Holy Resurrection Armenian Apostolic Church 

It was a busy year at Holy Resurrection

 

The busiest in a long time!

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Just as the snow melted we hosted the annual Wisconsin Genocide Memorial on April 24.

It was at that same week when heavy road construction started on Michigan Avenue. For those readers that know South Milwaukee, the pipe under Michigan Avenue carried the original filtered water from Lake Michigan to the water tower. (It’s also one of the first water filtration plants in the US). That was a long time ago, so it was very deep and very old and it took a long time to replace.

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We also discovered and replaced a worn out sewer line that led away from the church. The

plumbers had to dig a trench 17 feet down. I was there for most of the 4 day project. I was

hoping to find some artifact that was left behind when we built our “new” church, but the only treasure was an empty Schlitz bottle, proving that in 1962, there must have been at least one “supervisor”.

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A few weeks after that big event, we received our first official visit by Bishop Parsamyan. Our road was still gravel.

 

It stayed like that until about October 31, when the paving stopped and the barricades were removed.

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Before this serious work was started, we were primed for inconvenience in May 2024 when the city was hit by a hailstorm that struck our area with tennis ball sized hail. Cars were totaled and most homes had to be re-roofed. Of course our historic and Milwaukee landmark church with its large sweeping arched roof needed to be replaced, too.

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The remarkable thing that I noticed was that during this year and a half of weather, man-made hurdles and a shrinking bank account, Holy Resurrection remained open. No one complained, in fact we had record attendance. Sometimes people had to walk a block or two after they would park, but old and young they would still walk over the mounds of dirt and gravel, wipe their shoes off and walk in.

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At a time when some people say resilience and grit are in short supply, it made me think of our Christian heritage; there will be difficulties, but if we have Faith and understand that God will help us, the problems appear small and tolerable.

 

I would like to thank and pray for those who visited, worshipped, dug, hammered, paved and donated during this period which could have been a demoralizing, stressful time but instead it became a rallying point for Holy Resurrection.

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Deacon Armen Hadjinian