Our Story

Early in 2022, as Amy and I were preparing for our youngest daughter’s wedding coming up in June, we began reflecting on the blessing that our now adult children had not yet had to face the death of a loved one, not even a grandparent. And so, we began to pray for them, that grief and loss that was sure to come one day would draw them closer to Christ and not drive them away from him. At the same time, I began to have a sense that the church we had planted in 2008 was about to face a trial that could potentially break us. So, we also began to pray for our sweet congregation, Hope of Christ Church. We had no way of knowing that the trial our church would face and the grief journey our family would soon enter was the death of our own daughter, Ilona.

That grief journey began on Wednesday, September 21, 2022. Just after midnight on Thursday the 22nd, Amy received a text, “Can someone check Ilona’s location?” She had left over two hours earlier to spend the weekend with her sister, but she had not arrived. Her location showed she was still on I-95 and in a traffic jam. After calling our Sheriff’s office and the State Police and receiving no answers, we decided to drive to her last known location. Our son who was living at home at the time came with us when Amy woke him to tell him, “We can’t find Ilona, and she is not answering her phone.” We were only 40 minutes from her location. The whole drive Amy called all the local hospitals asking if an Ilona Bailey had been admitted. The whole drive I just kept praying, “Please, God… Please, God.” When we reached the front of the traffic, we could tell there had been a bad accident. We pulled to the side of the highway. After waiting a couple minutes, a State Trooper approached Amy’s side of the car and asked, “How do you know Ilona Bailey?” When I told him we were her parents, he told us that our daughter had been in an accident and had died. It was devastating. It still is. How could one  so full of life and love be gone?