Joy from tragedy

Prayer breakfast speaker determined ‘not to let Satan win’ after husband’s murder

By PAUL LORENZ

paul.lorenz@mcleansborotimesleader.com

McLEANSBORO — Trust in Christ allows people to experience joy even in their deepest tragedies, the widow of a slain Baptist minister says.

“I always believed this, but now I know it,” Cindy Winters said at the inaugural Hamilton County Prayer Breakfast.

Approximately 250 people attended the prayer breakfast Friday morning at First Baptist Church’s Carlton Activity Center.

Mrs. Winters is the widow of the Rev. Fred Winters, the First Baptist Church of Maryville pastor who was fatally shot during a sermon last March 8.

At the prayer breakfast, she shared the experience of losing her husband and her children’s father, and how since that fatal day, bringing people to Jesus has become her passion.

“What has happened here is sheer evil, and it was orchestrated by Satan,” someone told Mrs. Winters in the hours following the shooting. “I was determined then not to let Satan win.”

As Mrs. Winters and daughter Cassidy approached the church that day — March 8, 2009 — they saw cars being pulled over by police; it appeared there had been some sort of accident at the church entrance, she said. The Rev. Winters and the couple’s other daughter, Alysia, were already at the church for the early service.

Police pulled her car over, and while they were waiting, a friend called Mrs. Winters’ cell phone and told her that “everything is going to be all right.”

“I had no idea what she was talking about,” Mrs. Winters recalled, “and then she prayed for me.”

Another person from the church approached her and realized Mrs. Winters did not yet know what had happened.

“I’ll never forget the look on her face when she said, ‘Fred’s been shot,’” Mrs. Winters said.

When she arrived at the hospital, a charge nurse told Mrs. Winters that her husband’s injuries were “very, very serious,” then offered to let her see him. She thought that was a good sign, she said.

“It never occurred to me that Fred wasn’t going to be OK,” she said.

When she got to the place where her husband was, Mrs. Winters noticed that his feet were yellow, which she thought was strange, she said; but then she started thanking the other people there for taking care of her husband.

That’s when Mrs. Winters got the heartbreaking news:

“A nurse turned around, crying, and said, ‘I’m so sorry.’”

“He’s dead?”

“Yes, we just called it.”

Mrs. Winters recalled other aspects of what she described as a nightmarish day: breaking the awful news to her daughters; watching Maryville’s police chief — a friend of the Winterses — talking on CNN about what had happened and seeing clips of her husband preaching; and her daughters digging through the clothes hamper to pull out shirts belonging to her husband to hold in bed that night while they all “cried and cried.”

“This is what we were reduced to — dirty shirts,” she said.

In the wake of such tragedy, is knowing Jesus enough? It is, she said.

“Faith is trusting him when nothing makes sense,” she said.

Prior to his death, the Rev. Winters had read the book “90 Minutes in Heaven,” the account of a Texas preacher thought to be dead in the wake of a horrendous car crash, only to come back to life at least 90 minutes later “with only the memory of inexpressible heavenly bliss,” a description of the book on its Web site says.

After reading the book, Winters was determined, his wife said, to bring Don Piper — the man who experienced heaven — to the Maryville church to speak. And he did; the speaking engagement was set for April 26.

On that day, more than 5,000 people — still hurting in the wake of the tragedy seven weeks earlier — came to see Piper speak, Mrs. Winters said.

Of her husband, Mrs. Winters said, “One day I will meet him at the gates of heaven. My hope is I will meet you there, too.”

The prayer breakfast raised more than $2,500, with $500 of that amount going to Winters’ Grace and Hope Ministries, Dorothy Roesch, chairwoman of the volunteer committee, said.

Roesch called the inaugural event “wonderful.”

“I thought we had a great turnout,” she said. “Cindy is a great speaker. I’m looking forward to next year.”

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