Faith gives families of miners help, hope.

It is hard to find anything positive about the Sago Mine disaster, other than the recovery of the tragedy's lone survivor, Randal McCloy, Jr. The families of the 12 miners who perished have faced expected grief, along with additional emotional havoc caused by a premature, erroneous announcement that all but one had survived. And questions have been raised concerning the slow response to the disaster. The first rescue teams did not enter the mine until more than 11 hours after the explosion, according to the mine company's owner, International Coal Group.

Nevertheless, the people in the coal mining country of West Virginia are largely a religious people, and many received spiritual comfort in prayer, and emotional and physical support from their churches.

The Sago Baptist Church, across the Buckhannon River from the mine, became a relief center for rescue workers and a place where families and friends of the trapped miners could find and offer each other comfort. Church volunteers opened the building early on the morning of January 2, the day of the explosion, even before the church's pastor, Rev. Wease Day, could arrive. Church leaders provided chairs, food, hot beverages, and a place of physical and spiritual refuge for rescue workers and distraught people waiting for word about the missing men.

The false report that most of the miners had been found alive, and the subsequent letdown when the truth was made known, hit the people hard and severely tested the faith of many. Anna Casto, a cousin of one of the miners who died, told CNN: "We had a miracle, and it was taken away from US."

Most of the people persisted in their faith, however, helped along by their spiritual leaders. Rev. Day told the Baltimore Sun: "A lot of people who go to this church are my family, or, if not, they grew up with me or helped raise me. You can't live in these hills and work in those mountains without some faith in God."

Another local pastor who spent time counseling the flock at the Sago church, the Rev. Joseph Foster of the Elkins Good Shepherd Assembly of God, tried to put the severe spiritual test into perspective: "There will be some who may become angry and bitter toward God, and those who resent him. But whether we get what we pray for, we must praise God. Our salvation and our faith doesn't hinge on us always getting what we want. That would be a pretty selfish religion."

Sago resident Jo Linger told reporters: "Being with people here, it just builds your faith up stronger. We know that with all this tragedy that happened, there's a loving God. The people had this little church to come to, and we were able to be with them and hold them and cry with them."

The New York Times reported that at the First United Methodist Church, the Rev. Mark Flynn told congregants about his experience:

   I went to Sago to minister to those
   families, and they ministered to me.
   I was touched by the strength, the
   love and the wisdom. In those dark
   days and nights at the Sago Baptist
   Church, I saw some light. I saw light
   in the faith and love of the family
   members with whom I talked.

   Their faith was not just a vague notion
   that somehow everything would
   turn out as they wished. These people
   believe that they and their loved ones
   were in the hands of God, no matter
   what happened in that mine.

Rev. Flynn was not exaggerating the faith of these good people. One of the miners who died in the Sago mine, Martin Toler, Jr., wrote a farewell note bravely stating, "Tell all I see them on the other side."