.gif)
A Hispanic Baptist leader focuses on ministering to his family after his great-granddaughter dies in the school shooting.
In the quiet, 16,000-person town of Uvalde, Texas, nearly everyone has connections to the children, families, and teachers shaken by the deadly elementary school shooting.
“I was watering my flowers in the front yard when I heard shots ring out,” said Julian Moreno, former pastor of Primera Iglesia Bautista. Moreno lives two blocks from Robb Elementary School, where an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 kids and two teachers on Tuesday.
Within minutes of hearing the shots, Moreno said he saw two policemen running down the street. Then, an exchange of gunfire so close he could smell the powder.
Knowing his great-granddaughter, Lexi, was a student at the school, Moreno walked to the campus once the shots ceased.
He later learned that the attack took place in 10-year-old Lexi’s classroom, and she was among the victims.
Outside the school, Moreno said, the atmosphere radiated with fear, as parents clamored to get into the barricaded building. Officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and Border Patrol shouted at one another as they put on their gear and approached the school.
“People were talking loudly, a lot were crying,” he said. “They were saying, ‘My son or my daughter is in that building,’ and the officers were just saying ‘I’m sorry, you can’t go any further.’”
Located 80 miles west of San Antonio, an hour from the Mexican border, the town of Uvalde is 82 percent Hispanic, with sizable Catholic and Baptist populations. Around 20 local churches have joined together to support their community, now known as the location of the third-deadliest school shooting in the US.
Because he’s a faith leader, people in the community have turned to ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
Umn ministry
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
