Two pastors from the same town in Arkansas are left searching for answers after a deadly tornado swept through their town on Sunday evening, damaging one pastor’s home and church and completely demolishing another pastor’s house. This is the second tornado to damage the small Southern town in three years.
Wade Lentz, pastor of Beryl Baptist Church in Vilonia, Ark., says he is still trying to “understand why” God has allowed his family to go through the suffering of enduring another tornado’s destruction, but adds that he knows “God does not make any mistakes.”
“We don’t understand why the Lord has allowed us to go through this again, but I also know that our God does not make any mistakes,” Lentz told NBC News.
The pastor told NBC News that he is now questioning if he wants to rebuild his home in Vilonia again. He and his family suffered a $40,000 damage to their house in 2011 when an equally destructive tornado swept through their town. Although their house was salvageable the first time, Lentz says this time it is completely gone. “Do we even want to rebuild here? How many times are we going to go through this?” the pastor questioned.
Another pastor in the same town north of Little Rock is left trying to answer the same question that accompanies natural disasters: “why?” James Smith, pastor of the Vilonia Church of the Nazarene, had just finished rebuilding his church’s sanctuary after it was destroyed by the 2011 tornado. Now, he tells CBS News he’s just thankful the new sanctuary is only damaged, and not completely destroyed.
