It just came up all of a sudden. I was at the front door and had the kids in the closet, and I ran to the closet and shut the door and put covers over us. We locked arms.

It's hard, but I came out in better shape because I've got my kids.

You could feel the house tearing apart. We felt it when it picked us up, and we felt it when it put us down.

By the time the (tornado) sirens started going off, it was at our back door. I didn't hear a train sound. I heard a roaring.

We have seven kids of our own between the ages of 23 and 8. But we felt like we still had more love to give.

There's a similar story with St. Francis and the wolf. The wolf was terrorizing a village, eating kids and older people. They couldn't catch or kill him, but Francis found it in the woods and tamed it with God's help.