A Church of Our Own

As a second generation Greek American and the son of a Greek Orthodox Priest, it is easy to say that the Greek Orthodox Church has been an essential part of my life since the day I was born. Some of my earliest memories are of Greek Easter Services and food festivals, where I was able to indulge myself in my favorite Greek delicacies such as tiropetes, dolmathes, and baklava. So it was no surprise to me that the woman I married would be of Greek descent and attended church. We married in 1992 and moved to Roseville during the Christmas season. Within weeks of moving to Roseville, we began attending church services at the Greek Orthodox Church of Roseville for Saturday morning. Services were on Saturdays because the church was only a mission, using the chapel at St John’s Catholic Church on Main Street in Roseville. We had to “borrow” Father James Dogias from the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church of Sacramento to perform services. In 1998 we welcomed Father Kosmas Halikakis and began holding services on Sunday in our rented space on Sunrise Blvd. A few years later, we welcomed Father Christopher Flesoras, named our church St. Annas, after the mother of the Virgin Mary, and began planning the building of our church and hall on the current property at Stone Canyon Drive. As for my wife and I, our family grew to three children, two girls and a boy. Our youngest, Dean, was baptized at St Anna’s in 2002. By this time, my wife had become involved with the Parish council of St Anna’s and the building committee, a small group of parishioners entrusted with the task of the formalization of a building plan for our new church. After several years of dedicated service, this group made a dream into a reality and the community celebrated liturgy for the first time in our new church on Christmas Eve 2006. And now, three years later, we have grown to a parish of over 150 families, enjoyed our third year of hosting the food festival at the Church, and receiving a Holy Relic of Saint Anna from the Skete of Saint Anna, in Mount Athos, Greece. Our next goal as a community is to build a Byzantine style church in the next few years. This church will become a permanent home for Orthodox Christians throughout the area and a beautiful landmark for the City of Roseville. So now here I am, and the memories continue. I am still enjoying tiropetes and baklava at the food festival, watching my children grow in the Orthodox faith, attending Sunday school and participate in many youth activities. I know that even 100 years from now, St. Anna Greek Orthodox Church will still be in Roseville to serve and provide future generations of not only Greek Orthodox, but Orthodox Christians of all ethnicities.

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