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MEADVILLE — There isn’t much left of Old Zion Baptist Church on Berrytown Road in Meadville, but the couple who were inside it when a tornado ripped through the building came out almost completely unscathed.

Rick Strawbridge and Dianne Strawbridge live not far from their church in Meadville and could hear what sounded like a tornado coming at them from the South, Rick Strawbridge said.

Thinking the church to be a little more sturdy than their own home, they went there for safety, he said.

“We were there for 5 to 8 minutes and I opened the door and could hear the tornado coming straight to us through the woods,” he said.

He and his wife went to bunker down in the restroom and before he could close the restroom door the roof of the building was gone, Strawbridge said.

“I looked up and I could see nothing but sky,” he said.

When he and his wife stood, they saw debris all around them in every direction — everywhere but in the six-foot diameter space where they stood, he said.

“We didn’t have a splinter on us,” he said. “You know, being the spiritual person I am, it was providential. God’s hedge of protection was on us. I don’t want anyone to come tell us it was luck. Luck had nothing to do with it.”

Strawbridge said the strange thing was, through it all, neither he nor his wife felt any fear — not even as they crouched down on the bathroom floor, he said.

“You would think someone would be frightened but we knew deep down we would be alright,” he said.

The church building, on the other hand, is reduced to rubble.

Strawbridge said the congregation plans to have a short standup prayer service Sunday morning and will then relocate to another member’s home for the regular Sunday worship service. After that, the future of the church is unclear.

“It will be eight months to a year before we get another building built,” he said. “Local churches around the area offered their facilities to us for afternoon worship but we haven’t determined yet where we’ll go.”

Around 20 to 25 people attend Old Zion regularly on Sundays, which is led by Rev. Lance Moak, he said. The church established in 1917 burned 70 to 80 years ago and the building had been rebuilt before, Strawbridge said.

“We’re going to rebuild but it’s going to take time,” he said. “We have a strong church family and this is not going to split us up. Our church is the people. This was just the building we met in. We’re OK and our church is OK.”

Anyone who wants to assist with the recovery of Old Zion can still reach the church’s mailing address at 4775 Berrytown Rd, Meadville, MS 39653, he said.

Apart from the loss of the church building, Strawbridge said a neighbor lost a barn and a mobile home had rolled over and caused injury to one of its occupants during the storm. Trees and tree limbs were down and covered roads.

Strawbridge said he’d never before experienced anything like the tornado he and his wife lived through on Saturday.

“I used to work offshore and ran from a lot of hurricanes but I was never in the middle of it,” he said. “It was a disaster and I was blessed by it.”