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1950–present · across the LaPorte County line
Two congregations outside the township carry New Carlisle addresses and New Carlisle people. Hudson Lake Mennonite Church stands at 7503 North Walker Road, New Carlisle, IN 46552 (telephone 574-213-6126) — in Hudson Township, LaPorte County, carrying this town's postal address and serving its countryside, and printed here at boundary size. The Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (article of June 2024) records that the congregation grew from outreach by Olive Mennonite Church of Elkhart County — a namesake warning: that "Olive" is the Elkhart County congregation formerly called Shaum, not Olive Chapel of Olive Township — and by Holdeman Mennonite Church members: a summer Bible school in a community building in 1950, then Sunday school, with Clarence A. Shank, pastor at Olive, leading the early years; lots purchased at Hudson Lake in 1951; a basement church built in 1952; the building completed and dedicated April 19, 1953. It was the first predominantly Caucasian Mennonite Church (MC) congregation to have a Hispanic pastor, Mario Bustos, from 1976; an accessible entrance was added in 2005–06. Its affiliations are the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference and Mennonite Church USA. The pastoral line runs Shank 1950–53; Daniel H. Stoltzfus 1953–62; Stanlee D. Kauffman 1962–63; Paul M. Hackman 1963–68; Aden Horst 1969–73; Abram H. Peters 1973–76; Bustos 1976–84; Paul K. Smith 1985–94; Daniel Z. Miller 1994–97; Esther Lanting 1997–2022; Rebecca Helmuth, transitional, 2022–23; and Marcella Hershberger and Marcia Carpenter, co-pastors from 2023, as the June 2024 article gives them. Membership ran 4 in 1952, a peak of 100 in 1990, and 25 in 2020.
West, at Rolling Prairie in Galena Township, LaPorte County, stands St. John Kanty (John Cantius), the Catholic boundary parish — in the Diocese of Gary, whose historic-parish list dates St. John Kanty, Rolling Prairie, to 1889; Rolling Prairie's own local history says priests from Terre Coupee began offering Mass in cabins near the present church and that the first church was built in 1890 for $1,000, a small white frame building that later served as parish hall, with the large two-story brick church built in 1924 and a new parish hall in 1977, and the spelling settled as "St. John's Kanty" in the late 1970s. Both founding datings — 1889 and 1890 — print unmerged. St. Stanislaus's own history ties the two together: from 1888, St. John Cantius was assigned to Fr. Zborowski's Terre Coupee mission. The same Rolling Prairie ground holds two more boundary entries at mention size: Rolling Prairie Christian Church (built 1834, still standing, additions 1887–1888), whose pastor W. M. Roe assisted at the organization of New Carlisle's Christian Church in 1868, and Rolling Prairie United Methodist Church, whose own history preserves the Terre Coupee circuit record used above. North, St. Mary's at Otis — whose centennial book preserves the Szulak account quoted by St. Stanislaus — and east, St. Hedwig and St. Joseph in South Bend, are the boundary parishes Terre Coupee's Catholics actually used before 1884, as the parish history states.
Sources
- Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, "Hudson Lake Mennonite Church" (June 2024) — read in full.
- Diocese of Gary, historic parish list; Rolling Prairie local history pages — St. John Kanty at the strengths stated.
- St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish history — the 1888 mission assignment and the pre-1884 boundary use.