Pastor Wally Yarbrough was born and grew up in Charlotte, NC. He was baptized and confirmed at the Little Church on the Lane. his family joined Park Road Moravian (now Peace Moravian) where Wally and Linda were married in 1968 by the Rev. Henry May. He graduated from Garinger High School and later from the University of NC at Charlotte with a B.S. degree in chemistry. He served two years in the US Army. After returning home he and Linda moved to upstate New York where he became Manager of Product Development with Norton's abrasive division in Troy, NY. They adopted two children, Melissa, who today lives with her husband, Greg, in Reading PA, and Robert whom they lost to a brain aneurysm in 2002. Wally lost his wife Linda to cancer in 2003.

He left Norton in 1984 to earn a PhD in Solid State Science (chemistry and physics of solids) at Penn State University where he later joined the faculty. He held two faculty appointments, one with the Solid State Science Program at the Materials research Laboratory and the other with the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. He taught and did research at Penn State until 1997 when he and Linda responded to God's call by moving to Bethlehem to attend Moravian Seminary where he graduated in 2000. While a student at Moravian Seminary he was called to serve the Canadensis Moravian Church in the Pocono mountains or Northeastern Pennsylvania where he was ordained. He served there for two years until moving home to NC in 2001. He served the Enterprise Moravian Church until 2004 when he was called to serve our congregation here at Friedland.

Pastor Wally's hobbies and interest include fishing (as often as possible), and the many parallels that exist between modern physics and Jesus' teaching about the nature of reality. To learn more about him, and the rest of us at Friedland, come and visit with us