Rob Muthiah was preparing to teach a membership class at Pasadena Mennonite Church one day in October when he thought to reach for a familiar tool, the Martyrs Mirror. Then he remembered his copy of the book, which famously describes the death by burning of many early Anabaptists, had itself been turned to ash.

That was one of many reminders of loss for Muthiah and his wife, Lisa, one of three families in the church whose homes burned to the ground in the Eaton Canyon fire, which destroyed more than 9,000 structures in neighboring Altadena in January 2025.

When evacuation alert systems failed, one church family learned they were in danger only by being awakened by the noise of panicking neighbors around 3 a.m., just half an hour before their home would go up in flames. At least four other families suffered extensive smoke damage and toxic infiltration that kept them from returning to their homes for months. More were evacuated, sometimes more than once, and were homeless for days.

The fire, which took three weeks to fully contain, marked the beginning of a challenging year for the Pasadena congregation, bookended by services of remembrance and lament.

Marking the one-year anniversary on Jan. 11, Pastor Katerina Gea invited the congregation to lay on the altar objects that represented “an emotion, a story, or something you remember from this past year related to your experience of the wildfires.” As they had on the Sunday immediately following the fire, members took time to share their stories in place of a sermon. On a separate table, 19 candles burned to remember the 19 people who died in the fire.

During the fire and in its aftermath, prayers went up, and offers of shelter and other help poured in from the Pasadena Mennonite community, sometimes in the middle of the night as the evacuation zone spread. The Muthiahs went to a friend’s home as a precaution when the evacuation order came in at 1 a.m., taking just an overnight bag, then got another notice to leave at 6 a.m. before landing in the neighboring city of Glendale.

One Pasadena Mennonite member created a spreadsheet to keep track of where members had been evacuated to, the status of their homes and what they needed. Beds were offered in homes of members and their friends and relatives, information about community resources was collected and shared, and the modest care fund established years ago to help church members in financial need quickly grew to more than $50,000.

“The church community has been really amazing,” Muthiah recalled, remembering the member who showed up at their temporary refuge in Glendale with a duffel bag full of clothing in his size. “It was incredible, because I had one extra shirt, and that was about it. We joked a bit about that, because he has better taste in clothing, so I got an upgrade in my wardrobe. It was such an act of care.”

Offering the spiritual and emotional support was challenging too, as the sprawling building Pasadena Mennonite shares with two other congregations and a nursery school was itself threatened. Only blocks from the active fire line, it had a large window blown out by the fierce winds that propelled the fire. Ash infiltration kept congregants out of the building for six weeks. All Saints Episcopal, which has a longstanding relationship with Pasadena Mennonite, was quick to respond to Gea’s request for space.

“There were a lot of real key people in the congregation that were affected” by the fire, recalled church moderator Dave Lehman, “so there was some diminished capacity in terms of people who would usually pick up the slack in times of trouble. But people just really kicked in, and that very first Sunday we were meeting at All Saints. All Saints was just wonderful to us and gave us a room where we could meet.

“It was really important for us to meet that first Sunday — and, lo and behold, representatives from Mennonite Disaster Service showed up at that service.”

The MDS reps toured the church building and offered advice on the complicated process of cleanup, disposing soft materials such as carpets and sofas and cleaning every surface, followed by repeated testing to ensure the air was no longer toxic. Even after most of the church building had been thoroughly cleaned six weeks later, children’s programs had to be held outdoors because the particulate level in the air in the basement was still too high, and further cleanup and air exchange were needed.

“MDS gave a chunk of money to Pasadena Mennonite and Conexion, the Spanish-speaking Church of the Brethren congregation that is the owner of the building, and that was absolutely key, because the cleanup was pretty expensive,” Lehman said. “While they were there touring our building, Kevin King, the head of MDS, was out from Pennsylvania, and you could see they were looking around, checking out the facility with the dream that, hey, could this be the location for a major MDS project?

“I give a lot of credit to the folks who came out. They had a visionary view of what might be possible, and they gave us some hope that help is on the way.”

MDS is now awaiting the City of Pasadena’s approval for a long-term project site at the building, in cooperation with local partners. This would include placing several large trailers in the church parking lot to house volunteers and upgrading the church kitchen for daily use. A tiny house on the site would be turned into a project office. If approved, reconstruction work could begin in June.

The first house to be rebuilt will probably be Conexion’s parsonage about three blocks away, which for complicated reasons was uninsured, leaving Pastor Juan Pablo Plaza and his young family homeless.

Saved from fire, thrift store anchors community in ‘full circle’ of care

Full Circle thrift Shop is celebrating a remarkable recovery a year after the Eaton Canyon fire, which destroyed much of the city of Altadena, Calif.

The thrift shop, owned by Pacific Southwest Conference of Mennonite Church USA and used to support a wide variety of mission projects in California and Arizona, occupies a historic brick building that was miraculously left intact while most of the neighborhood around it burned to the ground in January 2025.

“Things are going much better than we sort of cautiously assumed they would,” said manager Paul Netherton, who is credited by many with saving the building by staying on site to douse embers that landed on the building and its surroundings during the first night of the fire.

The store recently set a new record for customer transactions in a single day, though it is still surrounded on three sides by empty spaces that once held homes, a post office, grocery store, florist, bank and other businesses.

Inventory could not be saved after the fire due to infiltration of toxic smoke and ash. Disposing of that in an approved landfill and completing a thorough cleanup of the interior took until the end of May. Restocking with donations took another month. But business has been strong since reopening on July 7.

“One of the strongest things [in our favor] is that we had built a really good relationship with our customer base prior to the fire,” Netherton said. “Most of our customer base stayed in touch via social media and were looking forward to coming back to resume shopping at the business once we reopened.”

He expressed gratitude to the conference for helping keep the staff of five employed during the long months of preparing to reopen.

He credits the staff’s longevity and commitment to the job for strengthening connections with local folks at a time when many small businesses are struggling to survive.

The fire remains a traumatic memory for many.

“When we reopened, there was a lot of emotion in the store from our customers coming back, and we heard a lot of stories of loss and people going through the grieving process,” Netherton said. “It had echoes of the pandemic, when we were a safe place where people could go to do something normal. In many ways we have done that in a bigger way since we reopened, giving people something to go back to.

“And somehow we’ve been able to adapt to pull more customers from areas that didn’t burn.”

He was surprised to learn some people who donated items for the reopening were themselves fire victims, giving back to the community some excess items that had been donated to them — giving new meaning to the “Full Circle” theme of the store.

On the Jan. 7 anniversary of the fire, some old customers returned for the first time, heavy feelings evident in their faces, Netherton said. Still working on emotional acceptance of what happened, “they came into the store as something of a refuge that day,” he said.

“I think a lot of the community has seen us as a sign of hope, because it’s something normal. . . . It’s one part of Altadena that’s still here, and the vibe and feeling of the store is still here.”— Doreen Martens/For Anabaptist World

Pasadena Mennonite member Dan Sharp, a retired civil engineer, is serving as church liaison to the MDS project. Recognizing that it will probably draw a large number of volunteers from more rural and conservative Mennonite traditions, Lehman looks forward to this as an opportunity.

“PMC has always had a significant proportion of convinced Anabaptists,” he said. “They haven’t had much contact with that side of the Mennonite family, but I prefer to see it as an opportunity for a lot of learning and growth, and if we can play a role in being cultural translators and introducing them to the Altadena community, it will be kind of cool.”

Pasadena Mennonite invited neighbors to participate in the anniversary service, and some attended. It’s hoped they will be understanding about small inconveniences the MDS project will bring to the neighborhood, including increased street parking. Adjustments will also need to be made with the nursery school and volunteers sharing the building.

“There’s the potential for some strains and stress, but, from my perspective, what an opportunity we have as a congregation to play a direct role in the rebuilding of our community,” Lehman said.

Meanwhile, the congregation has risen to new challenges with the Trump administration’s decision to send National Guard troops to the Los Angeles area and indiscriminate and often violent arrests of undocumented immigrants. Pastor Gea was among many who witnessed neighbors screaming as they were dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night. The congregation could not turn away. It has long been involved in peace and justice activities such as protesting the violence in Gaza and pushing city leaders on ethical investments and easing zoning restrictions to make affordable housing easier to build.

“We made the decision in the summer that we would host a series of nonviolent resistance trainings at our church, one a month,” Lehman said.

Four such events were organized in cooperation with other groups such as Mennonite Action, a clergy/laity group working for economic justice, and a local day-laborers association.

The congregations sharing the building worked together on a safety plan in case ICE decided to raid the church, designating some areas as private space, posting watchers outside and creating evacuation signals and plans.

“It was such a traumatic year — the combination of the fires, the [2024] election and ICE. It’s all intertwined,” Muthiah said. “For a lot of years, we had people who had passions for various things, and that was all part of our community, but there wasn’t a central focus as much. Immigration has become a big deal for us.”

The families who lost their homes have been living in temporary accommodations while waiting to rebuild. The Muthiahs have been grateful to live in the back house on another church family’s property and expect to see a new home rising on their now cleaned-up property soon.

The capricious nature of the fire was such that theirs was the only house on their block that burned down, so they will return to a mostly intact neighborhood. But the burned-and-relocated school where Lisa Muthiah teaches still looks out on a wasteland, a daily reminder of the trauma suffered by the entire city of Altadena.

One way Gea and the leadership team ministered to fire victims was by hosting a dinner last spring to help them share their stories and offer mutual support.

“We had a second meal like that two days after the anniversary of the fire,” Lehman said. “All three of the families are very close to breaking ground. If we have another meal in a year, probably there will be houses, and that will be cause for celebration.”

There may be a hidden blessing in the difficult year of 2025.

“Between the Gaza vigils that have been ongoing and this work in giving support to the community during the ICE raids, we probably have a more robust connection to the Pasadena community than we’ve had in many years,” Lehman said. “That’s great, and it’s a tribute to our pastor, but it’s also thrust upon us by the times.

“With the ICE raids, the times demanded a response that we would creatively and prayerfully come up with a way of being faithful in this moment. But it’s weird that it comes at this moment of, in some ways, reduced capacity because of the fires. So it’s been a struggle but also exciting to be part of it, and to feel that energy in the church community that we’re doing this. In some ways the church is at a really good place, in spite of all these terrible things that have happened.”