Home Is Where Jesus Is: Lukas Prestenbach

My name is Lukas. This is my third year at La Tech and my second year regularly coming to the Wesley at Tech. I was such a church boy growing up. I grew up directly across the street from Bayou Blue United Methodist Church, the same church my great-grandparents helped establish for their little group of Cajun Methodists. Growing up, church on Sunday mornings was the norm. There were times when my parents wanted to sleep in, so my 8-year-old self put on my little polo shirt and khaki pants and walked to church all by myself. The members of that small church I truly considered to be my family. The twenty-some regular members were invited to my sweet 16 and graduation parties (along with friends my own age, mind you). Vacation Bible School every summer was a moral requirement for every member of my household. I once was assigned a project in my 8th-grade English class which was very open-ended, the only true requirement being it had to be humanitarian in some aspect. So, I approached my pastor, we gathered the other church members, and altogether we gave away bag lunches to the homeless community in Houma a few times that spring. I ended up getting an A on the assignment and won a Wesley award at the following general conference in Shreveport that summer.

We were a struggling church but a family nonetheless. We struggled with attendance, struggled with donations, and struggled paying the bills just for our basic operations. My senior year of high school, we began having several meetings about what the future of the church would look like. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t pretty. The Covid-19 pandemic ensued shortly thereafter, and the fate of the church was sealed. We closed our doors and merged with 1st Church in Houma. Several of the members from Bayou Blue faithfully joined the Houma congregation, but most used this as an opportunity to find something different: different congregation, different denomination, different city, different state. After my first year of college came to an end, I no longer had a home church to go back to. The building now stands empty, waiting for some buyer to come along and put her out of her misery. I got to pass by the building while visiting my mom, but now even her house is off limits after Hurricane Ida paid a lovely little visit. I’m free to attend 1st Houma when I visit down south, and I’m more than welcome to contact my 50-year-old friends on Facebook, but divided in any capacity is not the same family at the end of the day.

Since coming to the Wesley at Tech, I finally have my church family again. No, it’s not my home church, but that place in my life is filled again. I get to worship Jesus in a community of friends again. I have a building I can call my safe space again. I belong to a church again. This is not just me simply going to church; I belong to this church. The interns at the Wesley are truly doing the Lord’s work in every way imaginable. They have created and sustained a community in Christ that looks out for one another, supports each other, and wants to see each other succeed. These interns check up on us. Frequently. They don’t just talk to us, they know us. They get to know us over coffee, over thrift shopping, over children’s coloring books. They want to know how we’re doing in school, in family life, in social life, if we’re going to pay our rent on time, if we got a speeding ticket, if our roommates are getting along, and, most importantly, if we have a solid relationship with God. My personal relationship with God has increased since joining this community. There are so many opportunities to worship throughout the week. The interns organize ample opportunities to grow in faith with one another in the Methodist tradition. I needed the Wesley, and I am so thankful that God continues to bless the Wesley at La Tech and we keep receiving generous donations to stay operating. I pray that the Wesley continues using its resources to reach other Louisiana Tech students and help them grow in Christ.

Lukas Prestenbach is a junior Aviation major here at Tech. This is Lukas’s second year as part of the Wesley Foundation, and it is a blessing to call him a part of our community. He is full of personality and always willing to lend a hand. Able to be serious when needed and to joke with the best of them, Lukas has become a dear friend of many of the students and interns of Wesley in the last few years.