AUSTIN, Texas (RNS) — Sandy Davis Kirk woke at 5 a.m. on July 4 to a roaring sound outside her window.
“I heard people shrieking from the waters,” said Davis Kirk, whose backyard is bordered by the Guadalupe River. “It was hard to even believe it was real.”
Like most Kerr County, Texas, residents, Davis Kirk did not receive any emergency alerts on her phone when the Guadalupe quickly spilled over its banks, leading to unexpected flash floods. Thankfully, she is an early riser.
Davis Kirk is a minister, Christian author and former president of the Christian ministry Aglow International. Originally from West Texas, it was Davis Kirk’s love of Camp Mystic that motivated her to move to Kerr County in 2023. The now-devastated Christian girls camp is just a 10-minute drive from her home.
Sandy Davis Kirk. (Courtesy photo)
“My whole character was developed there,” said Davis Kirk, who attended the camp for 14 years, starting in the late 1950s. Her twin daughters, Christi Grider and Misti Grider Webb, would go on to attend the camp, as would her granddaughter Ella Webb, whose closing ceremony at the end of a camp term inspired Davis Kirk to move to the area.
“I’m driving along, and I think, ‘This is the one place in the world that my whole family loves,’” she recalled to RNS. “I found a place that looked like a small Camp Mystic, with sprawling pecan and cypress trees along the river.”
The camp that shaped three generations of Davis Kirk’s family has, for nearly a century, welcomed hundreds of girls each summer. Founded in 1926 and nestled along the south fork of the Guadalupe River, Camp Mystic offered Christian formation alongside recreational activities. When last week’s flash floods hit, 386 campers and 64 staff members were in the cabins near the Guadalupe River. The floods devastated the camp, killing at least 27 campers and counselors. Those who survived relayed harrowing stories of narrow escapes.
Just a day after the floods struck Kerr County, Misti and her daughter, Ella Webb, saw a girl and her mother at a department store in Lubbock, Texas, wearing Camp Mystic T-shirts.
“And we just hugged each other,” Misti, 51, said. “We had never met these people in our lives, but you have a bond with anybody who goes to Camp Mystic.”
Twins Christi and Misti attended Camp Mystic in the 1980s and ’90s. The reverence for the camp, they said, spans not just generations but continents.
Twin sisters Misti Grider Webb, left, and Christi Grider pose for a group photo at Camp Mystic in 1991. (Courtesy photo)
“It’s a global sisterhood,” Christi said. “When we went to camp, we had people from Canada, Mexico and parts of Europe.” She specifically remembers camping with three girls from Spain.
Misti said that, despite the decades since she attended Camp Mystic, she still retains friendships from her time there.
Camp Mystic is one of dozens of kids’ summer camps dotting Texas’ hill country — all of them similarly filled with cabins, outdoor spaces for sports and plenty of recreational offerings, from kayaking to horseback riding to archery. But the women of this family agree it is the faith-centered nature of Camp Mystic that created such lasting memories and strong bonds.
Davis Kirk, who said her parents were atheists, described the camp as the only place she could grow and nurture her spirituality. Now 81, she still remembers devotionals she heard at Camp Mystic as an 11-year-old girl. Decades later, the camp moved her granddaughter in a similar way.
“Some of my greatest role models came from Camp Mystic,” Webb, 20, said. “I want to live my life the way they do through Jesus.”
Christi remembers always being surrounded by singing at Camp Mystic and hearing her mother sing those songs around the house as a young girl. She recalled also the clanging chorus of charm bracelets.
“Imagine hearing 400 girls walking to the waterfront wearing their charm bracelets,” she said. “Our charm bracelets were making a song, too.”
Christi Grider said that campers trade and gift one another charms at the end of each camp session. (Courtesy photo)
In the early morning hours of July 4, as the river raged outside her window, Davis Kirk said she made two calls to 911, and dispatchers eventually told her to evacuate her home. The storm had knocked out power in the area, and she was unable to open the garage door to get her car out. Davis Kirk leaned into her faith and set out on foot.
“I believe that people want to help each other, and I just trusted that,” she said.
Ella Webb hugs another camper during a devotional service at Camp Mystic in 2023. (Courtesy photo)
Within minutes a passerby picked her up and drove her to a friend’s house on higher ground. Davis Kirk was much luckier than some of her neighbors. The water never reached her house but did considerable damage to those pecan and cypress trees and left a lot of debris in her yard.
While the future of the camp that fostered her religious life is uncertain, Davis Kirk said tragedies like this don’t challenge her faith.
“My faith doesn’t get weaker,” Davis Kirk said, “because I wonder how people go through things like this without the Lord.”
Davis Kirk said the outpouring of people offering to help with the cleanup has been overwhelming. She does not downplay the intense tragedy of these floods, but she does see a silver lining.
“It’s really built a lot of relationships that probably couldn’t have been built any other way,” Davis Kirk said.
While officials try to determine why alerts were not sent and crews dig through mountains of uprooted trees, Christi is focused on the people of Kerr County and the power of her Camp Mystic community.
“The faith I have is really in the bonds I’ve created with these people,” she said. “There is strength and something that ties the campers together, and that’s Jesus.”
A Camp Mystic sign is seen near the entrance to the establishment along the banks of the Guadalupe River after a flash flood swept through the area in Hunt, Texas, Saturday, July 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)