IONIA, Mich. — The Zion United Methodist Church in Ionia is rebuilding.
On Thursday, the church hosted a weekly soup kitchen meal. It was the first time they'd met since a fire kindled inside their historic church in early January.
"It means a lot to me," John Euvrard said.
Euvrard is a regular parishioner to Zion United Methodist Church and their weekly dinners.
"I'm homeless. I get a meal here, but I get to see a lot of the friends," Euvrard added.
He was there the night of January 5th when the church caught on fire. He says, when smoke started building up, there was only one thought going through his mind.
"Getting everybody out. 'You were there?' I was the last one out. I made sure everybody was out. When I came out, I couldn't breathe. I had to crawl on my hands and knees through the hallways to get out," Euvrard added.
The damage was mainly inside the addition to the church that has stood there on Main Street since the late 1800s.
"It's very charred. All the paint is black on the walls and bubbled up and just very charred, very smelly," Pastor Chris Moore told FOX17. "I've been thinking about it all week, like, hey, I'll get to see those people again."
Moore added they're now in the process of rebuilding.
"Our food pantry opened yesterday on Wednesday, for the first time since and it just felt good. I mean, though, these are things that the community has known about us for a long time, right. And felt bad when we couldn't provide those services," he said.
The services are now getting back up and running but are being housed elsewhere in the meantime.
"It looks like it's going to be Christmas. If, if all goes well," Moore said.
Moore says the soup kitchen will be held at First United Methodist Church, the food pantry at First Christian Church, and mass at a banquet center in Muir.
As that work continues, Moore looks ahead at updating the church to serve his community better.
"We're going to have to be more accessible to disabled people. We have a lot of stairs in that place. So there's going to be ramps and whatever we need," Moore said.
FOX17 is waiting to hear back from investigators about the exact cause of the fire, but Moore tells us that the fire seems to be an electrical fire.
