by Paula Schlueter Ross
Everybody who rode out the May 4 tornado in Greensburg, Kan., has a story. And many of those stories reflect a strong Christian faith.
When TV newscasters reported that a tornado was headed their way, Stan and Dolly Adolph jumped in their van and headed to their daughter’s house, which has a basement.
They’re glad they did, because their daughter and her two young children didn’t know about the approaching storm and might have been injured if they hadn’t sought shelter, said Dolly.
The tornado demolished the house, leaving huge piles of rubble that blocked the basement door and windows. The family was trapped for nearly an hour in the dark basement, with only a cell phone for light, when a passerby heard them yelling for help.
The stranger told them, “I’ll help you. I’m your neighbor,” and pulled each of them out a window. When Stan, the last one to wriggle out onto the debris-covered lawn, stood up, the rescuer was gone.
Oddly, none of them had seen this “neighbor” before—and haven’t seen him since.
“I think God sent him,” Stan says today.
And Dolly, usually petrified of storms, says she was strangely unafraid. As the tornado tore through the house above, she found herself repeating “God be with us” over and over.
And He was, she says.
“I just knew the good Lord was there with us.”
The Adolphs, members of Peace Lutheran Church in Greensburg, lived in six different places after the tornado. They moved back into their home last month after replacing its doors, windows, siding, and carpeting. Only their house and one other remain standing on their street, but they were anxious to get back home nonetheless.
“Our house is the same,” says Dolly. “It’s just when you walk outdoors [everything] looks different.”
