<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cOn the sixteenth day of November, 1890, workmen under the direction of Capt. J. A. Nichols, of Duluth Minnesota, encountered soft hematite in a test-pit on the northwest quarter of section three, township 58, range 18, west of the fourth principal meridian.\u00a0 This mine, now called Mountain Iron, was the first body of soft ore discovered on the Mesabi iron range.\u201d (1)\u00a0 Less than two years later the first shipment of iron ore left Mountain Iron in October of 1892.\u00a0 Less than two years after that, 31 men and women of Finnish descent met on February 25, 1894 to organize the church that was to become Messiah Lutheran Church.<\/p>\n Finnish Language<\/strong><\/p>\n As usual for churches of the time, services and Sunday church school were held in the parent language, Finnish.\u00a0 An English service was added and eventually all services and Sunday Church School were held in English.<\/p>\n \u201cI had Sunday School in Finn.\u00a0 I had it all in the Finnish language.\u00a0 I remember Sunday school teachers would talk to us in Finn and everything else\u2026They had it in Finn and English but then they did away with the Finn in about 1950.\u00a0 Some time I like to go to a Finnish service to see what it sounds like\u2026\u201d<\/span> Ed Ranta,<\/strong>\u00a0 Interview: August 11, 2000<\/p>\n \u201cWe came here we inquired about the church here in Mt. Iron.\u00a0 No, that was a Finnish Lutheran.\u00a0 Well we were Swedish Lutheran Church that we belonged to so we went to Virginia to Gethsemane, the first Sunday.\u00a0 Then the boys were in school and they got talking to the other friends of theirs and they said that there was an English service in Messiah.\u00a0 So then we started to go to Messiah\u2026\u201d<\/span> \u00a0Art Peterson,<\/strong> Interview: May 1, 2000<\/p>\n Buildings<\/strong><\/p>\n At first the congregation met in various homes and in 1896 began meeting in the Temperance Hall.\u00a0 In 1907, the congregation purchased that building and worshipped there until a new church was built in 1917.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first Sunday School was in the Temperance Hall.\u00a0 That was above a hardware store on 9th<\/sup> street, up the hill there.\u00a0 Of course, that has been taken down.\u00a0 The mines took over that part of town.\u00a0 There is nothing there now but it is where the Temperance Hall used to be.\u00a0 Our Sunday School was there and there was a stage there\u2026\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember what year the church was built.\u00a0 I think it was a basement first.\u00a0 Eventually we transferred to the church.\u00a0 Maybe we didn\u2019t even have a basement.\u00a0 I don\u2019t quite remember that.\u00a0 All the Sunday classes were held upstairs in the pews, some in the balcony.\u00a0 The confirmation students and the rest of us were just in the pews.\u00a0 Maybe you had a few pews for one class and then two pews in between, and so on.\u00a0 Then years later the addition was built in the back.\u201d\u00a0<\/span> Irene Dubevick,\u00a0 <\/strong>interview: January 13, 2002<\/p>\n On July 14, 1998, lightening hit the steeple of that church building and the building was a total loss.\u00a0 A new site was found and a new building was built at its current site.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the end of the day shift at MinnTac and my partner come running in and he says, \u2018Jer, your church is on,\u2019 there\u2019s a storm going on outside, he says, \u2018Jer, your church is burning!\u2019\u00a0 And I go, \u2018What?\u2019\u00a0 \u2018Ya, lightening hit it.\u2019\u00a0 Well, it had been hit before by lightening and it was just a little fire.\u00a0 It did some damage, but nothing that a couple of carpenters couldn\u2019t fix.\u00a0 So I thought, oh ya.\u00a0 So I was all changed, I jumped in my truck and I drove out of MinnTac and, as I was coming down to the gate at MinnTac, I could see the big plume of smoke coming up and I thought, \u2018Whoa, this is serious.\u2019\u00a0 And when I got here, in that short of time, the Pastor was standing out on the lawn, the fire trucks were here and it was already blazing through the roof.\u00a0 I mean, I looked at that and I said this is major.\u00a0 And then when the firefighters backed away and he said, \u2018We can\u2019t do much more.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 All the congregation was there by that time.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0 Jerry Hill,<\/strong> Interview: August 11, 2000<\/p>\n So we started looking for another site\u2026\u00a0 And we had a member of the congregation suggest that we look into the site where we are now.\u00a0 And I did.\u00a0 And I got authorization to negotiate and made an offer which was accepted.\u00a0 And we ended up with the property which was pretty much non-controversial… (T)he idea popped up that maybe we don\u2019t need 11 acres we could exchange part of it with the city, because they were looking to build a new city hall.\u00a0 We can say you can have this part of the site if you build a road past where we\u2019re going to put the church and build a parking lot and run the utilities there so we could both use them.\u00a0 And that exchange ended up happening.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0 Jerry Kujala<\/strong>, Interview: August 14, 2000<\/p>\n Ongoing Ministry<\/strong><\/p>\n The ministry provided to members and the community has changed over the years depending on the congregation, pastors and the expressed needs of the community.\u00a0 Come and join the body of Christ as we seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit for our ministry in this place and time.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope for the future of Messiah that we will bring in more people committed to being the living Christ in this community and really living out Christ\u2019s ministry in this community.\u00a0 I just hope lots of the real Doubting Thomas\u2019s or people who have fallen away from the faith or people who have never had a faith will say, \u2018There\u2019s something there that I want.\u00a0 I want to be a part of that.\u00a0 I can really see that those people are different<\/u> than other people.\u00a0 It\u2019s not one more social service entity, but it\u2019s a group of people who are providing a service and ministry to this community that is unique and I want to know more about that.\u00a0 I want to know what their driving force is.\u00a0 I want to know what the impetus is for that.\u2019\u201d<\/span>\u00a0 Cindy Jindra,<\/strong> Interview: August 12, 2000<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1:\u00a0 de Kruif, Paul; Seven Iron Men: The Merritts and the Discovery of the Mesabi Range; Harcourt Brace and Company; 1929; Republished by University of Minnesota Press; 2007; p. 106<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Messiah Lutheran Church Mountain Iron Minnesota Our Story \u00a0 \u201cOn the sixteenth day of November, 1890, workmen under the direction of Capt. J. A. Nichols, of Duluth Minnesota, encountered soft hematite in a test-pit on the northwest quarter of … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-581","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.messiahmtiron.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.messiahmtiron.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.messiahmtiron.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.messiahmtiron.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.messiahmtiron.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.messiahmtiron.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":582,"href":"https:\/\/www.messiahmtiron.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/581\/revisions\/582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.messiahmtiron.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}