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"The pain is just as real!" Greensboro pastor calls two-year tornado recovery a test of faith!

An EF2 tornado destroyed The Refuge in Greensboro on April 15, 2018. Two years later, the pastor reflects on his faithful journey to reopen the church.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Severe weather ripped through the Triad Monday with one confirmed tornado causing serious damage in Alamance County.

The loud alerts and urgent warnings reminded many of us about the EF2 tornado that hit Guilford County two years earlier on April 15, 2018.

The powerful EF2 was on the ground for miles near downtown Greensboro. Winds took out entire neighborhoods, stripping houses, covering streets with debris and gutting a house of worship inside out.

The Refuge Church is slowly rebuilding, but with a new crisis to battle, Pastor Derrick Hawkins called it a two-year test of faith.

"It doesn't seem like it was two years," Hawkins told WFMY News 2's Tracey McCain via Zoom.  "The pain was just as real!"

RELATED: Church Helps Rebuild East Greensboro Community One Year After Devastating Tornado

The last Sunday service at The Refuge was April 15, 2018 at 11 a.m.  By the afternoon the church was gone.

"I remember driving up to the church and I remember the next day waking up with tears streaming down my face, 'like God, I don't know what you're doing, but I believe you're in the midst of what we have going on.'"

We were with Pastor Hawkins as he tried to grasp the magnitude of the recovery ahead.

"There are some people in the community who are literally just now getting back into their homes.  We've been out two years and we still haven't gotten back into our building," he said.

But now a new crisis has curbed his hopes of holding church in the Bessemer Avenue location again.

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Posted by The Refuge Greensboro on Tuesday, April 17, 2018

"It's been a slow turnaround and I was talking with one of the officials in the city and they said this could set east Greensboro back another 15 years with COVID-19 because people are still not recovered from the tornado," said Hawkins.

The tornado forced The Refuge to hold services in a borrowed space and now COVID-19 has moved services online.

Pastor Hawkins hopes the next and final move is home on Bessemer.

"We just want to be in a place that we can call ours again.  Our church is about 90 percent complete right now, but we still have a little ways to go."

He added the congregation's will to move forward is as strong as the new walls.

"God never fails and He's in the midst of this crisis.  He's going to hold us up."

Pastor Hawkins hopes once the stay at home restrictions lift, The Refuge will be ready to hold services by summer.

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