ROGERSVILLE, Mo. – A vacant 100-year-old church has been repurposed into a family home.

Ozarksfirst.com met up with Joshua Morley and, at the time, Danae Wheeler when they purchased the Methodist church last June of 2021.

The engaged couple was looking for a new home for their family of four. Morley and Wheeler were in a long-distance relationship, with Morley in Utah and Wheeler in Missouri.

While looking for homes in Rogersville, the price for Rogersville United Methodist Church, which had been closed since 2019, lowered its price from $1 million to $190,000. Morley and Wheeler purchased the church to make it their home.

The next project for the couple was to fix up the church to the point where they could live in it and then get married in it.

Ozarksfirst.com spoke with Wheeler, now Danae Morley, about what kind of changes they have made to the church for the past few months.

Seven months of tearing down and cleaning the sanctuary.

“We’ve been demo-ing from June all the way up to January the 7th,” laughed Morley. She and her husband have also been tearing down the basement and kitchen areas of their home.

“I did our dishes in the bathtub for about four months before we finished our kitchen sink,” says Morley

“I think we have hand-shoveled and torn down over forty thousand pounds of plaster by hand,” says Morley. She says they also received help from members of their church.

After revealing the vaulted ceiling by hand, She says she wants to leave the exposed look for the rest of the sanctuary.

On January 8th, 2022, Joshua and Danae got married in the sanctuary of their church home.

Check out the video above to see Morley give a tour of the sanctuary.