BELOIT — Family, friends and neighbors gathered at a candlelight vigil Saturday evening to pray for 89-year-old Adline George’s return on her 90th birthday.

Several ministers, pastors and reverends led the group in prayer and others led the gathering in Amazing Grace. The group swayed, said ‘Amen’ and hummed along as night fell in Beloit.

“When, my mother passed she told me she would be my mother, she told me ‘Jerolene, don’t worry, I’m your momma,’” Jerolene Williams, friend of the family said about Adline when her own mother passed in 1979. “She told me ‘anything you need just come to me’ and that’s what I did.”

Williams said Adline kept her children for years during the day and was a great baby sitter to them, caring for them when they had colds.

But Williams and others, though they spoke of George, did not speak of her in the past tense.

“I’m still praying and still hoping,” Williams said.

Others said the same believing George, who vanished from the Beloit community on July 31, will still return.

“I don’t ever believe for a second that she will not come back to us,” Della Grace, Adline’s daughter said, as she thanked the group for gathering and all of their support.

Friend of the family, Rosa Honor, encouraged the family that this is just a test of God, and reminded them they must look to God in this time of trouble.

“God will deliver a family but He is going to do it on His time not our time. We just have to wait and be patient,” Honor said.

Adline has 11 children, and her daughters Mamie George and Della Grace have faith and strong hope that she will return surely, and hopefully safely.

“We just want to let everybody know that we haven’t given up hope and we want everyone to keep praying for us, and whoever took our mother we are praying for them also,” Grace said about the reason for having the vigil.

Sunday is Adline’s 90th birthday. The Dallas County Sheriff’s Department still has no lead on George’s whereabouts.