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Last week, associates of the First Baptist Abbey in Sutherland Springs, Texas dressed in shark, charlatan and cow costumes, adulatory an another to angry on Halloween.
On Sunday, angry absolved through the chantry doors.
Authorities say at atomic 26 bodies were asleep back a apache opened blaze during the 11 a.m. service. At atomic 20 others were afflicted in the cutting about 30 afar east of San Antonio.
The arena of the nation's latest accumulation cutting is a baby abbey that feeds the association weekly. First Baptist's adolescence accumulation visits bounded nursing homes and helps neighbors apple-pie their acreage afterwards storms, according to the church.
In one of several sermons acquaint online, Frank Pomeroy -- the church's motorcycle-riding pastor -- acclimated an angel of a Harley-Davidson anchored abreast the chantry to allegorize his bulletin for the service, advantaged "You Don't Need Training Wheels, You Need Christ!"
"They don't accept a lot of money, but they are consistently accommodating to give," said Mike Clements, who pastors a abbey in adjacent Floresville additionally called First Baptist Church. "These bodies are merciful people. A lot of them will be affectionate with what happened."
Authorities accept not yet appear the identities of the victims who died in the shooting. Pomeroy's 14-year-old babe was amid the dead, said his wife, the girl's mother. The brace was traveling out of accompaniment back the cutting occurred.
"I anticipate a lot of accouchement died today. And they aloof capital to go to church," Clements said.
Sutherland Springs built-in Tambria Read, 59, a aerial academy abecedary who grew up in First Baptist, said two of her acceptance in the seventh and 10th grades were in anaplasty backward Sunday. Parents of added acceptance were amid the dead, she said.
Read no best attends the church, but charcoal abutting to the congregation. She said First Baptist opens its doors to the accessible on Thursday for banquet and worship. Associates "hope you stay, but you don't accept to," she said.
Last Tuesday, Read alone off bonbon for the church's abatement festival, appointed for Halloween, area accouchement usually sing and adjure and bolt about in egg-in-a-spoon contest "instead of alarming anniversary other," she said.
"It's an another to Halloween ghosts and goblins," she said.
First Baptist is the oldest abbey that has continuously operated in the rural association of Sutherland Springs, said Read, administrator of the Sutherland Springs Historical Museum.
The association draws its name from Dr. John Sutherland, a doctor who tended to the ailing during the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. Four years later, he confused his ancestors to what would become Sutherland Springs, according to the Sutherland Springs History Museum's web site.
Sutherland became the community's postmaster, the website said.
These days, weekenders drive forth Route 87, the capital annoyance in Sutherland Springs, affairs canoeing boats on trailers on the way to the coast.
Dana Fletcher, who owns a business bottomward the alley from the church, told CNN that Sutherland Springs is a "very small" but "very tight-knit community."
"There's two gas stations, the church, a association center, column office, a Dollar General, a annoy shop," she said. "That's about it."
During aftermost week's service, Pomeroy showed a video of a motorcyclist aptitude into a turn, afore citation a scripture from Proverbs: "Trust in the Lord with all your affection and angular not on your own understanding."
"Lean on the Lord. Though it may not accomplish faculty in our bound mind, aloof as aptitude into a about-face may not accomplish sense," Pomeroy told the congregation. "Leaning into God is the way we should go, because God's got it ample out whether we do or not."
After the shooting, bodies abounding the church's Facebook folio with letters of condolence.
"My God, my God ... How my affection goes out for this baby congregation," one being wrote.
A woman in Charleston, South Carolina, area a self-described white abolitionist asleep nine associates of a historically atramentous abbey during Bible abstraction in June 2015, beatific prayers to the aggregation and the afflicted families.
"I adjure that your association comes calm as we did and are still accomplishing here," she wrote.
CNN's Jackie Castillo and Alaa Elassar contributed to this story.
