Finding Home at Bethlehem
A Sunday Morning in Hempstead, Texas
By T. DeWayne Moore, Ph.D.
There are moments when history stops being something I study and becomes something I can feel.
The morning of Sunday, September 30, 2026, at Bethlehem United Methodist Church in Hempstead, Texas, was one of those moments.
My wife, Sokheng, our nine-year-old son, Noah, and I attended the 9:00 a.m. service. It was our sixth Sunday worshipping at Bethlehem, and somehow the experience becomes more meaningful each time we walk through the doors.
Five years ago, Hempstead was not home.
I was a Tennessean who had moved hundreds of miles away from the state where I was born and raised to begin a new chapter as an Assistant Professor of History at Prairie View A&M University. Moving somewhere and living there, however, are not necessarily the same thing as belonging there. Belonging takes time. It comes through relationships, shared experiences, trust, and the gradual realization that a community has begun making room for you within its story.
At Bethlehem, I am beginning to understand what that feels like.
