Holy Apostles marks 10 years; man’s field welcomes back Cornell, IC

The 50 parishioners of Lansing’s Holy Apostles Orthodox Church will celebrate the 10th anniversary of its founding this month.

Their “mission church” was started in August 2010 with the vision of serving the area’s Orthodox Christian community members who were looking for services held primarily in English, according to the church’s priest Father Joel Brady.

Brady has been in Lansing for about 3 1/2 years — this is his first assignment following his ordination. He followed Father James Worthington. The community holds services in the old All Saints Church building at the corner of Ridge Road and Myers Road.

“Most people come to our church who are already looking for an Orthodox church,” Brady said. “Others come as part of their explorations of the Christian traditions or their general spiritual journey. They are looking for something rooted in more than just their own ideas. People realize that and come looking for us.”

Brady said that the parishioners see one another as family.

“People have expressed appreciation for that,” he said. “Our faith is ancient and demanding — it asks a lot of you. So, that real, warm family environment that happens organically in this community draws people.”

Brady has firsthand experience in seeking — his parents crisscrossed the Midwest as he grew up seeking a religious community where they felt at home before settling into the Orthodox church in southeastern Ohio. After completing his undergraduate work at Malone College in Akron, Ohio, he did mental health work professionally.

“I basically decided that, if I was going to address the varieties of human suffering, it needed to be a spiritual thing,” he said.

Holy Apostles’ “mother parish,” Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Endicott, helped at the beginning by sending clergy to officiate the first services.

“The All Saints building was a great place to get started,” Brady said. “It enabled us to have a really full liturgical life — a great blessing.”

Over the next 10 years, Brady sees Holy Apostles moving into its own new and permanent location with a parish hall, a kitchen and a worship space.

Lansing man’s field welcomes Cornell, IC back

Returning Ithaca College and Cornell University students flying into the Ithaca Tompkins County Regional Airport will find a gigantic welcome mat spread beneath them across the Eisenhut family fields in Lansing.

Tony Eisenhut, daughters Sarah and Emily, and Emily’s husband, Tom D’Alessandro, took 12 hours over three days to design and mow lettering spelling out “Welcome back CU IC” into their pastures under the usual approach path for planes landing in Ithaca.

“It was too big of an area to ‘free hand,’” Eisenhut said. “So, we plotted out the dimensions on graph paper and then took that layout to the field and marked each row out in blocks so that a single letter fit in each block.”

The team began with “WELCOME” and worked their way to “CU” and “IC.”

“Once the blocks were in place, I ran the walk-behind mower while Sarah, Emily and Tom stood at the pivot points of each letter,” Eisenhut said. “From there, it was a bit of hope and prayer.”

Neighbors Shannon and Jeff Dunbar showed up with a drone that allowed the team to check the alignment of the letters “WELC.” The next day, friend Sue Ruoff’s drone camera assured the team that “WELCOME BACK” was on the level before adding “CU” and “IC.”

“All in all, we are happy with it,” Eisenhut said. “[It’s] not perfect, but not too bad for novices. I have watched the planes come and go from our porch for 20 years, and I always said I should carve ‘Welcome to Ithaca’ as a greeting for visitors to see as they came to town.”

Eisenhut added how grateful he is to live in this community.

“Dave Cutting would always tell me how lucky we are to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world and that sharing it with others would only make it stronger and more vibrant,” Eisenhut said. “I am a believer and supporter of this mantra. With all that has been going on in the COVID-19 world, I thought it would be great to do something that shared this sentiment.”

Ithaca derives a great deal of its community culture from the Cornell and Ithaca College students, Eisenhut noted.

“During this COVID-19 pandemic, there is a great deal of discussion around whether we should have students on campus,” he said. “I have confidence that both Cornell and Ithaca College will put protective programs in place that are for the benefit of all stakeholders and that the students will be responsible. We wanted to let them know that we are glad they are coming back to Ithaca, and we look forward to having them contributing to our great community.”