Blazing Inferno Meets a Supernatural God

“It was burning quick and it was burning hot,” Travis Standfest said. “I did think I was going to die. I was just praying to God.”
 
May 24, 2023, is forever seared into the mind of Travis as the night he nearly lost everything. Fast asleep, his pregnant wife, Rachel, frantically woke him as smoke billowed up the stairs – the first floor of their two-story pole barn apartment was on fire.
 
“We actually ran to the window, and that's where her parents met us in the driveway and told us the barn was on fire,” Travis said. “I remember my mother-in-law screaming and saying, ‘You need to jump.’ The window was about fifteen to twenty feet above the driveway. Rachel had to go headfirst, and then I helped my dog out the window. After that happened I actually was trapped up there because the flames started coming up over the window. And that's when I decided that I was going to run down and through the fire. I remember screaming, running through the barn because I could feel myself basically hitting flames as I was running.”
 
Travis narrowly made it outside where he saw Rachel, unconscious, being pulled away from the flames by her parents. His skin burning, Travis ran into his in-laws’ house adjacent to the pole barn to jump into a cold shower.
 
“At that point, I could see that my hands were burned,” Travis said. “I could see that my pants had caught on fire and that my legs were pretty beat up. I didn't know how severe the rest of it was. The first thing that I did once I had a moment to collect myself was just to pray, ‘God, please be with my wife.’ I just repeated that over and over and over.”
 
Firefighters and paramedics arrived to load Travis and Rachel into ambulances. In the ER, it was discovered that Rachel had a brain bleed from a fractured skull, along with third degree burns from her legs to her torso. Unsure if she would survive and being thirty-six weeks pregnant, doctors opted to perform an emergency C-section. Meanwhile, Travis went into surgery for his extensive burns, which included his face.
 
“They started sedating me,” Travis said. “I remember quick flashes. I remember hearing that she was going into the delivery room. That was kind of it.”
 
Their families contacted their churches, and hundreds began praying for them. A few hours later the surgeons successfully stopped Rachel’s brain bleed, saving her life. She and Travis would then get to meet their daughter, Brynlee.
 
“There was not a scratch on her,” Rachel said about their newborn. “She was perfect. God is so faithful. Day after day, we would pray for a body part to heal, and the next day the surgeon said, ‘It's healed. We don't need to re-graft it.’ It was just incredible.”
 
“Once I was told that Rachel was all right, that Brynlee was healthy, I was just praising God,” Travis said. “They are everything to me.”  
 
Their path to recovery was painful. Travis underwent three surgeries, while Rachel had five. She required physical therapy due to the location and extent of her burns – but they and others continued to pray.
 
“God is the ultimate healer, and He has shown that to us from day one,” Rachel said. “When I left the hospital, I was in there for twenty-nine days, and one of my surgeons told me that my healing was where I should be at four and a half months. It was just humbling to hear that.”
 
“Until you're in the situation where your life is on the line and you see miracles happening left and right, to me, that's really where it sunk in how important prayer is,” Travis said. “The fire burned about six feet per second once it was fully going. The fact that we survived that intensity is just, it's mind blowing to me. God really stepped in and with His grace saved us.”
 
Travis and Rachel reunited with Brynlee and their dog, Otis, who also escaped the fire unscathed. They posted videos about their experience on social media and received millions of views. The cause of the fire was never determined and only a Bible, a single photo and the shirt Rachel was baptized in, now framed, survived. Travis and Rachel believe that God delivered them so they would be able to share about His goodness to the world.
 
“Grateful is an understatement,” Rachel said. “It's all a miracle. Yeah, we went through this and it was tough, but we're here; we have a baby girl. This is God's story that we are here to tell. As long as you keep your eyes on Him, He will be with you.”
 
“I credit all this to God,” Travis said. “God gave us the opportunity to share who He is through our story. I've never looked at this as Travis and Rachel's story, but an opportunity to share with anyone and everyone who God is and how faithful He is. I love my family with all my heart. I'm grateful every single day, for what God's brought us through.”