“I’ve always been a city girl, I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and have lived in cities in Florida and Arizona. I have never lived in a small community before, much less on a dead-end dirt road,” she said. “The house was a church that was converted into a home in 2001.”

The home still features the original church windows and other clues to its original purpose as the Frankfort Township Church, such as a full kitchen and a mammoth-size workshop in the basement, Caryn said.

“We’re going to use the basement kitchen for canning,” Caryn said. “My husband, Dan, is just itching to get into that workshop, but he hurt his back when we were moving in, so it will still be awhile until he can do that.”

The 6,000 square-foot home sits on two acres with a 1/4-acre garden complete with fruit trees. The main floor features two bedrooms, a formal dining room, kitchen, living room and bathroom. A third bedroom has been converted into a walk-in closet for the master bedroom.

The home did need a few updates immediately before Caryn and Dan moved in.

“There was literally no insulation, so we had some installed, and there was no water system, the previous owner had been hauling water in,” she said.

The Chappelars journey to their home began with a vacation to Ponca, Neb., to visit family.

“My husband grew up in this area, and we were visiting my in-laws in Ponca,” she said. “We had been thinking about where we were going to move when my husband retired. I told him I thought I could retire here, and he about dropped his drawers because he never thought I’d want to live in cold weather.

“We hinted to the in-laws all weekend about buying a double wide and moving it onto their 15 acres, but they never got the hint. They just blew it off as a joke. Finally, the night before we were suppose to leave, I flat out asked them what they would do if we moved here. They were all for it, so we called our niece who is a realtor, and we had one day to look at houses.”

Their niece wanted to show this specific house to them, but they refused at first because they thought the price was out of their range.

“My husband was looking to retire, and we didn’t want to get carried away,” she said. “Then she told us it used to be a Methodist church, and we’re both Methodists, so we decided we would at least like to see it. There was no heat in it and it was so cold, we literally just ran through it because we were sure we weren’t going to buy it, but Dan fell in love with it. We decided we could at least make an offer. As it turns out, the owner was willing to work with us.”

Caryn said the biggest adjustment has been lawn care.

“I most recently lived in the desert. We had a postage stamp size lot, and most of our yard was taken up by a pool. We didn’t need lawn care supplies,” she said. “We moved in smack dab between two snow storms, and we didn’t have a snow shovel. When it came time to mow, we had to buy a mower. It’s very strange that no one ever really drives down our road. We have no neighbors.”

Caryn spent last summer cultivating her green thumb.

“I’d never had a garden before, and here we were with lettuce, potatoes, carrots, peppers, two kinds of tomatoes, corn, butternut squash and fruit trees. It was definitely a change,” she said.

The Chappelars plan to decorate big for Christmas this winter and invite people to visit the house.

“We’ve had so many people asking about the house and wanting to see what it looks like inside,” she said. “We figured Christmas would be a good time to welcome everyone in.”

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