A Texas pastor who is back home with his family after spending a week trying to evacuate the war-torn Middle East is crediting the prayers from his congregation for helping secure his return to the United States.
Pastor Steve Brooks of First Methodist Church in Midland discussed his experience in Israel as tensions escalated between Israel and Iran in an interview with local news outlet KVUE-TV published Wednesday.
Brooks traveled to Israel with his wife and 9-year-old twins earlier this month for a spiritual pilgrimage. During their time in the Middle East, war broke out between Israel and Iran, leaving them seeking to get out as soon as possible. “We got on buses in Jerusalem outside of our hotel. We had to walk about a quarter of a mile trying to keep a low profile,” he recalled.
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“We spent the next actually 18 hours on the buses getting to a location in Jordan,” Brooks detailed. After the family arrived in Jordan, they found themselves subject to delays in light of the large number of people looking to leave the region.
“We were kind of asked to go dark,” he said. “We were still able to read Facebook and our email, but we were asked not to give information out.”
The support they received from people back home was “incredible and so sustaining,” Brooks said.
First Baptist Church Associate Pastor Kurt Borden said it was “overwhelming the number of people that just genuinely were concerned.”
“We set aside a Sunday morning, specifically actually in this room,” Borden explained as he conducted an interview alongside Brooks at the church. “Folks in our church stepped up, leaders that we’ve been working on for years. They wrote the prayers and they got the scriptures and they got the music and we filled this with candles.”
“We have this connection with God but when you bring other people in that also have a connection with God … that’s where the peace comes, that’s where the hope comes,” Borden added.
Brooks attributed his family’s success in evacuating to the spiritual intervention from his church family: “Certainly, in this situation, with all the prayers, we were out.”
“It’s these moments where your faith is tested, and God is our refuge and our strength and our very present help in trouble, or he’s not,” Brooks maintained. “You really have to lean into that.”
First Methodist Church announced in a Facebook post in the early morning hours of June 20 that the Brooks family was “back on U.S. soil” and was scheduled to return home later in the day. Two days earlier, the church indicated that the family was en route back to the U.S.
The Brooks’ return to the U.S. came just over a week after Israel launched airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, setting off a conflict between the two countries.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
