Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

WORLAND – Worland Church of Christ Church recently hired Dustin Rocha, from Sidney, Nebraska, to be their new minister.

Rocha became the lead preacher for the Church of Christ in Sidney about six years ago right out of school. He attended the Bear Valley Bible Institute of Denver which has a four-year program condensed into a two-year program. During his first year at Bear Valley, Rocha studied hard and acclimated to the life of a preacher. His second year he was allowed to visit neighboring churches and preach.

"The first year you are there you are not able to preach or anything because you are kind of adjusting. The second year you are there, they allow you to preach out, is what they call it. Any of the churches around Denver or within a reasonable driving distance, that need help, they will allow students to go and preach. That's how I ended up in Sidney, Nebraska. For the whole second year, while I was there I would drive to Sidney, which is about 2.5-3 hours, every other Sunday. I was helping them because they didn't have a preacher at the time. So I drove up there every other Sunday and preached. When I graduated we ended up moving there," Rocha said.

To become a preacher Rocha, his wife Fee and their three children had to make a major life change. Both Rocha and his wife left well-paying jobs. Rocha managed T-Mobile corporate stores and his wife worked for Chase Bank. "We decided that doing this was more important than making a lot of money," Rocha stated.

According to Rocha, Sidney, Nebraska, is about the size of Worland and the home of Cabela's. The town itself started to shrink when Cabela's pulled out since the majority of the town was owned by Cabela's. Things got tight enough that Rocha needed to work a second job and he and his wife took that as a sign that it was time to move on and he began to search for a new church family before deciding that Worland was the place for them. "We looked at a few places, we visited a few churches that we were looking at and we fell in love with this church, the people here and their heart for God. So we decided that this was the place for us," Rocha said.