LOS ANGELES — The church members gathered around the room, holding hands. They bowed their heads and closed their eyes, waiting for words of comfort.

"We pray for the people who have lost their homes," said Pastor Connie Larson DeVaughn, standing near the center. "The marathon of it, it's harrowing. Harrowing, and stressful."

After a few seconds of silence, the congregation began calling aloud their own prayers.

"Help us to help each other," one woman said.

"Lift burdens here in our congregation, and in our community," one man called out.

For the last 11 months, members of the Altadena Baptist Church have felt the weight of many burdens. On Jan. 8 — the day after the Eaton fire started and rained down embers — flames engulfed their church. The Altadena Children's Center, started by the church, also was incinerated. Twenty congregants lost their homes. Another 20 were displaced.

Since that horrific day, the congregation has bounced around, forced to find different spaces to worship. A few church members have opened their homes to others. Some are rebuilding, while others are staring down the monumental task of doing so. Still others have thrown themselves into the years-long process of obtaining funding, permits and design plans so the church structure can rise again.

Across Los Angeles County, the fires that raged in January have tested the faith of many. Altogether, 15 sanctuaries of worship were destroyed, including five in Altadena. As the Eaton fire exploded, Altadena Baptist was in a part of Altadena that did not receive early evacuation orders.

Founded in 1934, the church was once at the forefront of integration in the region. Now the congregants will have to chart a path to a next chapter, reintegrating into a community that is likely to transform again.

Yet for many in this "diaspora" church, the fire has forged a stronger bond. There have been moments of unexpected charity. A time to reflect and be grateful.

Across the fire zone, at least 19 people died in the Eaton blaze and 12 in the Palisades fire. At the church, none in the congregation perished.

In addition, a pillar of their sanctuary survived: The church bell tower still stands.

A church attuned to the times

For so many years, this church has been an anchor amid change, merging in 1966 with the First Swedish Baptist Church of Pasadena to create Altadena Baptist Church.

Around the same time, as Black families began moving into Altadena and white families moved out, the church decided to stay and integrate its pews to reflect the diversity of the community. In 1972, then-Pastor George Van Alstine, who is white, arrived in hopes of being part of the fight for integration in California.

By the late 1980s, the church was ready to once again adapt. DeVaughn, the daughter of missionaries, grew up in Argentina and lived in Mexico before coming to the U.S. and starting to work at the church. While she initially thought it was a dead end, that had changed by 1987, when she became one of the few female pastors in the denomination at the time, working alongside Van Alstine, who now serves as associate pastor. She has led the church ever since, continuing its progressive direction by welcoming LGBTQ+ congregants, a shift from their Baptist denomination.

On the night of the fire, DeVaughn and her family were forced to evacuate from Altadena, leaving in such a hurry they left dishes on the dinner table and pots filled with food. After landing at a cousin's place in Long Beach, she began triaging: calling congregants, ensuring they made it out and finding a landing spot for the church in the immediate aftermath.

"We were pretty bruised and battered at that point," she said.

DeVaughn had little time to grieve; she knew the church needed to regroup and try to heal. Her job, very quickly, transitioned into listening to the stories of families who survived.

Then came the offers of help. Leaders of Highlands Church in La Crescenta reached out to DeVaughn and offered their church for services. (Eventually, the Altadena congregation found a more permanent spot in town, at the Christian Science Church.) One of the people to step up was Sarah Oberholtzer, who had left the area for college in 2013 but still tuned into Altadena Baptist services remotely.

When the fires slammed Los Angeles, Oberholtzer who uses they/them pronouns, watched for news updates until they couldn't take the helpless feeling of watching from afar. They booked a one-way ticket from Chicago to Los Angeles and for a month helped members of the congregation as they sifted through the ruins of their homes.

"That church was one of the first examples of community I ever felt," Oberholtzer said.

'Blessing after blessing' for one couple

Debra and Elton Blake were two of the church's longtime members who attended that first post-fire service.

Debra, 66, had come to Altadena from Wisconsin for a monthlong visit to her sister and never left. She later met her husband Elton, 71, and in 1996 they bought their Las Flores Drive home. There, they raised three children and then later, every holiday and summer, hosted grandchildren. For the 18 summers before the fire, they entertained some 100 guests at their block party barbecue.

When the Eaton fire ripped through their neighborhood, the Blakes lost just about everything they owned, including dozens of family photos, her L.A. Marathon medal and a letter from Gov. Jerry Brown thanking her for 25 years of service as a state worker.

Still, at that first post-fire church service, she said she felt hopeful and believed that this difficult moment would pass. The things she lost were just material, after all.

"I had it once and I will obtain it again, the LORD willing," she wrote.

Those first weeks were hard on the couple as they — along with so many others — scrambled to get a stable roof over their heads.

Debra, who retired after working in the California Department of Health Care Services, was on the phone with their insurance company on Jan. 9. To their relief, their insurance would help them rebuild their home, and would cover rental costs in the meantime. Even so, she and her husband struggled to find a place that would rent to them. They were turned down everywhere they applied, in spite of their clean credit scores and six-figure incomes.

In May, a fellow congregant came to their rescue. Peggy Golden, a longtime member of Altadena Baptist who lives in a nursing facility, offered up her former home that sits next to the old church property. They're still at Golden's house and their new home is on track to be completed by next summer.

Debra still worries how the church, with a small congregation and a large aging population, will rebuild. But she remains touched by Golden's generosity.

"Everything that just transpired that evening through today has just been blessing after blessing," Debra said. "As far as losing property and having to rebuild, I wouldn't say that my faith is shaken. I think it's actually strengthened."

Praying for guidance on next steps

Terry Harris, 73, recalls when her family moved to Altadena some 60 years ago. During the winters, she could gaze up at snow-frosted mountains. She remembers going on walks, breathing in the scent of conifers and collecting pine cones to take home. As she grew older, she lived in other parts of Southern California but came back to Altadena in the 1990s and ended up staying to care for her aging parents.

Nearly all she has now is those fond recollections. The fire destroyed the home she shared with her parents, brother and pet Chihuahua, Benjamin St. James. They now rent an apartment in Pasadena, and the drives into Altadena for Sunday church services stir bittersweet memories.

"It's all-consuming," Harris said. "Every second, you think about what you lost. I don't think we'll ever get over it."

Benjamin St. James, 16, had been in good shape and loved to roam her yard in Altadena, but after months of being mostly indoors, he declined physically and ended up dying. That compounded the grief of losing her home, which had felt like a family member.

"I thought I would be there forever," Harris said, "until I passed."

Roland Wiley, 50, another member of Altadena Baptist, knows the feeling.

On a recent Sunday, he and his mother, Alice, sighed while surveying what had been their house on Mendocino Street, about a mile west of Harris' home.

White flags dotted the lot, where soil samples had been collected. Pesky male walnut trees were growing unhindered in their absence. A large, deep hole had replaced the pile of debris that had sat there after the Eaton fire.

"It's like a death in the family," Wiley said as he looked out at the property, where he had lived since his mother bought the house in 1978. Next door, a power saw broke the silence as construction laborers rebuilt a neighbor's home.

Despite the loss, Wiley said he is thankful. He was home to help his elderly mother leave during the early hours of Jan. 8; his son was at his mother's home in Pasadena and didn't have to witness the destruction.

"I really just recognize the blessings in the midst of all this," said Wiley, who works as a voice actor and is now attempting to replace his home recording studio that went up in flames.

The Wileys and Harris share one thing in common: Their devotion to the church. They say it will endure no matter what comes next. At a recent service, Harris greeted other members with hugs while they asked how she was doing.

But while Roland Wiley said he plans to rebuild in Altadena, Harris is not sure. Sometimes, she visits the lot where her home once stood. While sitting in the driveway, she seeks guidance while thinking of her lost loved one.

"I've been praying about it and so far, I was so up in the air about it," Harris said. "As of today, I'll say I'm not rebuilding. That could change tomorrow."

'What do we want to be when we grow up?'

Leon E. White did not ask to become the chair of the church's rebuild team. He's faced enough challenges already. Though the fire did not destroy his home, the flames fouled it with smoke contamination, damaged his roof and forced him to relocate. He finally moved back in October.

Yet White, a former city planner for the city of Pasadena, had experience that was invaluable for the reconstruction effort. It became clear, he said, that someone needed to "herd the cats."

Two Tuesdays a month, the team meets on Zoom to plan the church's reconstruction. So far, he said, there's some debate as to what the church grounds, after building the main sanctuary, will look like. The one point of consensus, he said, is that whatever they build will be fire-resistant.

Another parcel of land, which once housed the children's center, could become anything from affordable housing to a senior community center, White said.

"The thinking is: 'What do we want to be when we grow up?' We want to be not only the church; we want to be a community hub," White said.

On a recent Sunday, Van Alstine provided an update to the congregation.

"I want you to know our rebuild team is really cooking," he said. "It's an unbelievably difficult journey and we ask you to pray for all of them as we go this long haul toward rebuilding for the future."

DeVaughn knows there are some people who are itching to move fast — but the reality is they're looking at a four- to five-year timeline, she said.

So far, they've been able to find help. After public outcry about the church getting no federal assistance on debris removal, they were able to obtain federal funding to cover the hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost. While government funding and insurance will cover two-thirds of the rebuilding, the church will have to cover the rest. Church leaders are looking to members and other fundraising efforts to close the gap of roughly $9 million.

In October, the rebuild team finalized a request for proposal and sent it out to architects. The team hopes to get drawings of what their church could look like by next spring.

While visiting the lot on a recent Thursday, White looked out at the acre of land cleared of debris except for the bell tower, which shone in the afternoon sun. The church had been small, he said, but it had met their needs; they had a kitchen in the basement, rooms for Sunday school, and a "fireside room" with a fireplace. Though that was all gone, the surrounding neighborhood was showing signs of activity. Construction workers in bright vests walked by, and traffic was returning to the adjoining road.

"Fire makes stuff stronger," he said. "There is literally life rising from the ashes right now. You just have to look and find it."

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