Joe and Jenny Gunter were separated by a few hundred feet Sunday when a powerful tornado swept through the Moss Community where they live. For a few minutes on Easter, they thought they had been separated forever in this life.

Jenny and the couple’s two girls, Alley and Presley, had walked across the road to their neighbor Betty Chesnut’s house to visit, while Joe stayed behind in their single-wide mobile home. He had arrived home the day before after two months of work on the pipeline, and after a day of enjoying Easter with his family, he just wanted to rest. A short time later, near 5:00 p.m., the wicked tornado landed in Moss and forever altered the geography of the small community.

Betty, Jenny and the two girls huddled in an inner closet in Betty’s brick house, not knowing what was happening outside or to Joe.

“We were praying,” remembered Jenny. “Betty cried out loudly ‘God, we are your children. Protect us now!’ And He did.”

The tornado left as quickly as it arrived, and Jenny walked outside to devastation as her girls screamed hysterically, thinking their dad had perished in the monster storm.

“When I saw this,” said Jenny Thursday, motioning with her hand toward where fallen trees and debris had replaced the area her mobile home had once stood, “I thought we had lost Joe.”

The Gunter’s home was gone, as was the shop that had housed their three vehicles. A huge safe bolted to the shop floor was severed from the concrete slab and tossed into the back yard. Betty’s house had been hit hard too, but it was still standing.

“With all the damage, every one of the crosses and angels I had were untouched,” noted Betty. A pound cake she and Presley had made earlier from a recipe left by Dorothy King, who passed away last October, was also untouched, still sitting in its glass dish on the bar.

As Jenny stood in front of Betty’s house moments after the tornado exited, surveying the immense destruction, she glanced toward the road (Highway 537) in front of her property and was amazed to see Joe walking slowly toward her.

“Are you all right?” she yelled.

“No.”

Joe was in bad shape. Beaten and battered by the ferocious storm, he was losing blood fast and suffering from injuries to his head, back and hand. The tornado had crushed his mobile home and had ripped him and the bathtub he sought refuge in from the trailer and slung them a half football field or so toward the road. Betty, who is a nurse, and Jenny removed his blood-soaked clothes and wrapped him in towels.

Wendell Welborn, a good friend of Joe’s, heard about the tornado and had worked his way to the scene, running a long distance through fallen trees and debris to get there. Dr. Chris Mauldin also was soon at the Gunter’s property. Together they all worked to save Joe’s life until an ambulance could get close and transport him to the hospital. The prayers continued. Two days after the horrifying experience, Joe left the hospital. He is expected to fully recover.

“It was not my time,” he said Thursday. “God has a reason for me to be here. If someone doesn’t believe in God after this, I don’t know what to say to them.”

Joe said he was conscious through the entire ordeal, and he held tightly to the bathtub inside the trailer as the sounds of the storm began to express its intensity. With big trees snapping outside, he thought his time here on earth might be finished. The thought of leaving his wife and girls behind saddened him. Then he sensed the presence of a third child, Riley Kate, who was killed in August of 2018. It was like she was there with him, in the middle of the storm, reassuring him that everything was going to be alright. Joe’s eyes moistened with tears as he reflected on the moment, and he is grateful that God has allowed him more time here to enjoy life’s moments with Jenny and the girls.

“We are so thankful we are all alive and have Joe with us,” said Jenny. “We are very blessed. We have such good family and friends. We lost Riley Kate a year and a half ago and to live in a small community like this is so unreal – to see the outpouring of love from everyone. You can’t put into words what people mean to you.”