Prayer service held for Walker family, missing in Texas floods

Prayer service held for Walker family missing in Texas floods

Hundreds of people attended a prayer service for the Walkers in Kentfield on Tuesday. KTVU's Tom Vacar spoke with a family friend about the gathering and how the community is handling this tragedy as the search continues.

KENTFIELD, Calif. - Hundreds of people attended a prayer service for the Walkers in Kentfield on Tuesday. We spoke with a family friend about the gathering and how the community is handling this tragedy as the search continues.

There was overwhelming sorrow for the loss of the three members of the Walker family at the community event. They went missing in the mega flash flood that consumed camps and homes and parks along the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill County early Friday morning.

Hundreds of friends, family, schoolmates, classmates, teammates and grieving folks, who knew the Walker family, filled Saint Sebastian Church in Kentfield to overflowing.

The surviving family asked that the media respect their privacy and not attend the gathering for Sara, Mark and Johnny, which lasted about an hour.

When it was over, one teary-eyed family friend agreed to say a few words.

"It was lovely. It was meaningful. It was great seeing so many young people, students, football players, kids that were friends and we miss them all. It was just tragic," said family friend Pamela Schaefer.

All of this has profoundly impacted the small Marin enclave.

"I think it was a big shock here because everybody, so many knew them," said Schaefer.

It's a burden to carry and a test of individual and community faith.

"If you're a Christian and you believe it's in God's hands, and they will be done, and you have to believe that there was a purpose and give it up to God, and he'll bless them. I believe I know where they are now," she said.

So long as people remember the terrible Texas tragedy or read about it in the history books, the questions will always come up. Why and why them?

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