Brief background history of our mission
All Saints Orthodox Mission was started in November 2021 as a ROCOR Western Rite Mission with the blessing of Metropolitan Hilarion of blessed memory. We started off with 5 baptized members (my family) and 10 inquirers. We met in a chapel we built in my converted garage in Stockton, California. At this time almost everything we had as a mission we had to build ourselves from scratch.
Our mission has since switched to Eastern Rite in 2024.
We met in that garage chapel for 9 month. In July 2022, the Lord in His great mercy and love, provided a store front space for us to rent (at a monthly rental rate one third of the market rate). The store front was located in Lodi California, so we officially moved All Saints to Lodi, where we are the first and only Orthodox Church in the city of Lodi (population 60,000+)
In the last year in in Lodi we have seen an increase of inquirers, and by God’s grace have made 20 catechumens in the last 2 years, most of them have been in the last 12 months. In total we have 17 baptized members (1 recently reposed), 20 catechumens, and over a dozen regular inquirers.
But beyond the numeral growth, the biggest joy in our mission is seeing people start their journey of repentance. Our mission is made up of many different people from different cultures, religious backgrounds, and economic backgrounds. We have many in our mission who were formally homeless (and nomadic) youth. We have seen catechumens who have come from backgrounds and have renounced being Neo-Nazis, Trans, Wiccans, occultists, and Thai buddhists. We also baptized a former Roman Catholic Sub- deacon.
Some pastorally precious and holy moments for me this past year:
- Moving out of the garage and into our own rental space.
- Cooking for and hosting on 20+ people at our home Thursdays evenings for our dinner and catechesis time.
- Seeing a Neo-Nazi burn all his nazi music and paraphernalia.
- Having a former trans person (who is now a catechumen) tell me after a pilgrimage to venerate the Iveron Hawaiian Icon, that she feels the Theotokos is helping her to learn to be a women again (after hating her own femininity for many years and rejecting it to try to become a “trans man”)
- Seeing the writings of Saint Saphrony of Essex help a devote Thai Buddhist practitioner renounce Buddhist and become a catechumen (eventually leading to his whole family becoming catechumens)
- Seeing a formally homeless young man in our parish get a steady job, and even start budgeting and having a bank account and credit for the first time in his life. And also seeing another young man who was also formerly nomadic and homeless, just get his CDL and start a career as a truck driver. These two young men have gone on to help 11 of their friends become catechumens.
The last couple years have not been easy, I was unemployed for 10 months while founding the mission, and during that time our family lived on food stamps, mortgage deferral, and what little money I could make selling homemade sourdough from my home.
Now I am employed, and work 40 hour a week (remotely) as a contracted Analytical Linguistic Project Manager (Contract ends June 2023). This has provided for my family, but has made it so that I don’t get any days off during the week, so I work 7 days a week without a break (between my secular work and work at the Mission, averaging 60-80 hour work weeks).
Our mission is currently in the process of opening a bookstore and reading room/cafe. The goal of this is to provide a place for people in our community to be introduced to our parish and to Orthodoxy in an approachable way. Most people in our city have never heard about Orthodoxy, and this can serve as a way of introduction for them.
One of our big challenges as a parish is transportation and housing for parishioners. Many of our parishioners, especially catechumens, are unemployed or underemployed. Although we have worked hard to help find employment for many of our parishioners in need, the cost of living in our area is still very expensive, and about 1/3 of our parishioners do not have their own form of transportation. This makes it hard for everyone to attend services, catechesis, and pilgrimages. We hope to get a (used) Church Van in future to help with our transportation needs. We also hope to someday get some land outside of Lodi to build a future Temple, while in the meanwhile using the land as an Eco Village and Educational Center for Sustainable farming. This would help provide a home base for prayer and Orthodox community, but also provide transitional housing for those in need in our community.
I would like to thank Share the Faith for everything they have done to help and support out mission. I would also like to specially Fr Angelo for all his words of encouragement and guidance. He has been very helpful in supporting our recent growth as a mission.
We started this mission with no funding and no financial support. Share The Faith as been the first outside organization that has stepped up to help financially support our mission. This financial support from Share The Faith means so much to us and helps our mission in so many ways. One way it has helped is that it alleviates some of the financial burden for my family and I and allows us to be able to afford to cook for 20+ catechumens and inquirers every Thursdays. The fruit of this since receiving funding from Share The Faith has been that we were able to make 9 new catechumens on a single Sunday, bringing our total number of catechumens to 20. Glory to God!
Being a bi-vocational priest of a new mission is very hard, but the support from Share The Faith has given me the hope that someday I may be able to dedicate all my time to serving our parish and not be torn in two directions needing to work at a full-time secular job while also trying to tend to the full time needs of our parish.
Here are some more photos of our parish and parishioners. More photos can be found on our parish website.
Ancient Faith Radio gave Share the Faith Director, Fr Evangelos Pepps, an opportunity to discuss Orthodox mission work in the US. How can we share the faith effectively and establish more Orthodox missions? 
