HAYMARSH -The time to arrive at Haymarsh is near sunset, when winter shadows lie long and low and the broad valley of the marsh is touched with the day's fragile pink glow.

It is at its loveliest then, this hidden place, where farms are neighbors and where the traveler's gaze is drawn to the old Catholic church in the hollow of the valley.

Haymarsh is northeast of Hebron.

This Christmas Eve, the clanging church furnace will be fired up to take the chill off the customary emptiness. Yellow light will spill out into the darkness from seven glazed arched windows.

Starting around 9 p.m., after folks clear the table of their festive suppers and let anxious children open a few gifts early, the Sebastian family, of the band Midnight Ride, will tune up their instruments.

The family will lead the singing of Christmas carols and Father Claude Seeberger will come to say Mass.

The church, so important to those with roots in the Haymarsh valley, will be for those few hours what it has been since 1887 - a place of peace and familiarity, where the emotion of Mass is entwined with the emotion of community.

There are only 10 families on St. Clement's roster.

More will come than that. People may have moved away from the church and from Haymarsh, but they have never left it.

It has been 15 years since Sunday Mass was said at the church.

Since then, it's been used for the occasional wedding or funeral and is one of only two churches in the state to hold a celebration of the Feast of Corpus Christi, a summer ritual to bless crops and pray for God's bounty on the land.

The valley was named for the practice of taking hay off the lowland after the spring water drained away. Haymarsh, these dry years, rarely fills with water anymore.

A new coat of white paint makes the church glow in the winter dusk.

The painting and other repairs were done this summer with grant money from Preservation North Dakota, a group dedicated to helping communities preserve their heritage.

Mary Ann Duppong and her family live just north of the church.

Duppong applied for the grant and hopes to use some extra grant and donated funds to repair and reglaze the church windows.

In the church yard stand the abandoned two-story Catholic school that was operated through the church and used until the '60s, the priest house and a few sheds and outhouses.

Preservation's executive director Dale Bentley said the collection of buildings is one of few anywhere.

Most rural parishes slowly parted with their buildings, selling or moving them, with the church the last to go, he said.

"When you're looking at telling stories, anytime you can preserve a collection of buildings, you get a better sense of things," Bentley said.

Duppong and her husband, Ken, have six children and they all, like second-youngest Renae, still love the church, where they twisted and fidgeted as small children.

"The history there is part of my past," said Renae Duppong.

The Duppongs have hosted their children's college friends these past few winters during the semester break. The students have tapped into the wavelength of St. Clement's, walking the quarter-mile over to pray and reflect in its simplicity and solitude.

After watching those kids trudge over to the church on their own, in search of time to sit and think, Mary Ann Duppong believes there could be a future for the church and maybe the other buildings as a retreat center.

"Young people need quiet and peace and there's something special about this church," she said.

Father Arul Joseph, of Glen Ullin, has said he, too, feels a strong presence of faith in the old church, the third built on the same strong stone foundation when fire destroyed first the original and then the second church.

Starting Jan. 4, Father Joseph will hold a monthly First Friday adoration service at 6 p.m., followed by Mass at 7 p.m. and says he's unconcerned whether there are four or 40 in the wooden pews.

It will be nothing like the old days of daily Mass and school children in and out of the church and everywhere, but it is something. It is life again in the Haymarsh church.

"We need the hope more than anything," said Duppong.

Anyone is welcome at the church on Christmas Eve.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)