A Las Vegas shooting victim with ties to Alabama is expected to make a full recovery. Danae Gibbs, the niece of Charles Gibbs, pastor of West Mobile Baptist Church, was shot in the leg when a gunman opened fire on an open air country music concert Oct. 1.
In an interview with local NBC-affiliate KXAN, Todd Mears, one of Danae’s pastors at Riverbend Church, Austin, said news of her injuries hit close to home.
“It’s hard, this one is really personal,” he said in an Oct. 2 interview.
Sources say Danae, a recent graduate of Texas Tech, worked 20 hours a week in the children’s ministry at Riverbend.
Pastors at the church helped her family travel to Vegas to be with her. Surgeons performed emergency surgery on Danae but decided not to remove the bullet, which is close to her spine.
“She’ll be metal-detected every time she goes through an airport metal detector,” her father, Darrell Gibbs, told NPR.
Darrell Gibbs told NPR that he blames “a godless society” for mass shootings like the one Danae survived.
At least 58 people were killed and more than 500 injured when 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock opened fire on the crowd of 22,000 concergoers from a 32nd floor hotel room in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, located across the street from the concert venue.
President Donald Trump, who visited with Danae and others recovering in Las Vegas-area hospitals, called the attack “an act of pure evil.”
Searching for meaning
“In times such as these, I know we are searching for some kind of meaning in the chaos, some kind of light in the darkness. The answers do not come easy. But we can take solace knowing that even the darkest space can be brightened by a single light, and even the most terrible despair can be illuminated by a single ray of hope,” the president said in a statement Oct. 2.
Alabama native Vance Pitman, founder and pastor of Hope Church in Las Vegas, mobilized his congregation to provide physical and emotional support to those affected by the tragedy.
“This is the day when we get the opportunity to really rise up and serve the city and love the city and demonstrate the love of God for the city,” Pitman said.
Hope Church is only a few miles from the shooting scene. The church opened Oct. 2 for prayer, counseling and shelter for anyone dislocated as a result of the shooting.
Las Vegas is home to 2.2 million residents and draws an estimated 1 million tourists weekly. There are 118 Southern Baptist congregations in the city, according to North American Mission Board (NAMB) figures. The church-to-resident ratio is roughly one to 18,300. Less than 8 percent of the city identifies as evangelical, NAMB said on its Send City website, and about two-thirds of the city is unchurched.
Pitman encouraged Americans to remember that Las Vegas is much more than a tourist attraction.
“You’ve got some people who are believers, yet even their faith has been shaken,” Pitman told Baptist Press. “And then you’ve got a lot of people in Las Vegas, a city that’s 92 percent non-evangelical, 60 percent unchurched, that are already really skeptical of faith and now, very much so.”
Pitman acknowledged that in moments of tragedy, people are tempted to run from God. Scripture teaches a different response, he said, quoting Psalm 46:1.
“God is a refuge in help, a very present help in time of trouble,” Pitman said. “The Scripture teaches that God is to be run to in moments like this, that He’s a refuge. He’s a shelter that we can run to in moments of tragedy and find comfort, find peace, find redemption, reconciliation and find hope.
“This is a moment to run to the Father, to cry out to Him and to pour out your heart to Him,” Pitman said.
Pitman said Hope Church will seek to be part of the city’s healing in the weeks ahead.
“(We) pray that God would take what the enemy intended for evil and out of that God would produce good that would ultimately result in Him being glorified and exalted among the peoples of the earth,” Pitman said.
Light of the gospel
“Today is a dark, dark day in the city of Las Vegas, which means that’s a backdrop for an incredible display of the glorious light of the gospel,” Pitman said. “And that’s what we pray to see happen here, is the church rises up and begins to serve the city.” (Compiled by TAB with contributions from BP and RNS)
_____________________________
Click here for the updated version of the original article.
Share with others: