Apostle to the Plains

The Life of Father Nicola Yanney

By: The Saint Raphael Clergy Brotherhood

Narrated by: A Member of the Saint Raphael Clergy Brotherhood

Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

In 1892, a young man left his home in the coastal foothills of Lebanon in search of a better life. Coming to America with his newlywed wife, he found work as a traveling peddler, before settling on a small farm in central Nebraska.

Years later, personal tragedy and an unexpected midnight visit from a saint changed the course of his life. 

Seeing the desperate need of his fellow orthodox Christians and heeding God’s call, he would spend the rest of his life traversing the Great Plains as a circuit-riding priest, known to his thousands of parishioners as Father Nicola Yanney. 

His legacy stands alongside that of St. Raphael Hawaweeny, his mentor, as a seminal force in the American Orthodox Church of our day.

©2019 The Saint Raphael Clergy Brotherhood (P)2020 The Saint Raphael Clergy Brotherhood

Glory to God

Good inspiration for our times. A true servant of God and an example to all in tmes of hardship. I enjoyed hearing of his journey.

Love requires sacrifice +

Fr. Nicola Yanney is a true example of what it means to follow Christ. His love for God is evident in his love for people and the Church. The brotherhood of St. Raphael did a wonderful job narrating this book. I highly recommend this book to anyone considering becoming clergy or desiring to know the Orthodox faith.

The life & travels of Fr. Nicola Yanney

If, as some have said, Orthodoxy is “the best kept secret in America” then it follows that the history of Orthodoxy in America would be little known to many as well. Hence the importance of the book Apostle to the Plains: The Life of Father Nicola Yanney. Put out by The Saint Raphael Clergy Brotherhood and, for those like me who listened to the audiobook, read by a Brother of the Saint Raphael Clergy Brotherhood. More than just a biography of Fr. Nicola Yanney, it details the life of Greek, Russian, and most of all, Syrian Orthodox who settled in this country and laid the foundation for the faith so many of us converted to or were born into.

A quick note on the audiobook itself. The narration was soothing however the reader misses out on the pictures and maps that accompany the written text of the book. Hence why I am not usually an audiobook listener.

Fr. Nicola hailed from then Greater Syria, which at the time encompassed current day Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan. He immigrated with his new wife Martha to Ellis Island in New York in 1892. After a long and arduous journey, from a region many have only read of in Scripture, to this new and strange World, they settled in Omaha, Nebraska. Here Fr. Nicola, aside from being a devoted husband, father, and brother, became a peddler, then farmer, and later, unexpectedly, a priest. He was known throughout the country as a circuit-riding priest as his territory – assigned by then Bishop, now Saint Raphael Halloweeny – stretched across the Midwest including towns in places like Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska among other. Traveling several months of the year he baptized close to a thousand children, married dozens of couples, and buried parishioners as needed in his almost 15 year tenure. Personal loss, weather, politics, and legal and monetary hardship could not stop him from providing the sacraments to his vast flock, who would have had no Priest at all without his visits. If you think we have a shortage of priests today – imagine going months or years without the sacraments or even a service, as many immigrants did.

The chronicle of this life and travels can be at times arduous but it serves to bring the reader into the feeling of what life must have been like for Fr. Nicola.
During his priestly career he faced many unending trials:
- The harsh climate, “Traveling twelve hundred miles from the far southeastern corner of his missionary travels, Father Nicola arrived at its northernmost edge, not far from the Canadian border…When he stepped off the train in North Dakota, he found the weather dramatically different from that in southern Missouri. The temperature had dropped thirty degrees.”
- The deaths of loved ones, “After the services, the congregation and the visitors made a procession to the cemetery…There, with prayers and tears, Father Nicola laid yet another member of his family to rest.
- The politics of the time, “Though grateful for the support of the Russian Church for the past twenty years, most of the communities that father Nicola had served desired to be under the Church of Antioch. Several congregations wanted to remain with the Russian however, and still others were being torn in two by the strife, even individual families were bitterly divided”
He never however lost his faith or failed to turn to God in prayer. It is his strength that was a pillar permitting Orthodoxy to grow and spread in America and hence why this work is and will continue to be a vital piece of our American Orthodox heritage.

Author and Orthodox historian Matthew Namee in the Afterword of the book perfectly encapsulates this historical tribute of Fr. Nicola’s life:
“What, then, is the legacy of Fr. Nicola? It is not merely that of a pioneering priest, a founder of parishes, the first ordination by St. Raphael. No, the legacy of Fr. Nicola is much more than that - it is the legacy of martyrdom. By the choices he made in his life, culminating in his self-emptying death, he bore witness to the reality of the Gospel. No man of little faith could have endured such suffering and accepted such tribulation. No man of little faith could have so disregarded his own self-interest to care for the sick and the dying.”

Captivating

I could not stop listening to this book. It is beautifully read and the story of Fr. Nicola is one that deserves to be heard. The wealth of information on Fr. Nicola Yanney gives a complete picture of his life and priesthood. His sacrifice was not only for Syrian Orthodoxy in the early 1900’s, but it lays the foundation for American Orthodoxy as it is today. I highly recommend this book!

A Life Truly Given to Christ

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.

A Life Well Lived. An Example To Us All.

I don't know that I could have withstood the trials and tribulations that Father Nikola Yanney had to endure, but what an inspiration to us all!

Highly Recommended

By Michelle Diaz-Nanasca

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!

A Great Read for Any American Orthodox Christian

I was absolutely enthralled with Fr. Nikola’s story. As a member of the Orthodox community in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (spoken of several times in the book), although not the Syrian church in town (I go to the Greek Orthodox church), it was really interesting to hear about all the original Fathers to our country did to help our faith survive and thrive at the turn of the 20th century. I’m supremely grateful to Fr. Nikola, Bishop Tikon, and all those who worked until their death to humbly serve the ancestors of my amazing friends and church family. Truly they were the best example imaginable of what it means to be Christian. Thank you also to the Saint Raphael Clergy Brotherhood who compiled and narrated this work. I was deeply blessed by this book and being able to listen to it given a reading disability that renders me unable to effectively read a book in the “normal” way.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Orthodox Pioneers

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!

A life well lived...

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.