Mourning Loss After Storm Imelda, Family Holds Tight to Faith

Tags: Currents Faith, Media, National News, Natural Disaster, Texas, Weather

Currents News Staff

Last week, while rain from Tropical Storm Imelda was hammering the city of Houston, Texas, 56-year-old Raul Eliseo Rivas-Hernandez lost his life.

His is one of five deaths in Texas linked to the storm.

Raul was a husband, a father, an uncle, and a cancer survivor. But he was also a man of faith who always had scriptures in his home, and the Bible nearby for him and his wife to read.

“My husband he loved the Lord. he loved the Lord,” said his wife, Irma Rivas. 

Irma is peace now, but at the height of Imelda on September 19 and the days thereafter, she was “crying like a baby,” and could not control the rush of emotions.

That morning, she had begged her husband of 25 years not to go to work that day, but he insisted that he would be okay

At about noon she called him one more time, begging him to come back home.

“‘Honey. come back home. Come back home.’ He said, ‘I will call you back.’ He never called me back, never called me back,” Irma said.

According to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Raul attempted to drive the van he was in through Will Clayton Parkway in Texas, but the vehicle sank in about eight feet of water.

The family found out the following day that he had passed away.

“He used to tell me all the time that I was his very special niece,” Raul’s niece, Xeoara Zepeda, said in Spanish.

“Now I’m happy,” said Irma. “Now I’m happy because I know he went to the best place. He called him home. He went home with the Lord.”

Although the entire family is heartbroken and devastated, their faith is helping them heal.