MySA "After raising a family in the San Antonio area, Farida Brown moved to LaVernia about 20 years ago and found a community at the First Baptist Church, as so many others have.
"It was the type of place where congregants had developed an unofficial seating chart and greeted each other by name each Sunday.
"But that building will soon be gone.
" 'Pastor Frank Pomeroy told leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention it would be too painful to continue using First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs as a place of worship and he plans to demolish the building.
"The church didn't have a seating chart, but after years together everyone had settled into their particular spot. Green said Dennis Johnson, one of the victims, always sat in the row next to him, across the aisle."He said he won't be able to stomach seeing empty seats without thinking of their former occupants.
"It was the type of place where congregants had developed an unofficial seating chart and greeted each other by name each Sunday.
"But that building will soon be gone.
" 'Pastor Frank Pomeroy told leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention it would be too painful to continue using First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs as a place of worship and he plans to demolish the building.
. . . "The group's spokesman, Sing Oldham, said Pomeroy expressed hope he could turn the site into a memorial for the more than two dozen people who were killed last Sunday and build a new church on property the church owns.
Brown was attending services on Sunday, as she's done for the past 10 years, when a man marched in with a rifle and shot nearly everyone inside. He killed 26 people and wounded 10 more.
When David Brown got word his 73-year-old mother was shot during church services, he didn't know what the protocol was.
"This is my first disaster of this sort that was so close to home," he told mySA.com.
Doctors were amazed Farida Brown's blood vessels were not struck by one of the bullets and pieces of shrapnel that hit her body. Bullet shrapnel struck her left hip, under her kneecap and above her left knee, traveling up to the top of her femur bone, David Brown said.
"The floors, all the pews and the walls are splattered with blood," David Brown told mySA.com. "The flooring is completely covered with blood."
"I heard it was so bad that it was almost raining out of the church."
"Rod Green, 71, an elder at the First Baptist Church, said he went to a yard sale Sunday morning instead of attending services. He learned about the tragedy over a series of phone calls.
"Green recalled how, at the beginning of each service, everyone would stand up in the pews and greet each other. It was a chance to reconnect with each other, each week, Green said."
"I shook every hand in that church," he said. "Let them know that it's good to see them."
"The church didn't have a seating chart, but after years together everyone had settled into their particular spot. Green said Dennis Johnson, one of the victims, always sat in the row next to him, across the aisle."He said he won't be able to stomach seeing empty seats without thinking of their former occupants.
" 'I don't think it's going to be possible to get back in that building, Green said. "I know myself and my wife Judy don't want to use that building."
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