Scott Warner’s phone beeped loudly with a flash flood warning just before 8 a.m. on Sunday, as storm clouds marched through the Texas Hill Country and began dropping torrents of rain.
The Hill Country is still reeling from catastrophic floods that began July 4, and the new alert made him flinch, he said. So does hearing words that once evoked nothing but joy, he said: Camp. River. Rain.
“We’re not the same as we were before the Fourth of July,” Mr. Warner, the senior minister at Kerrville Church of Christ, told the roughly 50 people gathered in its pews Sunday morning. “We’re hurting, we’re downtrodden, we’re suffering. We’re crushed in a lot of ways spiritually. We got anxiety, we got fear, we got sorrow.”
People in Central Texas trickled into churches on Sunday looking for solace after so much destruction battered their region. The floods that struck over the July 4 holiday weekend killed at least 129 people, including at least 36 children. Officials say that at least 170 more people are still unaccounted for.
Kerrville is the county seat and largest city of Kerr County, where most of the deaths occurred. Thousands of searchers continued to look on Sunday for victims of the flood, when the fresh rain falling on the region allowed. But the chances of finding more of the missing were dimming as the search dragged into a 10th day.
The heartbreak has seemed ceaseless, local residents say — a feeling underscored by the thunderstorms that bore down again on Sunday, threatening further destruction and forcing many people to stay home from church services.
As Mr. Warner addressed his flock, some roads in Kerrville had already begun to pool with water once again and had become impassable. He spoke between claps of thunder, addressing the fears that the congregants sitting before him probably had about how difficult it might be to get home again after the sermon.
The community was tired and weary, he said, and begging for some kind of respite. “Lord, turn off the floodgates of heaven right now,” he prayed.
Churches in Texas have often played a central role in communities recovering from disasters. They have doubled as shelters, food banks, evacuation centers and staging grounds for emergency workers. And, of course, they have been places of mourning.
Daylight streamed through the stained glass windows of the First Presbyterian Church Kerrville Sunday morning as rain pounded the roof. “This week was a really scary week for many of us,” the senior pastor, the Rev. Jasiel Hernandez Garcia, said. “This week my prayer and my hope is that we can all comfort one another.”
The church lost to the flooding one of its members, Jane Ragsdale, 68. She was the director and a co-owner of Heart O’ the Hills, a summer camp for girls in flood-stricken Hunt a few miles upriver. She was known for her brimming smile, soothing voice and “enduring love for the campers entrusted to her over all these decades,” the Rev. Bobby Musengwa said. “Jane made everyone feel loved and gave them a sense of belonging.”
Mr. Musengwa said that he, too, had wrestled with how to make sense of the suffering the community was facing. He highlighted signs of hope in people who were helping the neediest: the volunteers serving meals, the emergency personnel working through sleepless nights, the neighbors comforting people who lost homes or loved ones.
“I want to speak directly to those who are struggling most deeply today: Your pain is seen, your grief is honored, and your questions are valid,” he told the congregation. “We don’t know why this tragedy happened, but we do know this: God is with us.”
The pain is being felt far beyond the region. Twenty-seven of the people who died were campers, counselors or staff members at Camp Mystic, a nearly 100-year-old camp along the Guadalupe River in Hunt, where generations of Texan girls have relished childhood summers horseback riding and canoeing.
In Houston, at St. John the Divine, an Episcopal church attended by many Camp Mystic alumnae, worshipers came together Sunday morning.
“We pray for those who are heroically searching for the lost, those waiting to be found and those grieving for the death. Nourish their souls,” the Rev. Louise Samuelson said during the service. “We know this has been a very difficult week for everybody”
Herschel Hamner, the church’s senior warden, said his daughter and wife were among the many Camp Mystic alumnae who attend the church. Hundreds gathered there earlier in the week to pray together for the camp.
“Everyone in the room has been affected in some way,” he said on Sunday. “There is an overwhelming sense of mourning and loss.”
Tim Crockett, who attended the service at St. John the Divine, said he had been shocked by how quickly the water rose during last week’s storms.
“Our family lost family in the flood,” he said. “We had friends that were there that were able to get out but will never be the same. What happened here is beyond comprehension.”
Soumya Karlamangla is a Times reporter who covers California. She is based in the Bay Area.
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