West Texas church mourns victims, nurtures hope in communities devastated by July 4 floods

[Episcopal News Service] It has been a month since the Guadalupe River burst its banks, devastating communities in the central Texas region known as the Hill Country. At least 136 people died, including 28 campers and staff at Camp Mystic, when an early July 4 storm caused the river to rise rapidly, washing away homes, businesses, cabins, sometimes whole families.

“It was all hands on deck,” the Rev. Bert Baetz, rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Kerrville, told Episcopal News Service in describing his community’s emergency response during and immediately after the disaster.

The stories of survival are harrowing – yet also somehow filled with hope. Baetz and his congregation have leaned into that persistent hope as Kerr County, hit hardest by the flooding, looks to the future. St. Peter’s has committed to a long and growing list of ministries and initiatives to assist local recovery efforts while mourning the deaths of six church members and many other neighbors.

With emergency donations flowing in, the congregation has provided gift cards to families who lost everything. It has used some of the money to buy ATVs to assist with debris removal and to provide additional clean-up supplies to Camp Mystic. It also bought an RV for use as a mobile relief unit, to serve as a temporary home base for two nurses as well as to offer pastoral care, counseling and other services.

As regular worship services continue at St. Peter’s, Baetz also has begun leading weekly Sunday services west of Kerrville in the smaller community of Hunt, which was nearly leveled by the floodwaters. And it created a new ministry task force, Help and Hope for the Hill Country, intended to support the communities on their long path to full recovery.

It may be hard to understand how communities that lost so much could hold on to hope, but Baetz, in a phone interview with ENS, said he and many of his neighbors have found solace and inspiration in their faith. A recent Sunday reading, from the Gospel of Luke, helped him express this, through Jesus’ words in the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us each day our daily bread.”

“I think for all of us here in Kerr County, that’s taken on new meaning,” Baetz said. “We look at the situation we’re in and it can be overwhelming. And so, we’re asking for our daily bread. We’re asking one another, how are you doing today?”

Even as he leads worship services in Hunt at an open-air pavilion, with a “mountain of debris” behind him, he is heartened that worshippers – more than 100 have been attending – can celebrate Holy Eucharist together, receiving Jesus.

“He said, ‘I am the bread of life,’ and we need that daily bread. We need him every day from this day on. … The mountain of debris behind me, that’s the symbol of disaster, but the bread is the sign of hope.”

Kerrville, about an hour’s drive northwest of San Antonio, is a city of about 24,000 people and at least 20 churches. St. Peter’s, despite being mere blocks from the river, was on high enough ground that it was unaffected by the flooding that began before sunrise on July 4.

Baetz recalled waking up early that Friday, around 6 a.m., when he started receiving phone calls, text messages and other alerts about the rising river. His first anxious thought was of his 15-year-old daughter, who was a camper staying at Camp Mystic on the Guadalupe River south of Hunt.

He soon learned with relief that his daughter was safe, and he was able to join other church members in responding to the escalating calamity engulfing their community.

The rain-swollen river rose by up to 26 feet within 45 minutes in some locations, leaving anyone in its path little time to escape to higher ground after receiving scant warning that a severe flash flood was imminent.

With the river’s floodwaters tearing through Kerrville and other Hill Country communities, Baetz began hearing that some members of his parish could not be located. Others had climbed onto the roofs of their homes to escape the water. One parishioner, whose home was outside the flood zone, told Baetz later that she had received a phone call from a teenager she knew: He was calling for help. The young man told her he had clung to a tree as the water surrounded him and was trapped, with little more than his phone. She reassured him that help was on the way and stayed on the phone with him until he was rescued.

That day, as the water rose and subsided, St. Peter’s opened its doors for prayer and offered support to families around Kerrville as they sought missing loved ones. Residents joined early rescue efforts while Episcopal leaders from the congregation, the Diocese of West Texas and Episcopal Relief & Development coordinated a church response plan.

Episcopalians churchwide were encouraged to pray for the victims and donate to one of several relief funds, organized by the congregation, the diocese and the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country. On July 6, West Texas Bishop David Read joined St. Peter’s Sunday worship service to offer his support.

“[Our] hearts go out to you all,” Read said. “The Diocese of West Texas is with you in the midst of all that’s going on.”

Many St. Peter’s parishioners lost their homes in the flood, Baetz told ENS, and the congregation continues to mourn the loss of six of its members. One of them, 8-year-old Renee Smajstrla, was among the campers who died when the river consumed two cabins at Camp Mystic, a century-old nondenominational Christian camp for girls.

Her funeral was held July 12 at St. Peter’s. Nearly 1,000 people attended.

“I felt like that was one of the first opportunities the community had to begin the healing process,” Baetz said. “It was really, really hard. And it was really beautiful too. It gave us a chance to come together and grieve and cry and hope.”

Richard “Dick” Eastland, Camp Mystic’s longtime owner and director, also was among the flood victims, killed while trying to rescue campers stuck in one of the cabins. He and his wife, who survived the flood, had attended both St. Peter’s and the First United Methodist Church in Kerrville. The two churches are planning joint burial and memorial services for Eastland.

St. Peter’s and the wider community also are mourning the loss of Reece and Paula Zunker and their two children, 7-year-old Lyle and 3-year-old Holland. Reece Zunker was a beloved boys soccer coach and teacher at Kerrville’s Tivy High School. Baetz officiated at a private funeral for the family July 31 at St. Peter’s. A public “celebration of life” is scheduled for Aug. 4 at Kerrville’s Schreiner University Events Center, where Baetz expects as many 2,000 may turn out to pay their respects.

“They will be sorely missed by everybody in the community,” Baetz said.

Kerrville churches have been at the center of recovery efforts from the start, and St. Peter’s hosted one of the first ecumenical gatherings after the flood to discuss ways of serving the communities’ immediate and long-term needs. Those efforts include supporting victims’ families in dealing with trauma and addressing the wider community’s mental health challenges.

St. Peter’s has launched a grant application process to assist residents whose homes were lost when the river flooded neighborhoods in Kerrville to the west in the city of Ingram and other Hill Country communities. The $2,500 grants, with support from the local Community Foundation, are intended to cover a range of potential costs, including property damage, medical expenses, temporary housing and funeral expenses.

Episcopal leaders also have been active in conversations in Hunt about creating a temporary community center to serve residents during the rebuilding of the Hunt Store, a popular business that had functioned as an unofficial social and cultural hub in the community until it was destroyed on July 4.

St. Peter’s plans to keep its focus on “meeting the emotional, material, spiritual needs of the folks who have been impacted by the floods,” Baetz said. The congregation will remain committed to supporting “every phase” of recovery efforts across the region, nurturing hope for “the long haul.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.