In fact, if someone had suggested years ago that Rhonda Mills and her husband, Donnie Mills, would be hosting weekly Masses in the metal shed outside their house, "I'd say you're crazy," she said in a recent phone conversation with The Western Kentucky Catholic, newspaper of the Diocese of Owensboro. And yet the Mills family is now in their third month of welcoming fellow members of Resurrection Parish in Dawson Springs following a severe tornado outbreak in December 2021 that devastated Kentucky and surrounding states and left Resurrection's church building destroyed.
A Welcoming Place, Parish Helps People Still in Need Months After Tornadoes thetablet.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thetablet.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
It is now the third month since historic tornadoes struck Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri and Illinois during the night of Dec. 10. Of Catholic dioceses in the region, the communities within the Diocese of Owensboro in western Kentucky sustained the most damage. While St. Joseph's Church waited to hear from insurance whether their damaged church would be stable enough to permit worship inside, the parish became a hub for helping people who had lost everything in the storms.
Families across western Kentucky continue to face the impact of the December tornadoes that roared through several communities as one Catholic Charities agency accompanies them along the way. Susan Montalvo-Gesser, director of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Owensboro, said recovery efforts are expected to take two to four years.