She got a flu shot — but Indiana youth pastor is ‘dancing with Jesus’ after virus
A 36-year-old Indiana youth pastor who was called a “motherly type figure” by her church’s pastor died from a flu-related illness this week, according to Reddington Christian Church.
Allison Williams began feeling sick after attending the Tennessee Christian Teen Convention on the weekend of Jan. 12, according to The Seymour Tribune. A few days later, doctors told her she had the Type A flu — despite getting a flu shot earlier this season, the newspaper reported.
Her symptoms worsened and after arriving at the emergency room, she went into cardiac arrest, the church wrote on Facebook. She died a short time later, with the pastor of her church present, WLKY reported
“Initially when he was talking to me, I didn’t really comprehend she had passed. It just didn’t click. It didn’t seem possible,” Pastor Scott Brown said of speaking to the doctor.
A day before her death, Williams questioned to her pastor why she got the flu shot in the first place. The flu shot is recommended to everyone 6 months of age or older each influenza season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“She told me yesterday, ‘I don’t even know why I got a flu shot. It didn’t do me any good,’” Brown told the Tribune.
Williams was the best youth minister Brown has worked with in his 34 years in ministry, he told WLKY. Others echoed Brown’s thoughts on social media, calling the youth minister a “mentor,” and a “role model” who “oozed joy.”
Carlyn Anders wrote on Facebook that Williams is “dancing with Jesus in heaven right now.”
“Being a kid who was going through way too much, Allison was always reaching out to me giving me a shoulder to cry on and the greatest advice that I could ever receive,” she said.
Leading nearly 100 kids, Williams “adored the children in her youth program from the babies all the way to high school,” Brown told WAVE 3.
The funeral and visitation for Williams will be held Thursday at Reddington Christian Church in Seymour, which is in between Indianapolis and Louisville.
A graduate of Johnson University in Tennessee, Williams was a youth minister at Reddington for 11 years, according to her obituary.
“As a second parent for ‘her kids,’ she always protected and pushed them to be and do better,” her obituary notes. “She encouraged them to step out of their comfort zones to be witnesses, and at the end of every lesson she would say, ‘Carry this and teach all your friends.’”
As of Tuesday, 31 people have died from flu-related illnesses this season in Indiana, WBIW reported. Williams is one of 10 people between the ages of 25 and 49 to die in the state this season.