Apostle to the Plains: The Life of Father Nicola Yanney

Father Yanney's life story is an inspiring one. His travels to minister to the Orthodox faithful scattered in small settlements across a large swath of America was grueling. I was exhausted reading about them. We Orthodox living and worshipping in the mid section of this country are in many ways his legacy. Thank you for pulling the information together and sharing his story. May his memory be eternal.

I really enjoyed reading about a man whose heart is so full of love for God and his Orthodox faith.

So many parts of the life of Fr. Nicola Yanney as described in Apostle to the Plains sound like an Orthodox version of the stories from the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder. From immigrating to the United States in deplorable conditions on steam ships, to working as a peddler, to farming in the plains of Nebraska and living in a sod house, the accounts of his life are a historical snapshot of the life of immigrants and pioneers in the early 1900s. The sheer fortitude displayed by Fr. Nicola, his family, and his Bishop, St. Raphael of Brooklyn, seems impossible and even super-human at times - a quality many of us associate with those early American trailblazers & missionaries that lived in and traversed much of the new landscapes of a growing country. Apostle to the Plains not only serves as a snapshot of early American pioneers, but it also documents the growth and challenges that the fledging Orthodox Church experienced in America. Apostle to the Plains was a perfect book to read during the current COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. I found myself moved to tears of solidarity by several accounts in the book. Before he was ordained, Nicola and his wife hadn’t been to church after their arrival in the United States because there simply were no Orthodox churches available to them in the areas of Nebraska where they settled. It is a particularly touching moment when the visiting Bishop Raphael (exhausted and ill from his travels all the way from New York) arrived at the Yanney sod house in the middle of the night and is greeted by Nicola and his wife with much joy and enthusiasm. The Yanneys would finally be able to have their children baptized and would receive Holy Communion after 8 years. The inability to attend church is not the only parallel to the 2020 pandemic, however. So selfless and relentless was the ministry of Fr. Nicola that it led to his death from the Spanish Flu during the pandemic of 1918. Despite the quarantine measures in Nebraska, Fr. Nicola bravely continued to minister to the sick and perform funerals. It ultimately caused his repose at just 44 years old. He never even got to meet his first grandchild who was born shortly after his death. This audiobook narrator, an anonymous monk from the St. Raphael Clergy Brotherhood, has a wonderfully soothing voice, just the right speed and never hard to understand. The book was maybe a challenge to narrate because there are lengthy passages that list the itinerary of that Fr. Nicola including the stops he made city after city. Although these passages might seem slightly boring and unnecessary, for me as an Orthodox Christian, I found it fascinating that there were so many pockets of Syrian Orthodox in the US during the early 1900s. It is also important to hear all the stops Fr. Nicola made because the territory he visited year after year was so staggeringly large and varied. He travels (by uncomfortable train and horse and wagon, no less) more than any of us modern readers can claim in our lifetimes. Apostle to the Plains is a fascinating piece of the life of the Orthodox Church in the United States and of the lives immigrants alike. The legacy of Fr. Nicola lives on to this day - the church he established, St. George in Kearney, Nebraska, is still an active parish and it is estimated that he baptized over 1000 Orthodox Christians from Nebraska, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to the rural areas of Tennessee. Fr. Nicola’s life and work is truly an example of the sacrifices early American Orthodox men and women made to spread the beauty and truth of the Orthodox Faith in North America. May his memory be eternal!

The American heartland is vast. We forget this today with our extensive road system, ubiquitous automobiles, and sprawling suburbs and metropolitan regions, but you can still attain something of a feel for the wide open spaces if you should ever drive across the Great Plains, as they stretch from northern Texas in the south, to Minnesota and North Dakota, and on into Canada, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River, and arguably even across Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. If you have ever driven, hour after hour, across Nebraska or Kansas, you begin to grasp the true scale. Imagine crossing it on foot, or by horse-cart, or even by a 19th century steam train, where the hours turn into days, or the days into weeks. This was Father Nicola Yanney’s territory as a circuit-riding priest. Father Nicola would eventually perform over a thousand baptisms, numerous weddings, and a great number of funerals, including his own daughter’s, when she was 12. He faced a perpetual struggle to balance the needs of his own local parish with the needs of scattered Orthodox communities in his vast territory, and the book often recounts him arriving home, only to be required to travel again within days due to some emergency or other. He often had to play peacemaker too, either within the Orthodox communities, or between them and others. He even served as an Orthodox priest at the replica of the Holy Sepulcher church built at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Even by today’s standards of travel, Father Nicola’s schedule was punishing, and the distances enormous. But from this schedule, and surviving records, correspondence, and family recollections, Fr. Nicola’s devotion is readily apparent. He served even when financial support was lacking, acquiring significant debt to keep his 3 remaining children housed, fed, and in school while serving far afield. This is in marked contrast to other priests ordained after him, who sometimes would leave their assigned parishes for wealthier locales, forcing Nicola to keep up a longer travel schedule than he should have. It was his great piety that led his home community to nominate him to the priesthood, and that piety remained undiminished throughout his career. In this time of the COVID pandemic, it is especially fitting to remember Father Nicola, for it was in the Spanish Flu pandemic that he lost his life, visiting with the sick and the dying in his own home town. Just as we are sometimes unaware of the size of our nation, we are often forgetful of how much our ancestors had to struggle, and how recently they lived with dangers that today we consider long forgotten. Apostle to the Plains is a worthy look at what service and devotion meant a century ago on the Plains, through the eyes of an itinerant immigrant priest. Nota Bene: Ancient Faith provided me with a copy of the audio book for review.

I think I've decided that my favorite type of Orthodox book is the kind that gives as much information as possible about the lives of saints. Whenever I read the paragraph-long lives of saints that appear in places like The Prologue from Ochrid, I always have so many questions! There are so many saints about whom we know just bits and pieces, a few small facts about how they lived and often the most about how they died. I am always hungry for more details, all the elements of a saint's story that added up to a life of becoming more and more like Christ. Imagine my delight, then, when on the same day I received two such books: an audiobook review copy of Apostle to the Plains: The Life of Fr. Nicola Yanney and, in the mail, a book ordered by my husband just a few days before, The Romanov Royal Martyrs: What Silence Could Not Conceal. We are still reading and loving the second; this review is about the first, which I so enjoyed listening to while doing chores over the course of a week. Fr. Nicola is a person whom I think every Orthodox Christian in America should know about! His story opened my eyes to many aspects of American Orthodox history that I had never heard about. I didn't know what it was like for a young man living in a small village in Lebanon in the late 1800s, or what he would have experienced immigrating to America in a steamship with his new wife, Martha. Learning about the experience of immigrants made me think about how blessed I am to be born in a country with religious freedom and access to opportunities. As a newly-married nineteen-year-old, Fr. Nicola left his home not because he wanted to, but because he couldn't safely raise a family there. He knew he would probably never be able to return to his beloved homeland. The book describes the difficult two-part sea voyage and the tense wait to see if he and Martha would pass inspection at Ellis Island and be deemed healthy enough to enter America. I felt like I was recovering pieces of American history that I really should have known about. I was intrigued by how much detail The St. Raphael Clergy Brotherhood was able to compile to tell the story of Fr. Nicola's experience in Nebraska, as a peddler and then a farmer, and finally as a missionary priest with a massive territory (nearly all of the middle third of the contiguous U.S.). His story reminds readers of the gift it is to have a priest and an established parish in our own towns. He and his family spent years without any opportunity to see a priest, to go to confession, to receive Holy Communion, or to have their children baptized. The Yanneys were finally visited by the future bishop and saint, Fr. Raphael, on their remote homestead, when he baptized their children and stayed for a few days to offer church services and give the sacraments to the local Syrian Orthodox community. In the following years, they again had no access to a priest, since Fr. Raphael was based in New York and was traveling all over the U.S. to find the scattered Syrian Orthodox people. When Fr. Nicola's wife, Martha Yanney, tragically fell ill and then died in childbirth, she was not able to receive the sacraments or have an Orthodox funeral, because there was no priest. These experiences of having so little connection to the Church were formative for Fr. Nicola. When his community all agreed that he was the best candidate to become their priest, Fr. Nicola was ordained by the newly consecrated Bishop Raphael of Brooklyn. In accepting ordination, he assumed a life of incredible self-sacrifice. While a single father with four still-young children, at Bishop Raphael's request Fr. Nicola began serving not only his local community in Kearney, Nebraska, but the Syrian Orthodox people throughout numerous Mid-Western states. After years of pouring himself out, he literally gave his life for his flock when he contracted the Spanish flu while confessing and communing ill parishioners, during the pandemic of 1918. With the publication of Apostle to the Plains last summer and now its availability as an audiobook, we have the huge blessing of access to an in-depth look at Fr. Nicola's life and ministry. It was a treat to listen to the audiobook, because I love being read to while I work around the house. I'm very picky about narration, and I thought the read-aloud style of this recording was well done. The reader's straightforward manner doesn't distract from the text, allowing it to take center-stage. More importantly, the reader demonstrates an obvious respect for Fr. Nicola. While I am glad to have the audiobook version and am already listening to it for a second time, I am planning to purchase the hard-copy version of the book, as well: I want to be able to reference it easily, and I want to see how names are spelled and have the full experience that comes with reading a book. As you can see, I highly recommend Apostle to the Plains!

Three years ago my family and I moved from my native Oregon to NW Wisconsin. It's not much of a move compared to Fr Nicola Yanney's immigration from Syria to Nebraska, but in a small way I left everything I'd ever known, and when I heard about this book I really needed to read it. It told the story of another soul who not only left home and church and family, but who settled here in the American midwest. I'm sure it's a different place than when the Yanneys originally made their homestead, but in some ways we face similar obstacles. Out among the farms, Orthodox parishes are few and far between and usually small. A regular pastor might or might not be attached to a parish. The elements and the climate can be harsh and unforgiving. In rural America, people are still often monetarily poor. 'Apostle to the Plains' is the story of a man who, in the midst of all this rocky soil, not only sprouted, but in Christ bloomed and flourished. In a worldly sense he endured tremendous sorrow. As I listened, I found myself in tears approximately every forty pages, because of all the bereavement that was so common at the turn of the 20th century (which is a compliment I must pay the authors of this book - I don't recall the last time a historical autobiography engaged me on such an emotional level). Fr Nicola bore every cross. He sacrificed everything most of us consider most valuable: family, honest prosperity, a home. But in the words of the Apostle Paul, 'whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ' (Phil 3:8). Fr Nicola Yanney truly exchanged everything he had for the pearl of great price, and he continued to do so until he died. On a wider historic level the book gives readers a glimpse into the foundations of Orthodoxy in America, and through Fr Nicola's eyes, a very personal experience of the struggles the church suffered in becoming established here. I am a convert to Orthodoxy, and without people like Fr Nicola to shepherd Orthodox immigrants through those years, I wonder if an American Orthodoxy would've survived for me to be baptized into. On behalf of myself, my husband and my four children (who were all baptized just after their birth) I feel deep gratitude to Fr Nicola and those like him who sacrificed so much temporal treasure for the sake of eternal gain.

Apostle to the plains is a detailed account of the life and times of Father Nicola Yanney, an Orthodox immigrant to the United states in the late 1800’s. I have listened to this audiobook four times and each time I am struck with a new depth of understanding in his continuous work towards the cross. His life was chock full of tragedy, hard work, and an unrelenting schedule. How does one man almost single-handedly keep Orthodoxy alive in such a vast expanse like the Midwest. From Alabama to North Dakota, Colorado to the Mississippi River, he touched so many lives through the sacraments. But it was his selflessness that strikes my heart. His willingness to be the chosen man to leave his Nebraska farm to become the great missionary to the Orthodox people. He lived a complicated life of schedules between our naturally complicated church calendar and the logistics of serving so many over an expanse I can barely wrap my head around. He managed to grow many churches among the Orthodox that still stand today in his fourteen years of missionary work. Every year we take a trip to the western states I have been struck at the number of small Orthodox parishes dotted around the countryside. Now I know this was part of the great work of Father Nicola Yanney and our Father in Heaven providing for His people.

Readers who have marveled at the experiences of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books will see some parallels in “Apostle to the Plains.” The Yanneys also lived in a sod house for a period of time while they were homesteading. Although the Ingalls family’s experiences preceded the Yanney’s by some 20 years, and happened largely in different states, both families suffered illnesses and loss. There were times when each family struggled to attend school or church (because there was none, or it was far away). And despite their hard times, both families endeavored to do what was right and persevered with dogged determination. A large portion of “Apostle to the Plains” is dedicated to recounting the missionary journeys and busy life of Fr. Nicola’s years as a traveling priest, and at points these chapters feel a bit overwhelming. Even with today’s technology and travel infrastructure, his months of travel and the few weeks at home in between trips would exhaust anyone. But when the reader remembers that his travels happened more than a century ago, with much slower communication and more tedious means of transportation, what he accomplished is truly astounding.

This is a remarkable book. Father Nicola was an immigrant from Syria when thst country was still under the Ottoman Yoke. The normal persecution was compounded by a particularly bad economy. He married young and emigrated to America, settling on a farm in Nebraska after having first spent time working as a peddler. His wife dies young after giving birth to their fifth child. The community, in need of a priest, raises him up as a candidate. He is ordained in New York by Bishop (now Saint) Raphael. This was St Raphael's first ordination- and St Raphael was the first bishop consecrated in the America's, so a double first. While assigned to the parish in Kearney, Nebraska, he was also given a large mission field to care after the Syrian Diaspora. It was all the territory from the Canadian border to the Mexican, between the Mississippi and the Rockies. And he took this seriously spending months traveling from community to community baptizing, hearing confessions, and praying the Divine Luliturgy. This is also the Era of the Armenian Genocide. While the Armenians are the most famous victims the Turks also went to work murdering off the Pontic Greeks, Assyrian Christians, and the Syrian Christians. Fr. Nicola raised funds and awareness about these crimes and their victims. He ends up dying during the Spanish Flu (yes, it was from Kansas but that is what history inaccurately calls it) after ministering to his people who were suffering from it. He was only 45. You also get a taste of the Syrian Christian confusion between the Maronites, Melkites, and Orthodox, as well as the divisions that cropped up in the Orthodox Community following St Raphael's death. It is written in an easy narrative style and doesn't lean too heavily into hagiography. A good read.