Original Bells Ring Again At OKC's First Church

Members of First United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City are getting ready to ring in Christmas.

They just re-installed the church's original bells, which are ready to ring for the first time in six years.

The bells were first installed in 1922 and they were the first of their kind west of the Mississippi River. Locals grew to recognize and love their chime but the bells fell silent in 2010. Church staff say decades of wear and tear, plus the Oklahoma City bombing, caused damage they couldn't ignore.

"The wood frame tower from 1922 had shifted and was no longer really secure with the bells," said the church's pastor, Mark McAdow. "And so at that point we knew that we would have to quit playing the bells just so that it wouldn't cause any danger to anyone who would be playing them."