SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Tex. — One minute the Holcombes were a tight-knit family praying in the tiny church on Fourth Street.

The next, eight of them were gone.

Bryan and Karla Holcombe, a guest preacher and his wife, were dead.

Their son Marc Daniel Holcombe, gone. Their pregnant daughter-in-law, Crystal Holcombe, gone.

And four of their grandchildren — Noah, Emily, Megan and Greg — gone.

Twenty-six people were killed when Devin P. Kelley opened fire on Sunday at the First Baptist Church in this small Texas town, including the child Crystal was carrying, officials said. According to the Wilson County sheriff, Joe Tackitt Jr., as many as half of the victims were children.

And the gunman nearly wiped out the Holcombe family, leaving Joe Holcombe, 86, Bryan’s father, to mourn the loss of the generations he had raised. “We know where they are now,” he said in an interview, his voice strained by exhaustion. “All of our family members, they’re all Christian. And it won’t be long until we’re with them.”