Pastor disarms, prays for gunman during church service

It was a peaceful night when Larry Wright, pastor of Heal The Land Outreach Ministries in North Carolina, began his New Year's Eve sermon in front of around 60 people in church.

The night took a drastic turn at around 11:30 p.m., when a 57-year old man entered with a rifle in his right hand and an ammo magazine in the other.

"I came here with some terrible things on my mind, I was going to do some bad things", the man said, according to Wright, who is also a city councilman and retired army drill sergeant.

Wright later told WRAL Sunday, that he saw the hopelessness, hurt, pain and despair in the eyes of the gunman as he approacjed him, calmly asking "can I help you?"

The gunman's next words were "can you pray for me?"

"When he said that, then I knew everything was going to be all right", Wright added.

"When I told the congregation, its OK, he wants prayer and I began to pray for him, and the power of God hit and he fell to his knees and began to cry and weep and he had his face on the ground", the pastor stated.

Officers later took the man to a medical center as per his request. He also went through mental evaluation and has not been charged for his act.

The gunman, whom the pastor described as emotionally distraught, later returned to apologize to the congregation for the scare he brought, explaining that his wife had just been diagnosed with an unbearable illness which brought them financial constraint making it hard for them to support the medication.

"God stepped in and he moved on that young man's heart and instead of him shooting and killing a whole lot of people, God touched his heart", Pastor Wright added.

The congregation plans of baptizing him should he come back on Sunday.