(bell chimes) (acoustic music) - As an architect, I've always had kind of a soft spot for the historic rural churches and I know we can't save 'em all, but I feel we need to save some.

This one became most interesting 'cause we had a family connection.

It's not very big, it only seats about 100 people on the inside, 120, so it's not overwhelming or daunting to save the church.

So I just feel that we do need to save part of our history.

- I'm going to architecture school and I got really into kind of the architectural history of kind of the vernacular of the area with the churches and the old schools and university buildings and stuff like that.

I just think it's important to kind of keep that history.

- On March 17th, 1879, 63 individuals started Grue Church.

They came here from Norway and they have a sister church in Norway called Grue.

So that's where it kind of got its name and got its start.

In 2020, they were down to very few active families, probably four to six active families in the church here and they decided that it was time for them to close the church.

One of the gals that lives close by here in the summertime heard that they were talking about burning the church.

Her family is buried out here so she has a connection to the church and that's when she became interested, her name's Nancy Freezy.

She'd called me and asked if I was interested 'cause she knew I was an architect in Buxton, but what she didn't realize when she called me is I love to do historic preservation work, but me and my husband were also married here and my in-laws are buried here.

We've been to a lot of activities, my mother-in-law played piano here for almost 40 years, both of my sons, Koy and Jace were baptized here, so we all had a connection too.

So when she was interested in saving the church and doing something with it, I jumped on board.

So the Buxton in Bloom, the board of directors, we got together and we said, "Yes, we're in."

(acoustic music) Challenges are always finding the funds to do the work and finding those people that are willing to donate and also finding people are willing to donate their time too.

- There's no running water so anytime we need any sort of hot water it's drive over to our farm, which is a couple miles and load up a plastic storage container that we filled full of warm water.

That's always kind of been a struggle as far as keeping it clean.

I used to clean with my grandma here when I was younger and the same issue there, you'd get your bucket of hot water so you can mop the floors from two miles away which sounds kind of insane.

- We plan on having two events here every year.

Last year we had an event in July.

We did fresh lefse on a Blackstone grill.

My mom, my sister, and one of my sister's friends, we made lefse and lemonade and we had kind of a closing ceremony and the other event is we received a grant from the North Dakota Council on the Arts and we had Waddington Brothers, they're from Southwestern North Dakota and they came and performed a concert here the last Saturday in October and that's gonna be another event that we wanna do yearly, kind of an end of October fall concert.

- It's been used for weddings for probably since it's been built.

So kind of continuing that use, but also I envision kind of the future concerts.

It creates kind of an interesting acoustical setting with all the tents surrounded by it.

The previous concert that we had, we had a pretty good turnout.

- Since the pandemic, we're seeing people just wanting to have more of those type of events close to home.

We used to have to travel to do those type of events so having some cultural events closer to home right here in North Dakota and Western Minnesota it's just a perfect spot.

Our thought is to maybe have visiting artists, traveling artists could probably come and stay here for a couple weeks at a time and do some of their artwork at this location and maybe we can have an art exhibit too.

We would like to see it done in three to five years, that's kind of our goal.

Our main goal this year is to get the roof redone.

We do have a grant from the North Dakota State Historical Society that we're still looking for some grant funds for matching so that we can keep the water out.

We're gonna be painting the outside so we're just really excited and thankful that we have other groups that are interested in being part of our project.

- There's definitely some nostalgia sitting in the pews.

When I was younger, I used to sit there and shuffle my feet back and forth 'cause they never touch the ground so I get some memories like that or watch my grandma play the organ here.

There have been a couple times where I've played the piano for Sunday church service.

The second I walk through that door, it just kind of floods my memory full of times like that.

- I feel calm when I come to Grue Church.

It just has this pleasant, calm, peaceful feeling.

It's quiet, it's serene, it has the nice backdrop of the coulee with the evergreen trees and you can see it from the highway when you drive by too.

It's a little off in the distance, but it still has that nostalgic look.

(acoustic music continues) - [Speaker] Funded by the North Dakota Council on the Arts and by the members of Prairie Public.