A Texas parish keeps faith after a tornado destroys the church

A story I found and covered on Crux.

destroyed-church-690x450Simon Salinas heard that a tornado had destroyed his parish church, and knew he had to help. He was with his sister and her critically ill father-in-law in her home  during the storm, and they hunkered down in the house hallway and prayed.

After the tornado passed, he found out from another sister that the church had been destroyed. About 3 hours after the tornado, he got out to the church in the dark.

Arriving to the parish, he found the driveway surrounded with trees. He saw four cars in the parking lot and worried someone might be inside under the rubble. He was worried about their safety as he traversed downed power lines to look for survivors.

45 people had been attending a dinner for graduating seniors at St John the Evangelist in Emory, Texas. However, they had already been evacuated.

When he found out they were all safe, his thoughts moved to the Eucharist. He said his motivation came from his experience, “God has never abandoned me in my life and we as Catholic Christians, if we truly believe that God exists there, I didn’t want to abandon him. I wanted to at least search for him and that’s just what I did.”

Read the rest there.

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