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01.08.06

Finding faith after mine disaster

When the Sago Mine blast tested a town's faith, Wease Day of Sago Baptist Church offered hospitality and strength of belief

SAGO, W.Va. -- When it happened, before dawn Monday morning, the Rev. Wease Day thought it would be a good idea to open his church to the rescue workers, to give them a warm place to get coffee and doughnuts while they searched for the 13 miners trapped under the mountain across the river.

Two were his friends. As a boy, he had played football and gone hunting and fishing with George Hamner Jr. And for more than 20 years, Fred Ware Jr. had lived next door to the church and kept an eye on things for Day, who does double duty as a school bus driver. As Day headed to the church that morning, he felt confident that the miners would quickly be rescued.

But the pastor would not make it home that night, or the one after. Instead, his Sago Baptist Church became a place to sustain not just the rescue crews but the families of the miners, a place where thousands of prayers were sent heavenward and where - when it was all over - many questioned whether anyone had heard them.

For two days, as rescue workers slowly advanced toward the trapped miners, the families did the only thing they could: They prayed. Clergy from across this rural region of north-central West Virginia came to the church and held hands with the families. Candles were lit. Hymns were sung. Day's daughter played the piano.

And when word came late Tuesday night that 12 of the 13 miners had been found alive, the families were quick to give credit to God. It only made sense that, three hours later, when the families learned that 12 of the 13 miners were dead, they again pointed to God.

"We have got some of us saying that we don't even know if there is a Lord anymore," Anna Casto, a cousin of a dead miner, told CNN. "We had a miracle, and it was taken away from us."

Day, 49, would do as he had done for the past 40 years, since he was spiritually saved in the church he now heads: He would let the spirit in and trust the Lord.

"We heard about the tsunami. We heard about Katrina," the pastor said in an interview with The Sun last week after mine officials announced the deaths. "This one was here, and we had to deal with it. It's easy to play football from the stands. But when you get down on the field, it's a whole different ballgame, and we were standing in the middle of the field."

Ministering to these relatives and friends was a role Day is uniquely qualified to fill. He grew up in the hills around the mine, went to Sago Baptist Church before he was old enough to walk and returned as its pastor nine years ago. For the past 25 years, he has been a bus driver for the county school system.

"A lot of people who go to this church are my family, or, if not, they grew up with me or helped raise me," Day said. And though he might not see them in church every Sunday, he knows what they believe. "You can't live in these hills and work in those mountains without some faith in God."

As other local pastors prepared for their Sunday sermons, they thought about how to address the inevitable questions, the ones that defy easy answers. The Rev. Joseph Foster of the Good Shepherd Assembly of God in nearby Elkins said he understands why people who hurt would question their faith.

"There will be some who may become angry and bitter toward God, and those who resent him," said Foster, who spent time at the Sago church last week. "But whether we get what we pray for, we must praise God. Our salvation and our faith doesn't hinge on us always getting what we want. That would be a pretty selfish religion."

Day said he hasn't had time to think about what he will say when he stands before his congregation today. What the community needs, he said, is to express itself. So he expects to say only a few words and then let people talk.

"We'll just sit down as a family and discuss it," he said.

When the search ended last week, he told those assembled at the church that although their lives had changed, God had not. He is the same God they were praising when they thought the miners had been saved. And he did not do this to them, Day said.

"God is not the author of death and confusion," he said. "He is the God of life."

'Renewed spiritually'

Sago is little more than a crossroads at the entrance to the mine. There's one road in, which hews closely to the Buckhannon River. On one side of the river is the mine. On the other side is the church - a simple country church with white siding, a gravel parking lot and a small graveyard. Never before have the church and the mine been so closely intertwined.

Day reached the church about 10 a.m. Monday. Volunteers had already opened it to the rescue workers, and soon families of the trapped miners began arriving, too. It seemed the logical place to go.

"I knew the only comforting power they was really going to find would come from the Lord," said Day, who has the stocky build of a former football player and a warm, generous nature that suited him well to the task he faced.

He told the families to make themselves at home in his church, to ask for anything they needed. Folding chairs arrived at the fellowship hall, and the adjacent sanctuary was opened. There are strict rules forbidding food and drink in the sanctuary, but they were suspended.

"I told them these are only material things, and the Lord has said it's time to open the doors," Day said. He had always wanted to have a service where he could see people standing outside, looking in the windows, like when a preacher used to call for a revival. In a sense, that's what he got.

That first night in the church - Monday night - the lights were dimmed and some tried to sleep on the pews. Others kept singing or were simply too heartsick to move. To those who seemed to have lost hope, he asked what they needed, brought them coffee and listened to their fears.

"We live in a society where things change. Time changes things," Day said. "But Scripture teaches us that the spirit is being renewed daily. And they were being renewed spiritually as the moments went by."

Then, after hours of asking for a miracle, one seemed to occur. Word came from within the mine that 12 men had been found alive. Someone from the command center phoned someone in the church. That wasn't supposed to happen, but it did.

Day was in the breezeway between the sanctuary and the fellowship hall when he heard the celebration. At first he was confused. Officials had notified him in advance of all the previous announcements in order to alert the families and gather them together. This time, no one told him an announcement was coming.

He dwelled on that for only a moment, then he, too, was carried away in the euphoria. "It didn't take me long to join in," he said. "When people are shouting and praising God, I want to join in."

At the back of the church, a pull rope leads up to the bells in the white steeple, and Day ran to it.

"I thought about the old churches," he said. "If someone was killed in the mines, or even if someone died in the community, they always tolled the bell. I thought, man, if you toll the bell when someone leaves the community, then if someone's being granted back to you, it's time to ring the bells and beat on the bottom of kettles and whatever it takes. So I untied the rope and started ringing the bell."

Within 45 minutes, another message surfaced from the mine to the command center: Only one miner was alive, and just barely. Mining company officials waited to confirm the report, even as they knew about the bell-ringing and Lord-praising going on at the church.

'Worst of times'

Later, company officials would say state troopers had been asked to alert the clergy about the conflicting reports so they could calm the revelers. Day said he never got that message, and in any case it wasn't his to deliver.

"Were we ever given information that we were supposed to take out and announce to the people? No," Day said. "I have no authority to announce anything from the coal company. I can announce to the people that Christ has been crucified. I can announce to them that he could be their savior. I can announce to them that salvation was free and we was ready to help them get it."

He expects the tragedy to bring the families closer to God and help them realize what they still have. The problems within families or small disagreements that kept people apart probably won't seem so important anymore. Fences that had been built up will be torn down.

"You can't always feel like praising the Lord," Day said. "But in the worst of times, this is what we have: faith in God."

More than a few in the community say they haven't lost that. And they believe that those whose faith was strained by the disaster - as well as by the miscommunication - will weather it.

"Their faith may have slipped down a little bit, but I know they're stronger today," said Jo Ann Casto, 50, of Sago, a member of the church who was also a friend to four of the miners who died. She was back at the church on Friday, where half a dozen women were mopping the floor and putting the church back in order for today's services.

"Being with people here, it just builds your faith up stronger," said Jo Linger, 60, who lives in Sago. "We know that with all this tragedy that happened, there's a loving God. The people had this little church to come to, and we were able to be with them and hold them and cry with them."

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