The inside may be destroyed but hundreds gathered outside the St. John Regular Baptist Association Tabernacle Sunday evening for prayer, worship and healing.
“By praying and then doing something about it. Doing something about it, we have to do it in prayer and in love,” said St. John’s Albert Black from the podium at the candlelight service.
After services last Sunday, vandals broke glass, wrote obscenities on the walls, overturned pianos and even drew upside down crosses on the doors.
“I saw it on the news and when I came here I feel like it’s somebody in my family passed away,” said Cynthia Pennick.
Dava Watson and her family attend another church but they came to show their support.
“We’re all in the same family, we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ and so we wanted to be here together to show our love for them,” Watson said.
Soon, St. John may be able to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening again. Dyezz Surveillance has offered them a state of the art surveillance system — a $5,000 value free of charge.
Casey Ellison with Dyezz Surveillance says the system includes cameras and alarms. Ellison said they also put one in for the Austin Zoo recently after they were burglarized — that too was on the house.
“Because we all live and work in the community, in order for Dyezz to be a local company like we are, we feel like we need to give back. And whenever we can help, then we will,” Ellison said.
As candles were lit Sunday night and prayers were being lifted up, many of those prayers were for those responsible for the damage.
“Absolutely. Absolutely because we worship a God of forgiveness and so we have to get past this and pray over them and pray that somebody reaches into their lives as well and shows them a better path,” Watson said.
APD confirms with us that 2 juveniles were arrested Saturday night on the premises after they received a criminal trespass call.
St. John moderator Dr. G.V. Clark tells us their volunteer security guard caught the 2 sleeping in the building — he’s not sure if they vandalized the building again or if they were the ones responsible for the vandalism in the first place.
“Well they were in the wrong place. They shouldn’t have been in this place, this is private property. And they had to know that it had been vandalized,” Clark said.
If you know who may be responsible for the vandalism, call Austin Police.
MyFoxAustin.com | KTBC Fox 7 | News, Weather, Sports