Crisis-trained chaplains Al and Toni New arrived in northern Illinois the day after an EF-4 tornado tore through, killing two women and destroying much of the small town of Fairdale.
“There are a few homes that people can still live in,” Toni said. “Then you have the ones where the tornado touched down and there’s no home standing; it’s just obliterated.”
As a seasoned Billy Graham Rapid Response Team chaplain, Toni has seen more than her share of devastation from floods, hurricanes and tornadoes.
“I always think of pick-up sticks,” Toni said. “You pick them up and you drop them, and they just go everywhere. There are piles of wood and debris and metal. And everything that people had in their homes has just been thrown in big piles all over the place.”
Toni knows that every pile represents a story. Like all of the Billy Graham chaplains, she’s been trained on what to say—and what not to say—to people who have just lost everything. But Toni also has personal experience; she and her husband, Al, lost their home to a fire in 2006. Since then, God has used that experience to help the couple minister to others.
“We’ve talked to a lot of people,” Toni said Monday in Fairdale. “Cried quite a few tears with them.”
She talked about meeting an 80-year-old man with extensive damage to his home and very little insurance coverage.
“Things like this don’t matter,” he told her. “I’m OK. I’m strong.”
“He tried to hide the tears, but he couldn’t help but cry,” Toni said. “We had prayer with him and he cried the whole time we prayed. I told him he needs to cry. He said, ‘I’m not supposed to.’ We’re going to keep going back and ministering to him, because he’s hurting really bad.”
Toni and Al are working with seven other Rapid Response Team chaplains including Mike and Pookie Mattingly from the Charlotte area.
Pookie has spent time with relatives of both of the women killed during Thursday’s tornado. She said the daughter of one of the women was overwhelmed not only by the loss of her mom, but by the massive and expensive nature of the property damage she was left to deal with.
“She was having trouble figuring out how she was going to pay to clean up the property, and a Samaritan’s Purse assessor came along and said, ‘We can do this for free,'” Pookie said. “She started crying and she said, ‘Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord.’ It was very moving.”
Pookie also spoke with the husband of the second woman who died in the tornado.
“He’s 84 years old,” she said. “He went upstairs to get a lantern, and the tornado hit before he could get back downstairs. His wife was killed, and he was pretty banged up.”
They talked a bit about his service in WWII, and he shared that he would have to make funeral arrangements for his wife the following day.
“Before he left, he turned and gave me a kiss on the cheek, and I just lost it,” Pookie said. “That was without a doubt, the most meaningful moment for me.”
As ministry continues in Fairdale, the chaplains are asking for prayer for the residents there—that they would experience God’s great comfort and love in the aftermath of the tornado.
