after a season when they were not attending regularly, that welcome did not disappear.

In late spring of 2021, they returned to Mount of Olives with their daughter Makayla—Mack—who was home from college. They worshiped there through the summer and became acquainted with Pastor Levi, even going to coffee with him so they could get to know each other better. They reentered congregational life feeling as though they had never really been absent.

Then, in September 2021, Mack returned to college as a sophomore and died by suicide at age nineteen. Their testimony is that God clearly had a hand in bringing them back to church in those previous months. Their faith had once again become central in their lives. Pastor Levi had come to know Mack personally and was able to preach a personal service grounded in that relationship. The whole church community provided tremendous support through their tragedy. For Marlene and Rich, Mount of Olives was not simply a place they happened to be attending when sorrow came. It was the community God gathered around them before they knew how desperately they would need it.

Emma Sundeen speaks with similar gratitude. She joined Mount of Olives in 1988 when she moved to Wyoming. Her son Trent joined then as well, though later moved to another faith, and her husband joined some years later. Over all those years, she says, the members of Mount of Olives have been such a support to her. She especially remembers Pastor Levi doing a personal service for her husband Terry as he moved through several months on hospice toward death. Pastor Levi helped Terry with that transition. Emma calls it a blessing. She says simply that God has always taken care of her, and that Mount of Olives has also taken care of her.

Marilyn Tangen, too, speaks of the congregation as family in the deepest sense. When she thinks about the heart of Mount of Olives, that is the first word that comes to mind. The good times and the struggles have both been part of congregational life, she says, but the family always pulls through. The many outings and social events have only strengthened those bonds. She remembers clearly the years when the congregation struggled financially to make mortgage payments. Members adopted individual bills. They worked for a local catering company doing prep work and waiting tables at events. They hosted a lutefisk dinner and added Swedish meatballs for those who were not brave enough to try the lutefisk. In the summers, they made crafts to sell at a boutique. Anything to keep the church alive, she says. And it worked.

Now the congregation is smaller, but Marilyn says everyone still feels the love of every member. Her own faith story has unfolded alongside that communal life. She remembers when joining the church felt mostly like something one was supposed to do if raised Lutheran. But over the years, as she taught Sunday school, joined committees, served on council, and became active in the women’s group, her dependence on God deepened. Then came the death of her husband, and with it a clearer understanding of how necessary that bond with Christ really is. The church, she says, was the main reason her faith stayed strong. She is grateful for that. She also points to the many outstanding ministers and leaders who have guided Mount of Olives over the years, and she is proud that the congregation has remained open-minded in a world that keeps changing rapidly. To Marilyn, one of the clearest signs that God has been at work is the congregation’s determination to keep God alive among them even through seasons without a pastor.

Jim Wasseen has seen that determination from the inside. Over time, his faith has deepened through opportunities to serve in leadership: on council, as secretary, as council president, and now through preaching and presiding at the eucharist. The lesson he keeps learning is that God provides what is needed in the moment it is needed. He points to the COVID-19 pandemic as a vivid example. While serving as council president, he worked with a dedicated council and a talented pastor to carefully plan ways to minimize the congregation’s exposure to the virus. When conditions changed, worship moved outdoors. He remembers sitting in a lawn chair in the springtime, surrounded by blooming crabapple trees, breathing in their beauty during Sunday worship. He had no blueprint for how to navigate that season, he says, but God did.

At the same time, Jim is honest that Mount of Olives has endured significant challenges, including boundary violations, the pandemic, and the shrinkage of the congregation that followed hard seasons. Yet rather than falling apart, the church has in some ways grown closer and more dependent on one another. Where they once had more energy for outward community activity, much of their focus now has had to turn inward toward sustaining the life they have. Jim says he does not yet know the full shape of God’s larger plan, but he trusts that God has one for Mount of Olives.

One of the congregation’s best-loved traditions captures that spirit of shared life well: the annual church campout. Jim describes it as a beloved summer tradition in which the congregation leaves the church building behind and gathers at a local campground for a weekend of fellowship, worship, and delight in God’s creation. What began as a short getaway grew into a four-day event, simply because people discovered that a brief visit was not enough time to enjoy being together outdoors.

That love of being together appears everywhere in these stories. In bowling nights and adult dinners. In picnics and hikes. In coffee after worship. In campgrounds and holiday gatherings. In ecumenical partnerships and food drives. In children being folded naturally into the life of the congregation. In the church’s choice, as Eva remembers people saying, to go out into the community until “the church had left the building.” And yet these stories are also unflinching about the congregation’s present challenge.

Several members describe the strain of being without a full-time permanent pastor. In Rock Springs—remote, rural, desert Wyoming—it is not easy to find a pastor willing to come, especially at a time when many pulpits are open and fewer pastors are seeking call. Lower attendance and constant financial concern weigh on people. Lay leaders and volunteers, many of whom also hold outside jobs, have served repeated terms because there is no one new to take their place. Pulpit supply often comes from other churches, including sister congregations, but each preacher brings a different style, and that inconsistency has worn on the community. Eva says it plainly: “We are tired.”

Marlene notes that being without a pastor has also brought members closer together, requiring them to step up, continue meaningful worship, and pursue lay ministry training so communion can still be offered each Sunday. Cindy says much the same: wonderful members keep stepping up to the plate, but they are getting tired. Katherine Wegner, whose family first connected to Mount of Olives through her mother-in-law, also names the lack of a full-time permanent pastor as the biggest challenge she sees. For Katherine, Pastor Levi was central to her experience of the congregation. He reached out to her when she was unsure whether she wanted to come, invited her to coffee, and gently opened a door back into faith. One Sunday led to another. Eventually her daughter came, then her grandchildren were baptized there. Pastor Levi walked with the family through leukemia, hardship, and the ordinary not-so-good times along with the good ones. Katherine says that Mount of Olives and Pastor Levi gave her back her faith. Even though she no longer attends there, she still holds a special place in her heart for him, the congregation, and the church.

Sandy Andrews’ brief recollection points to how this story began in the first place. She and Lee moved to Green River in 1975 from Torrance, California, where they had belonged to a large LCA church. The very next weekend they found Mount of Olives and attended. There they met other people who were new to the area too, and soon they became friends and members.

That thread runs through the whole fifty-year story: newcomers arriving in an unfamiliar place and finding not just a church service, but a people.

The congregation’s public presence still reflects that identity. Mount of Olives continues weekly worship in Rock Springs, and the Rocky Mountain Synod currently lists the congregation in the call process for a pastor. A recent anniversary announcement invited the community to gather for an anniversary service followed by an open house with refreshments, photos, and “50 years of shared memories.” That phrase fits. Shared memories are exactly what these testimonies preserve.

When members look back over those fifty years and ask where God was clearly at work, their answers are not polished theological statements. They are concrete and lived. God was at work in bringing a family from North Carolina to Rock Springs and giving them the family they did not know they needed. God was at work in a smile at the church door and children eager to come back next Sunday. God was at work in a church where a girl could finally come to communion. God was at work in mortgage bills adopted, dinners cooked, crafts sold, and a congregation refusing to disappear. God was at work in lawn chairs under crabapple trees during pandemic worship. God was at work in coffee with a pastor, in grandchildren baptized, in hospice prayers, and in a congregation gathered around grieving parents after the death of their daughter. God was at work in the fact that, after everything, Mount of Olives is still here.

The prayers people now offer for the future are just as concrete. They pray for a pastor—perhaps even part-time—who will renew enthusiasm for ministry, bring new ideas and programs, preach to real life, and help attract young families again. They pray that the congregation will continue to work together and impact the wider community as profoundly as it has impacted them. They pray that outreach will help the church grow. They pray that younger generations can still be engaged in a life of faith. They pray that Mount of Olives will continue to worship, continue to welcome, and continue to shine as a community of faith learners. Most of all, they pray that Mount of Olives will remain what it has long been: home.

After fifty years, Mount of Olives Lutheran Church’s witness is not captured only in its founding dates or official milestones. It is told in all these particular memories—borrowed buildings, open communion, coffee conversations, campouts, Swedish meatballs, crabapple blossoms, baptisms, funerals, long winters of waiting, and the stubborn grace of people who keep showing up for one another.

In Rock Springs, that is what church has looked like.

And for many, it has looked a lot like family.