An Alabama man following an unexpected GPS route helped save a Georgia couple and 12 children from their burning home. Both Casey Sparks and LaRita Burke, whose family he helped rescue, believe God brought him there.

“Everything that lined up for me to be there when I was – how I was – there’s no other explanation,” Sparks told The Guardian.

“It was God. That’s it.”

LaRita Burke described the same conviction in a Facebook post after the Oct. 17 fire destroyed her family’s home near Lyerly.

“God went before us,” she wrote.

In her post, Burke credited God with bringing Sparks to the house, protecting her family during the fire and providing help afterward.

As the Burkes work to rebuild, they are also reassuring their adopted children that they still have the forever home they were promised.

Sparks and his 13-year-old son, Cason, were returning to Alabama from a softball tournament in Dalton, Georgia, when his GPS repeatedly directed him toward Lyerly, the newspaper reported.

After spotting the fire, Sparks stopped and told Cason to call for help. He went inside and woke James Burke, who had fallen asleep in a recliner.

LaRita and the children had also been asleep. The household included the couple’s 11 adopted children and a grandchild, according to Local 3 News.

LaRita said Sparks physically helped get the children out. Isabella was the first child he carried to safety.

“He scooped her up out of her hospital bed and carried her like she didn’t weigh anything,” she wrote.

Isabella weighed nearly 70 pounds, LaRita said, and could not support her head. She described Sparks holding her securely, carrying her across the yard and placing her on a trampoline before returning to help the others.

“He didn’t just wake us up and tell us to get out. He physically helped get kids out,” she wrote.

Older children held babies and guided younger siblings by the hand. Cason helped keep the children calm outside while his father continued the rescue.

According to LaRita, Sparks was the last person out.

The family gathered near the trampoline before being escorted to a field across the road. Barefoot and wearing her nightgown, LaRita watched firefighters battle flames that engulfed the house.

LaRita wrote that she initially thought firefighters needed to put out the flames so she could go inside and clean up the damage.

It took a few moments for her to understand that nothing was left to clean.

The Burkes had prepared for emergencies. They had practiced fire and tornado drills, and older children knew where to escape and where to gather. LaRita said smoke alarms were installed throughout the home.

But that night, she wrote, they were asleep and unaware of the danger.

“We praise God for putting him there at the exact moment he was.”

Many of the children are autistic, LaRita explained, and unfamiliar people or changes in routine can be frightening. A brush fire near their property a couple of weeks earlier had given them an opportunity to see firefighters and fire trucks.

Looking back, she believes that experience helped prepare them to accept help during the house fire.

LaRita said the family escaped without burns or smoke inhalation. They lost family photographs, the children’s scrapbooks, Bibles, her grandmother’s quilt and pictures of the children’s biological families.

LaRita asked for prayers for a rental home where the family could stay together, and for the children to feel loved and secure while they waited.

“God hears our prayers.” Answered prayers and divine intervention are two experiences Burke and Sparks are thankful they share.

Sherri Blevins is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You may contact her at [email protected].