By Nate Stanley
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GREENVILLE, South Carolina (WYFF) — A group of South Carolina pastors is safe now, after spending the weekend in and out of bomb shelters in Israel.
Pastor Josh Powell at Taylors First Baptist Church was visiting the Holy Land last week when bombs and missiles began flying across the region. Powell tells WYFF News 4 they spent between eight and nine hours in a bunker over the week, as bombs went off above their heads.
He was able to videocall with our team Monday afternoon as he waited to board a plane back to the U.S.
“At the end of our breakfast, as I was finishing up coffee, the sirens go off on every phone. So it’s just this loud siren noise from every phone, including my own. Never heard it before. We’ll probably never forget it,” Powell says.
With alarms blaring, that spiritual trip to Israel quickly flipped for Powell and a group of other upstate faith leaders. They were given 90 seconds to get below ground and into a secure bomb shelter.
“Down these four flights of stairs gets to the bunker. It’s got a big steel door, kind of an open room. They’ve got coffee, water, and juice sitting there for us,” he says, “Over the next 24, 28 hours, almost 30 hours for us, we were in and out of that bunker for about 16 times that siren would sound, and we’d have to run, and then we’d get released and we’d be able to go back to our room.”
The constant risk was evident.
“We’re sitting there eating. And you, we actually heard, a boom and, go off and, all of us look at each other. We didn’t hear a siren yet. We heard the boom, the siren came,” he says. “We ran downstairs right in the middle of lunch, had to leave everything. Ran downstairs, and, we found out later that that missile hit about them a little less than a mile from our hotel. And there were casualties there in Jerusalem.”
Stuck below ground, the group kept their eyes above.
“We don’t know what’s happening above us, you know, outside. So, we just kind of started passing around, bible verses that came to our, our hearts in our heads, and just kind of comforted each other through the word of God and read scripture together and prayed,” he says.
With airspace over Israel closed and an uncertain future, they headed for the border … And the Cairo airport in Egypt.
“By God’s grace, we got there safely. Several checkpoints. Roads were clear. Wasn’t much traffic. Drove down by the Dead Sea, right along the Dead Sea and got there. We spent the night there, and the next morning, which was this morning for us, got up and went across the border to Egypt,” Powell explains.
Looking back, Pastor Powell is reminded of the simplest blessings we take for granted.
“It’s an experience that we as Americans don’t really ever have. The uncertainty of the next moment. You know, we usually can plan out our day. We usually know how things are going to work, but we have such a rich and glorious blessing, be able to live in a country that is free and safe,” he says.
Pastor Powell wants people to be praying for families in Iran and Israel and the neighboring countries that have been impacted by the violence.
“If God is for us, who can be against us? You know, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ Jesus. So we just kind of spoke to those promises. And those promises just hit different in moments when we don’t know what the next second’s going to bring,” he says.
As of Tuesday evening, Powell returned home to the Upstate.
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