The makeshift shelf sags above the makeshift desk in the makeshift office of Centenary United Methodist Church.
But in the adjoining room of the trailer lie scattered blueprints and permits -- signs that the day is coming when the southern Anne Arundel County church will forsake these temporary digs for a building to replace the one that fire destroyed.
"We said from the ashes a new church would rise," said the Rev. Stephanie Vader, Centenary's pastor. "And it will."
Two years ago, in the week before Palm Sunday, an accidental fire claimed the Shady Side church's historic home. The church had been building an addition and renovating the structure, which dated to 1866. Anne Arundel County fire officials ruled that a roofing crew working on the steeple left a halogen lamp face-down, and when an automatic timer turned it on after dark, the intense heat touched off the fire.
That year, Palm Sunday services were held under a tent, with the stench of the fire wafting over the congregation.
"Every time Easter comes around, you think of the fire," Cindy Rothhaas, a stay-at-home parent and substitute teacher, said last week, as she helped fill 432 plastic eggs for the church Easter egg hunt. "I had just dropped off all of the supplies [for egg decorating]. They burned. They were gone."
Since the fire, Centenary has operated out of a variety of temporary quarters. Though congregants are grateful for community support, they are weary of running their church out of boxes.
Worship and Sunday school are held at Oakland United Methodist Church, two miles up the road. Large events, including Easter egg hunts and parties, are held at the Kiwanis Club of Shady Side.
Adult Bible study and church offices are in the trailer that sits in Centenary's gravel parking lot.
One of its windows overlooks a lot that is at once a sign of sadness and of hope. The 6,000-square-foot church that used to be there is missing. A line of daffodils nod along what used to be the path to the building.
But earth-moving is expected to start this spring in preparation for a 10,000-square-foot church there.
Many of Centenary's 300 members have deep roots in this church, and hardly any families drifted away after the fire.
Lucretia Brown, a third-generation churchgoer at Centenary, was baptized there. So were her grandchildren.
