The miraculous formation of the Orthodox Church of the Annunciation was initiated by Mr. John Warren in 1979. Mr. Warren, a former choir director at Holy Virgin Mary Cathedral, Los Angeles, began contacting Orthodox families on the Central Coast and bringing them together for the purpose of founding a mission. That summer, the group sent a petition to Fr. Thaddeus Wojcik, the Dean of the Pacific Southwest Deanery, requesting to be received into the Orthodox Church in America. By Fall, Father Ian MacKinnon, a newly ordained priest and recent graduate of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, was appointed by Metropolitan THEODOSIUS as rector of the fledgling community. He and his wife, Nina, moved to Santa Maria in December. The initial group of fifteen families met at the local Episcopal church, who made their facility available for the celebration of the Divine Liturgy on Sunday afternoons. In the summer of 1980, the group moved to a vacant storage building behind the Marian Residence, a Roman Catholic convalescent home for retired nuns of the Marian order. The local Roman bishop permitted the group to set up a permanent chapel in a building that had once been part of Marian Hospital before it relocated and transformed the complex into a retirement facility. The director of the facility, Mother Barbara, gave her enthusiastic support to the work, setting rent at such a reduced rate that the Residence was underwriting most of the cost of the monthly electric bill. Now at twenty years of usage, the chapel has undergone a number of renovations and improvements. The last, in 1995, saw a 200 square foot narthex added. Not only did the extra space make room for a growing number of worshippers, but it also gave the chapel a more traditionally Orthodox appearance.