St. Peter the Apostle Antiochian Orthodox Church
Our Story
Our first official home was in the local Holiday Inn (of all places!) where we operated out of a closet…taking out everything we needed each Sunday to conduct a Divine Liturgy. In spite of the obvious jokes about meeting as the ‘Church of the Holiday Inn’, we knew in our hearts that this little space where heaven met earth was where we could celebrate the Eucharist banquet.
We outgrew our little room, however, and moved on to a storefront in Bonita Springs. Unlike our experience at the hotel, we no longer had to be afraid that our candles and incense might set off a fire alarm and make everyone leave the building. In our new space, we could begin acquiring the tools we needed to make our little church look ‘Orthodox’. We could set up the icons and light the candles and burn the incense to our hearts content.
We continued to grow and soon decided the time was right to look for a more permanent home. A year later, after round-the-clock cleaning and painting, we moved into our present location which had been a Presbyterian church. We were thrilled…we were centrally located right on Route 41 where Ft. Myers meets Estero and even more exciting…we had five acres!
We are once again in the process of making our new home ‘Orthodox’!
From the very beginning, the main mission of our church has been to have a truly open and loving place to worship God…where people of all backgrounds, languages and customs could gather and love Him and each other. If you haven’t yet found Orthodoxy, we would love to help you find it with us.