In the lobby of Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas on Sunday, churchgoers gathered around a table with multicolored strips of paper. People bent over, pen in hand, as they wrote prayers and well wishes for the Bonner family before depositing the strips in a glass jar.
Hundreds of people gathered at Saint Michael for a prayer service to honor the victims of the flooding in Central Texas.
The Bonners lost their 9-year-old daughter, Lila, to the flooding after she attended Camp Mystic. Saint Michael wanted to find a way to rally their members amid tragedy.
“What we wanted to do was offer members of the church and the wider community to express that love and hopefulness to their family in a tangible way that also can bring them a bit of that joy,” rector Christopher Girata said.
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Well wishers of all ages from both the church and wider North Texas community came to pay respects, with people packed shoulder to shoulder into the pews. Even more people joined the stream of the service online.
Prayer strips for Lila Bonner’s family fill a jar after a vigil for victims of Hill Country flooding at Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church on Sunday, July 6, 2025, in Dallas.(Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)
Girata said the church made the decision to hold the prayer vigil as soon as they heard about the natural disaster on Friday. The bigger question was what day to bring people together.
“We decided Sunday gave us just one extra day to make it as powerful as we thought it should be,” Girata said. “One example of that is it gave us 24 hours to ask the community to submit names for prayers.”
During the Mass, over 250 names were read. The people listed were a mix of those lost, those recovered or rescued and those who died as a result of the flooding.
Many of the people in the church had direct ties to Camp Mystic, making it an emotional afternoon.
Saint Michael’s director of communications, Meredith Turner, was a camper and counselor at Camp Mystic over a period of 11 years. Her two nieces attended the camp, and her three sons went to La Junta this summer.
Worshippers kneel as names submitted by the congregation for prayer are read during a vigil for victims of Hill Country flooding at Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church on Sunday, July 6, 2025, in Dallas.(Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)
While she was able to get her family members home, she still lost people close to her.
“It’s just the bravery and the courage and all of that of those counselors and staff and rescue teams that are the reason that all of these people are alive,” Turner said. “And just my heart goes out to all the families that are grieving. It’s a lot of my friends that I went to camp with that their daughters … are missing or passed away. So it’s really hard from a personal level.”
Other churchgoers are mourning the loss of close friends within the community as well.
“I was here this morning and wanted to be here because we’ve had so many friends that have been touched by this tragedy, and we know people that did not survive,” Saint Michael member Jennifer Russell said.
In this time of tragedy, Girata said, he is advising community members to turn prayer into action.
“Love is a verb, and we shouldn’t simply feel love,” he said. “We should act love and go do something for someone else.”