Columbia, S.C. (WOLO)– A Midlands pastor and his wife are making their way home from Israel after spending Saturday going back and forth to the bomb shelter of their Jerusalem hotel. ABC Columbia’s Kelly Coakley spoke with Wes Church, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Columbia about th e experience as he and his wife waited in a Cairo airport for the next part of their journey back to South Carolina. “That was one of the scariest moments of my life to kind of go through that experience.” Saturday in Jerusalem was supposed to be a day of touring for Wes and Rachel Church. Instead Wes says it started like this,”at 8:30, Rachel was downstairs having breakfast, and I’m upstairs grabbing something out of the room – we hear a siren. We are in two different places, and she immediately starts crying – and I start trying to figure out where she is and how in the world i get to her. We ended up in two different stairwells that served as reinforced bomb shelters.” 13 more times over the next 24 hours the pastor of First Baptist Church of Columbia and his wife would take cover in a bomb shelter heading three stories beneath their hotel “Everybody is in a reinforced steel room that has machinery on the wall that’s there in case it’s some kind of chemical warfare attack. I mean it’s unnerving, but it’s also very comforting.” Church says he and others received phone alerts telling them when to move to a protected space, and sirens meant something else. “You now have 90 seconds to get to the bunker if it’s going to hit here.” Church says he didn’t allow his mind to fear, instead he stood on faith. “There will be some people watching this who may – faith is not part of their lives – and they may be going, are you crazy – how could you not be afraid. what would you say to them?” “I find myself putting my trust in God and depending on the prayers of people. Our church has been very faithful to pray for us, and i believe that is what has brought us this far.” and..will bring them home. The Church’s traveled five hours by bus to get to a Cairo airport. From there they will fly to Istanbul to Atlanta, and finally back to the Midlands. For more local news, click here. Categories: Local News, News, Richland ...read more read less