4:40
For Californians LiAnne Larson and Richard Maher, the first step to saving a small-town South Dakota church was buying the parsonage next door.
The couple manages businesses remotely and commutes back and forth to Egan from the west coast. They decided several years ago that the house was a way LiAnne could return to her hometown to visit. In 2015, Larson and Maher also married in the Egan Methodist Church next door to the former parsonage.
Earlier this year, the church became their labor of love and a history lesson for Larson.
“We ve always talked about how beautiful the church is and that the congregation was getting small and if it was difficult, we were thinking about even maybe they could do a reverse mortgage or something, and we could still keep it going. My dad said that they were looking at closing it. I talked to my husband, and we both looked at each other like awwww.”