It's crab leg night at Harrah's Casino's Town Square Buffet in Maryland Heights, and Melkam Tsige is delivering drinks and clearing plates piled high with crab-leg shells and uneaten shrimp tails.

She points to a skinny man pushing a cart of dishes. "He's a new hire here and a member of my church," she says.

Tsige, 46, started at Harrah's nine years ago, about the same time her granddaughter was born. It was also about the time her Ethiopian church began collecting money to buy its own building. Tsige estimates that over those nine years she contributed $3,500 to the church's building fund - that's aside from the $50 monthly membership dues and the weekly collection offerings.

Her $3,500 was part of $128,000 that church members say they lost after being duped in a real estate deal involving the pastor of another church.

Many members of Debre Nazreth St. Mary and St. Gabriel Ethiopian Orthodox Church work at Harrah's - as dealers, janitors or cage cashiers. Most of the Ethiopian immigrants who make up Debre Nazreth's membership work as cabdrivers, hotel maids, construction laborers and the like.

"I don't have enough money to just throw it away," said Tsige, echoing a common sentiment among church members, many of whom blame its own board for losing their money. The episode has left an immigrant congregation divided, disillusioned, bankrupt and bereft.

After years of renting time in other churches, the congregation had finally saved enough money to buy a building of its own, so in 2004 Debre Nazreth's board began looking in earnest for a church home. In the fall, a member found a nearly finished church in Jennings.

"Everyone was eager to have our first church," said Nebiyu Habteyes, 37, the board chairman at the time and the manager of a gas station in East St. Louis.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church traces its roots to the middle of the fourth century, when "a bishop from the Kingdom of Axum was consecrated in Alexandria and began the conversion of Ethiopia," according to the Harper Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism. The church split from the Roman Catholic church at the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century over a theological disagreement about the true nature of Christ.

The rituals and traditions of the church are ancient, and Sunday services last five or six hours. The length and style of worship, which involves heavy doses of incense, makes it difficult for the congregation to find a church to borrow.

That the property owner of the unfinished church, the Rev. Charles W. Roberson, had his own 150-member congregation in St. Louis added to the board's comfort level.

The two sides eventually agreed on $305,000 for the property and building.

But as the process of buying the church advanced, a disagreement over money prompted Debre Nazreth to sue Roberson for fraud. The church board said that in addition to $3,000 in earnest money, it gave Roberson $125,000 to finish building the church, which he never did.

Roberson, who said he had not hired an attorney, denied any wrongdoing and refused to discuss charges made in the lawsuit filed in the spring of 2005 in St. Louis County Circuit Court.

Roberson, 47, said he was doing just what the board wanted - using the church's money to work on the building, out of sight of the city's building inspectors.

The glacial pace of the legal process has frustrated the Ethiopians.

"All we want is our money back," said Habteyes.

With the donations they'd made over the last decade, many members had sacrificed individual gain for the good of their community, said Gedlu Metaferia, a member of Debre Nazreth and executive director of the African Mutual Assistance Association of Missouri, which is trying to help the church get its money back. "I know one mother who gave $500 instead of buying her family new shoes or clothes one year, and I know many people did not send as much money home to Ethiopia in the last few years," he said.

Negasi Tafere, 49, an equipment technician, said he'd contributed about $7,000 into the church's new building fund over the years. His three children range in age from 13 to 22; his 13-year-old daughter is in Debre Nazreth's choir. "Yes, I have kids and a family, and they needed things, but the church is important," he said. "I want it to be there for my kids and their kids."

Zewditu Ashagrie Greene, 51, a church member and quality control inspector for a factory in St. Louis, said she'd given $1,200 to the building fund each year for the last nine years. Her mother died in Ethiopia just a couple of weeks ago.

"I could have been sending more money back to help her get the best doctors there or brought her to the U.S. for treatment," said Greene. "But a church is everlasting. Coming generations born here won't have to return to Africa just to see their faith."

Today attendance is down at Debre Nazreth services - most of which take place at a borrowed church in Overland. Those who do come to church are not giving as much as they once did, and many have left.

"They are broken-hearted," said Greene of the church members.

Tafere has not left, but he is angry.

"Yes, I was mad at the board," he said. "You can't give $125,000 to just anyone. This was a mistake by our board. We are confused. We lost our money, we have no church. We have nothing."

Tsige said the congregation's members "lost our love for each other because of money."

At a public hearing in July, Jennings condemned the building, calling it dangerous and a public nuisance. Roberson had until Sunday to demolish the church. Now the city will probably do the job itself, then place a lien on the property for the cost of the demolition.

Henry Johnson, code enforcement officer for Jennings, said the city might give Debre Nazreth some leeway in the demolition timing.

"We understand there is a lawsuit involved, and because there is an innocent party, the city might wait a little longer to act," he said.

The original trial date has been delayed, according to Robert Parson, Debre Nazreth's new attorney. The new trial date is set for December, which may be too late to save the current church structure.

ttownsend@post-dispatch.com

314-340-8221