Stranded campers return home safe after flooding in Kerrville

Youth camp members of Shiner Lutheran Church were stranded this past weekend at Camp Chrysalis near Kerrville. Parents were unable to cross the bridge to get to them, but all made it back safely. 
“The camp that our kids were attending is on Turtle Creek, which feeds into the Guadalupe River,” Shiner Lutheran Church Pastor Chris Heinold said. Camp Chrysalis is just west of Kerrville, about 11 miles from Camp Mystic where a large number of children and counselors died in a massive flood. 
Heinold wants to assure everyone that at their location at Camp Chrysalis, the children were safe and accounted for. 
“Our church sent 27 youth campers to Camp Chrysalis,” Heinold said.  “We got there last Sunday evening and we were there all week. The flooding started at midnight on Friday night. We had a wonderful worship service that evening and as I was sitting next to my wife, we saw lightning out in the distance. The summer camp staff and the camp administration has cell phones while the kids didn’t. 
We noticed that a chance of rain was coming up and they moved us inside. Even when we went to bed, it didn’t start raining. It did start pouring rain Thursday night around 11 p.m. and it was pouring all the way until 6 a.m. the next morning.”
“We started looking at our phones and we saw reports of devastation in Kerrville just right up the road from us. All of a sudden, people were missing at a camp nearby. At that point at around 7 a.m. Friday morning, I personally called all the parents of the campers that were entrusted to me. I told them their camper is fine and if they saw stories of flooding, it was not affecting us.”
Turtle Creek was flooded over the road and access to the camp was blocked. The roads on both sides were closed and nobody could get out or in. 
“We were safe,” Heinold said. “We spent hours ensuring parents that their campers were okay and that we would be delayed getting back to Shiner. Yes, we were up there and saw torrential rain that happened all night long. However, our campers were safe. We were finally able to leave the camp about 6:30 p.m. on Friday.”
Heinold said on the way back after driving over the Guadalupe River, they saw horrific things. 
“We saw what people were seeing on the news at around 7 p.m.,” Heinold said. “We saw monstrous trees uprooted, we saw grass on the powerlines, and massive devastation.”
Heinold said the camp administration did everything they could to not raise alarm or cause panic with the kids. 
“We wanted to try and keep morale up amongst the campers and camp staff,” Heinold said. “The kids did realize that something was up. However, we assured them that we were going to be able to leave as soon as we could.”
Some parents did end up coming to pick up their children from the camp itself. 
Heinold said that there were many lessons he and the staff learned from this experience. “The first lesson involved communication,” Heinold said. “Regular communication with the parents was important.”
“The second lesson we learned is that prayer was very important for our neighbors, whether we knew them by name or not. We prayed for those who were in immediate danger. We prayed for those who didn’t know where their friends may be in neighboring camps. We lifted one another in prayer.”
Heinold said he wants to thank the community of Shiner and the parents of the campers.
“Thank you for trusting us,” Heinold said. “To those families who sent their campers with us, thank you for trusting us.”