- [Voiceover] The following program is a production of Pioneer Public Television.

(calming flute music) This program on Pioneer Public Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota, on November 4, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit real education retreat center, in a beautiful prairie setting near Windham and Southwestern Minnesota, shalonhillfarm.org.

The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center, your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts offering luxury townhomes, 18 holes of golf, Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Water Park, and much more.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great location for an event.

ExploreAlex.com, easy to get to, hard to leave.

(upbeat flute music) - Welcome to Post Cards, I'm Dana Johnson.

Small town churches have historically been the center of rural communities.

For most people, it was an important place to socialize and to get to know your neighbors.

Today we travel to rural Murdock to find a new home for Frank Lake Covenant Church, bought by Dean and Kathy Weckwerth for only a dollar.

The church was relocated by the Thein Moving Company to a new location, just outside of Benson.

Let's find out how this historic structure was moved and discover how the church became a focal point for the Swedish Community.

- [Kathy] Wow, I need to start looking for a place for headquarters.

I think you should look for an old church.

- [Marie] It's a landmark, it was built on a hill there by Frank Lake.

The church has been empty for about 30 years.

It was a beautiful building too, and it's important that it could be saved if at all possible.

- [Dennis] We're actually feeling good, more so than anything else because we know it's gonna be taken care of.

(piano music) - Well, our first ancestors came over in probably the early 1870s.

- [Marie] A number of them were Dennis' relatives.

His great-grandparents on both sides, and his grandparents, were all part of the beginning of this congregation here.

- They were immigrants from Sweden and a number of them settled in this area and started the church.

First of all, in homes.

- [Voiceover] Yeah, first in homes, and then in the schoolhouse.

- The church was built in 1877, and then it burned down.

And it's kind of neat to think about the one thing that they saved was an organ.

And I don't think it's still this organ right here, but they had put their original organ through the window and saved it.

But once this church, you know, the church body that met, had burned down, they decided to meet and rebuild.

So in 1900, they built this church for $2,000.

- We had a lot of friends and, sometimes that's the only time you got together with people was at church.

- People would travel up to 70 miles to come on a Sunday for church service.

They just felt like it was a really great thing happening here.

- It was part of their social life too, at that point in time, in the early 1900s when they didn't travel a lot of other places, but it was a place to get together and to encourage each other.

- This little rural church would work out kind of a compromise with the other churches in its area of Murdock, Minnesota, and they would travel back and forth and have different choirs performing at each church.

So Frank Lake would take their church, and their church choir, and go to another church and perform, and at times they would meet here to sing together, and I love that kind of camaraderie or the rural churches working together.

(choir singing) - One of the pastors who was a pastor at Frank Lake Covenant Church from 1890 until 1905, his name was Nils Frykman, and he was very interested in music.

The Swedish hymnal has about a dozen of his hymns, and I think, perhaps, he was one of the first people who was instrumental in beginning the musical heritage of Frank Lake Church.

- [Dennis] It's kind of interesting to note too, that until about 1930, morning worship services were in Swedish.

And at that time, they started switching over to English, so every other Sunday for a while, one Sunday would be Swedish, the next Sunday English.

(piano music) - The church organist in the 1940s and 50s was Esther Johnson, and in the late 50s, she took it upon herself to teach the young adults and young people Swedish songs, and in 1965, they made a recording which became quite popular because there weren't a lot of people singing Swedish songs at that time, and the older people were so appreciative of her efforts in doing that.

But a few times, in the 80s when there were special celebrations like a reunion service or the centennial service up at Frank Lake Church, the Swedish choir did get together and sing.

They had learned those songs when they were young, and when they would get together they could still just sing those songs.

So, there's a long history of music in that church.

(easy-listening guitar music) - About five years ago, my ministry, Best Life Ministries began, and it came out of a really horrific experience with my middle daughter who was violently attacked and almost killed.

As I was driving home that day from the cities from that court case, I just really felt overwhelmed with the fact that I wanted to help women.

So, I just decided, what would be better than to come up with a ministry that would be able to encourage women and so I founded the ministry and I directed.

As we've been progressing through the last few years, it just seemed harder and harder for me to be able to work from my office from my home.

So I began to pray, our team began to pray, and as I read through scripture, I found a verse from Isaiah 58:12, and it said "Your people will raise the ancient foundations, "will rebuild the old ruins."

And I thought, that's so interesting, and I thought maybe it was just investing in women's lives and encouraging them.

But the more that we prayed, and as time went by, I realized what God meant by giving us that scripture.

- Every year they came along and somebody would mention, "What are we gonna do with the church?

"We've gotta start thinkin' about it."

And, so one of these, we'd done that for a couple three years and then this time we said, "Let's get a little more "serious about it."

Eric mentioned, Eric Trunkness mentioned that we should put it on Craigslist.

- My husband called me from town and he said, "Kathy, you'll never believe what's on the cover "of the front page of the paper."

And I was like, "What?"

And he said, "An old church is for sale."

And I thought, "Oh, that's fabulous!"

But I wondered how much it would cost.

Is it gonna be a hundred thousand dollars, what is it?

And he said, "It's a dollar, it's on Craigslist, "listed for a dollar."

- That's what made our choice easier, because it was in starting to go downhill and now we're just thankful that now it'll be taken care of for quite a few, quite a number of years, I hope.

- Kathy had contacted us in regards to getting a price and relocating the church that she had bought from the Frank Lake Covenant Church, and the members that had been left.

And she had already known that the possibility existed, that the church, yes, could be relocated to her farm.

And we were chosen as the moving contractor to relocate the church.

And so the process begins.

- The move was something that was really, for me, very emotional.

I was surprised because I just knew that I was gonna be excited to have it here.

But I had no idea that I was gonna feel the high highs and the low lows.

- I will say that it was a little emotional just seeing it move through the countryside.

It was beautiful, but just a little emotional as it moved through the countryside and you could see it going down the road.

- One very interesting part was when we went by Bethesda Lutheran Church.

People were there waiting for it and rang the bell and that was kind of an impact on me.

- Here they had partnered from the early 1900s until 1960 and 70 with their music, and now the church is going by, and so to see the two of them right next to each other was an amazing thing for me, I just felt very overwhelmed, and so it was an incredible, amazing day.

It took a lot less time than I thought it would.

For them to be able to get it into this place and set it down in the grove, I felt all kinds of emotions, happy, sad, sentimental, and mostly grateful.

- The welcoming that we got with the church was nice and unusual, it's not that often that we're greeted with a band and a parade of people.

- I think that was very moving.

I thought it was very kind of that congregation to put forth that effort to be out there and serve cookies as the church went by, it was just, it showed a sense of community that we all care about each other and we're all important to each other.

- The church was definitely a neat job, or an opportunity in that respect because it brought a lot of people out and it drew a lot of attention and so there was quite a welcoming for the building when it arrived at its new home.

(upbeat music) Our great-grandfather started the house moving business back in 1892, in Clara City, Minnesota.

He was asked to move an old school house, a one room schoolhouse from one side of the street to the other.

So when the building needed to be moved, they turned to him to seek advice and to get his input, and he moved it.

And so it began.

And then, in 1942, it became a full time occupation for my grandfather.

Tim and I are the fourth generation in the family business.

With the equipment and the technology advancements that have been made, the size of a move is basically untouchable.

I mean, if man can build it, man can move it.

The moving business is the largest and the oldest recycling industry in the world.

Ya know, I don't think a lot of people look at it as a recycling industry, but it is just that.

We save the houses and the buildings and the structures that would end up in a landfill, and put them to use, ya know, somebody who's looking for a barn and can't afford to build a new one, or it has historical significance or sentimental history or value and so, that's gratifying to us.

- I think there is definitely something lacking in society today where people are so used to just getting rid of things, and so I believe that our generation that's been coming up, my children and their generation haven't really had as great of a respect or an opportunity for us to teach them the value of history.

And so, in order to do that, it's so easy to get rid of it, but it's harder to rescue and save, but most important for us as a generation and for future generations, to know about what happened in the past and to be able to embrace it.

(upbeat music) - My favorite part of the church move was probably the day that it got moved and delivered to the new site.

Just to see the joy on Dean and Kathy's face and the excitement about their new building arriving at their property, it's a good feeling for us to see somebody that's so happy about the project they've worked so hard see through to a completion.

That was gratifying, that was neat to see.

- We had about 160 people at the farewell service.

It was a combination service of saying goodbye and talking about the history of the church.

It was a beautiful service, and I think it was important to have that service, to say goodbye to the building, and to be ready for it to move on to its new ministry.

(cheering) - OK, let's build a church!

(clapping) To see the church coming up the road and to know it was here was so fun for us.

We had people singing, we had old chairs from the 1840s.

I wanted to make the feel kind of like yesterday, with lemonade and treats and family and friends, and that's what we experienced here, and it was a wonderful welcoming, I believe, for this church and for its new beginning.

When everything was said and done, I realized that that scripture that I'd read about your people raising the age old foundations, really is coming true because that's what we're doing.

- For most people driving through Olivia, what they first notice is a giant corn cob visible from the highway.

But what may not be apparent is that it's also the home to Saint Aloysius Church, which recently underwent a massive transformation.

Join us as we meet the young priest who led the ambitious restoration of this small town symbol and learn about the community which rallied around saving a little piece of history for their town.

(upbeat guitar strumming) - [Sister] Renville County is a complete farming area, complete agricultural area.

- [Father] This church was basically like opening for an artist, King Tut's Tomb.

It had been untouched, no one had really remodeled it.

- [Sister] It needs to be here as a presence, constant presence.

(upbeat guitar strumming) - [Father] I think this is, arguably, and this is my prejudice, is the most beautiful church in our diocese, if not in the upper Midwest.

(upbeat guitar strumming) - St. Aloysius Gonzaga is a Catholic Saint.

He is relatively new, he's been around for about 100, 150 years.

He is the patron saint of youth.

- Saint Aloysius died very young, he died about the age of 24.

He was sent to tend the sick when the Black Plague came into Europe, and he was very very compassionate with the sick, and then he took on the illness and he died himself, of the illness.

- He was chosen for this church for the name because when they founded the church and the parish, our first pioneers, they did that basically, on the vigil of his feasting, in the late 1800s.

So his feasting as coming up, so they thought, as good as any, was the vigil before his feast, and they chose him, but he's of Italian descent.

- [Sister] It is the only Catholic church here, and it has a great history from way way back.

- Saint Aloysius was formed a little over a hundred years ago, and the church itself was built back in 1925, it began under construction, but there had been another church that had existed before this one.

It was a wood structure, fairly large, I think it seated about two, 300 souls.

But the founder of this church, Father Pomage, he really wanted to build a church of Italian style 'cause he had traveled around the world and he finally wanted to bring a little bit of Italy here into the United States.

(regal orchestral music) This architecture for Saint Aloysius Church is largely Romanesque, which is unique because if you travel around the upper Midwest and certainly in Minnesota, the Dakotas and Nebraska, what you're largely gonna see are churches that are Gothic or Neo-Gothic, they copy a lot of the German style, the Western European Style, but this is really Southern European style.

This is of Italian descent and largely we can tell because of the barreled ceiling, you know, most of those Gothic churches all have those spires and points.

We have a flat, square tower as our designer who redesigned the church, he said this looks most Italian from the outside.

He said inside it has much more of a Baroque look because a true Romanesque, this is the style is a Romanesque church, it often times is very simple and plain.

If you go to Florence, I've been to Florence, I've been to Rome, a lot of those churches have a lot of simplicity to them, but over years they say they Baroque them out, and that means they added all the paintings and all of the little fleur-de-lis and all these little artistic points, so this church too, when it was first built had much more of a Romanesque look because there were no paintings.

The paintings weren't put in until the 1940s.

(organ music) So when people come here and they say, "Gosh, you have an Italian Saint, "and you have an Italian style church, "this must be a parish of Italian descent."

And the truth is, it's not.

The fact is it was largely a Czech parish, it's become much more mixed over the years, but it really has virtually no Italians.

The only Italians that were here was during the time of the second World War.

One of the old timers told me that they had some prisoners of war from Italy that they brought to this country, and actually they felt very much at home when they walked into this church 'cause they kinda processed them in.

And they would be able to attend the service, they were able to attend mass on Sunday morning.

There was a restoration done in the 1970s.

They were really on a limited budget at the time.

Some of the things that they did, which we ended up correcting, was they decided to paint all of the stations of the cross, which were in color, to paint them just white.

And they did it largely from the people I talked to and some who have since passed, because there was no money and to bring them out into all that detail was gonna be so expensive, they also painted Mary and Joseph on the side altars.

They painted them white, and so they made 'em look kind of marbleized.

Well that was one of the things we wanted to change.

- We could see from the very beginning, after it was proposed, that the parishioners were for this, they had been waiting for a leader to come and take on this monumental project.

- When I came, there was leaking here on the south side and I remember meeting with the finance council and saying, "What are we going to do?

"The longer we wait, the more damage is gonna be done "to the plaster, to the paintings," and so forth.

So we ended up borrowing a serious amount of money at the time, just to stop the hemorrhaging of the water.

So, the first two, three, four years, we just basically raised money, many times second collections, just to do the exterior, and we retuck pointed, we sealed we did new storm windows, we did a tremendous amount of repairs on the outside, and then I went to finance council, that's now getting on to be seven, eight, nine years ago, and I said, "Well, we've got pretty much everything done "on the outside, do you wanna proceed "and do the interior?"

And it was pretty much full consensus to proceed, and we raised the money, basically door to door, through a capital campaign and raised over a million dollars just from a congregation of about 450 households.

- So there wasn't a problem raising the money, isn't that something?

They were so much behind it.

- [Father] And it took us about seven years, but in the actual time that the work was being done, the church was buried in scaffolding for about seven, eight months, and we had to celebrate the liturgies in our social hall, which actually turned out really well.

- And I think we were just utterly and extremely blessed to have Father Van de Crommert assigned to our parish at the critical moment when people were just hoping that somebody would come and restore this church, 'cause the people really love this church.

(organ music) - [Father] Our designer was a man by the name of Father Angelo Gearty of Italian descent, he was a man already well into his 80s.

But when he came in he says, "You know Father," he said, "This church will be "most beautiful," he said, "in three or four years, "when there's a little bit of dust that settles on it," cause he said, "It's too bright right now."

And you know he's actually true.

As things have settled, it's getting a little bit more muted.

- [Sister] we are extremely proud, all of us, extremely proud of how it turned out.

- [Father] One of the paintings I really enjoy is of the Virtues, and it is Poverty.

And all the virtues are depicted as women, and on the other side she is there, and the little cherub is holding up a string of pearls and jewelry, and Poverty is turning away, saying she'll have nothing to do with it, so I think that's probably one of my favorite of all of 'em.

- [Sister] My focus is on the sanctuary, the beautiful mural above the altar, above the Bell d'Aquino there, it's a real meditation.

- [Father] History is so important because it tells us who we were and who we are now, and what we can be.

- [Sister] There isn't a part of this church that you don't learn something from.

The stained glass windows contain so many saints of our faith, so many saints, and we study their lives.

- I feel the church is a work of art, and I feel it's proof of God's existence because that the human condition can create something so masterful.

- We call it our Shrine in the Prairies, our Shrine of the Prairies.

It's just an extremely beautiful place of prayer.

- [Father] Anyone can come in here and appreciates the art, and the art speaks to us, and art has a power to evoke emotion, it has a power to evoke pain.

That's what it does.

I think this art evokes religiosity, it evokes piety, it evokes devotion.

This has been the one project that really, I think, has united, not only the congregation, but I think united the community.

I think the community, even people who aren't members of this congregation, are rather proud of it.

- [Sister] It has grown with the people, and not only the people of the parish, but the community.

The community too, it has grown on the people, and I don't think they would have it any other way.

It would be a sad day if this were ever closed.

- I think it's just such a spectacular church, and really, I'm sure Father Pomage, wherever he is, who built it and was here 40-some years is very pleased with the outcome.

- I hope that everybody who can, in their lifetime, have a chance to see Saint Aloysius Parish, and walk into this church.

I don't think you lose any of it, it stays in your mind, the beauty of it.

(piano music) - That's all for this week.

For more information go to our website.

See you again next time, on Postcards.

- [Voiceover] This program on Pioneer Public Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota, on November 4, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit real education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windham and Southwestern Minnesota, shalomhillfarm.org.

The Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center, your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts, offering luxury townhomes, 18 holes of golf, Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Water Park, and much more.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great location for an event.

ExploreAlex.com, easy to get to, hard to leave.

(upbeat flute music)