WINTER HAVEN, Fla. -- Missionary Danny Jones was the co-leader of a March trip to Israel. The Westwood Missionary Baptist Church member didn’t think he’d get COVID-19 when he embarked on the trip March 8.  

“He was on the phone with the Ministry of Tourism in Israel, he was on the phone with Delta airlines and he was on the phone with the tour company and everybody kept reassuring him this was not a big deal. You know everything is ok. Nothing is shutting down in Israel. Because nothing had shut down at that point," Danny’s wife Rachel Jones said. 

As COVID-19 quickly spread, Israel was put on lockdown by the end of the stay. By the time Danny made it to the airport in New York City on Wednesday, March 18, he had a slight fever. His wife picked him up from the airport in Orlando, and the family of five quarantined at home. 

“Our oldest daughter, who is 16-years-old, she locked herself in her room and never came out,” Rachel said.

“We were being precautious. We wore masks and gloves and I was putting Lysol on surfaces and doorknobs and light switches and my husband didn’t go into the kitchen. I took care of all of the food.”

By that Sunday, Danny’s fever spiked to 101 degrees. He went to get tested.

“After Sunday, he started coughing and he lost his sense of taste and smell,” Rachel explained. 

The symptoms got worse. That following Thursday, March 26, he found out he tested positive for COVID-19. 

“The next day he started having a lot of trouble breathing. It was my birthday and you know he was trying to sing happy birthday to me in the morning and he was coughing so bad he couldn’t catch his breath,” Rachel recalled. 

The next day, March 28, he went to the hospital. Rachel began to worry about how his underlying health conditions including a rapid heart beat would impact him. 

“I’m facing the reality that my husband might not ever come back from the hospital. And you know. So I’m having that run through my mind. What am I going to do as a single mom with these girls?" she worried. 

The same day her husband got tested, March 22, was the same day Rachel and their three daughters, ages 10, 13, and 16 all started experiencing symptoms. 

“All four of us started having a terrible headache, body aches, and we started running low grade fevers,” Rachel said. 

She still has the persistent dry cough. 

“It is so hard to go to sleep when you feel like you’re suffocating,” Rachel expressed. 

Rachel and her girls all got tested March 29th, the day after her husband was admitted into Winter Haven Hospital. 

“Our noses burned for three hours after that test. Like we were on fire for a couple hours,” she recalled. 

Two days later, they found out they tested positive for COVID-19.

“By this point, all of the major symptoms had set in. The girls were barely eating. They were barely drinking. You have this overwhelming constant state of nausea that makes you not want to eat or drink anything,” she explained. 

Miserably ill and taking care of her sick children, it started to take a toll on her. 

“I’m trying to not let them you know, how bad it was getting. And I cried a lot behind the scenes, you know, because I didn’t want to do it in front of my kids,” Rachel said in between tears. 

Her husband stayed in the hospital for five days, returning home April 1.

“I feel like he’s not getting worse. So for me that’s progress,” Rachel said. 

Five days later, their oldest daughter Tara got so dehydrated she went to the emergency room. 

“Every time she would get out of her bed to go to the bathroom she would black out because she would have so much trouble breathing,” Rachel recalled. 

She stayed at Lakeland Regional Health Carol Jenkins Barnett Pavilion for Women and Children for a few hours and then Rachel decided to bring her back home. The medical staff wanted to transfer her to the children’s hospital in Orlando. Alone. 

“With her being so scared, she said I’ll drink a gallon of water everyday. I don’t want to go to the hospital.  I don’t want to be away from you. I’m too scared to do this,” Rachel explained. 

Although she was dehydrated, her pediatrician wanted her to go to the hospital to be tested for pneumonia. Her test came back negative. 

Rachel said the virus just does what it wants. Some days the fevers are gone. Then they come back. 

“The overwhelming message that I would say to people is to take this seriously!”

Her husband has been fighting COVID-19 for more than 20 days.

“But we’ve had so many people praying for us and so many people reaching out and you know at this time I just have an overwhelming peace from the Lord that He is going to take care of the situation,” Rachel said while tearing up. 

Rachel and her husband still had fevers Thursday. They’re now taking the experimental drug Hydroxychloroquine, which is typically used to treat arthritis and prevent malaria. The Z-pack is typically prescribed with it, but Rachel said neither she or her husband can take the Z-Pack due to her allergic reaction and his heart condition. 

“That might be why it’s taking our bodies longer to fight this off because we can’t just do what the normal data is saying works the best,” she said.