Surviving members of the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, gathered as a congregation Sunday for the first time since a massacre took 26 of their fellow parishioner’s lives a week ago.
Organizers of the memorial service said they’d first planned to gather inside a local community center, but soon realized there wasn’t enough room for the hundreds of people who planned to attend — so they moved the event to a local baseball park.
Hundreds of folding chairs were set up on the field under a white tent, with the first three rows reserved for members of First Baptist Church and their families, the Associated Press reported.
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A steady drizzle fell as grief-stricken churchgoers prayed quietly or hugged each other, according to the AP. Other churches provided prayer cloths and small wooden crosses while mental health organizations provided tissues and therapy dogs.
But the congregation plans to do more on this mournful one-week anniversary.
The church said it had undertaken a number of efforts with the help of volunteers to transform the church into a memorial that pays tribute to those who died. They plan to open the memorial to the public at 5 p.m. local time on Sunday.
“This is our church, but it is not just us that are suffering,” Associate Pastor Mark Collins said in a statement. “This tragedy has rocked our nation, and has had an impact on all Americans and our country as a whole. It is our hope that this will be healing for everyone.”
At the center of the memorial sits 26 chairs, for each individual who was killed.
Earlier this week a spokesman for the church said that Pastor Frank Pomeroy planned to demolish the building. But those plans later changed, and church officials on Saturday said the white, wood-frame chapel will remain open as a memorial, 12-hours a day, five days a week.
Meanwhile, the Southern Baptist Convention has said it will pay for the victims’ funerals.