Friendswood Friends Church – Fort Worth Living Friends Church
With Mid-America Friends celebrating 150 years since it was formed as Kansas Yearly Meeting, it is
helpful to understand the dynamic of where our churches came from and how our movement of Friends
expanded.
One group of Friends moved west from Indiana, North Carolina and Iowa to establish a community and
church in Estacado, Texas just northeast of Lubbock. When the first group of settlers barely survived the
harsh winds of that winter in their tattered tents, they returned back east. Paris Cox, the founder of the
settlement who had lived the winter with his family in a dugout, had a good harvest that year and sent
word to recruit new settlers. This second group did establish the town and the church, with Paris’
brother Ansen named as the first pastor.
But by the early 1890’s the group was suffering from extended drought, an exodus of young people
looking for better opportunities, a land title dispute, and other factors that led key members of the
group, including its founder Paris Cox, to look for a new promised land in South Texas. There some key
families regathered, purchased land to establish the community of Friendswood, and began the church
that soon affiliated with Kansas Yearly Meeting (initially having been a part of Iowa Yearly Meeting).
Over 100 years later another group of Friends was looking to establish themselves in another place.
Instead of the icy winds of the plains to contend with, these Friends faced the cold winds of politics that
drove them out of their home country of Bhutan to Nepal. There they became refugees without a home
for almost 20 years, but like Friends before them, these Friends eventually found a home in Texas where
they were gathered together under the leadership of Pastor Dal Bah Tamang. They are now purchasing
homes and looking for a place to build or purchase a church building to become established in this new
land. In the meantime, their growing church was given full-church status in EFC-MAYM in 2020 and is a
partner in the same area as those earlier immigrants who settled in Friendswood.
There will always be people moving from one place to another for a variety of reasons. It is inspirational
to consider how God has used those transitional times to push His people to carry the Good News to
new places and to establish His church wherever the winds may take us.
–David Byrne
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