More than 100 Thais crowded a Buddhist temple at Elmhurst, Queens, yesterday to honor those killed in last week’s tsunami. Heads bowed, hands clasped, they chanted solemnly, along with seven monks in saffron robes who sat cross-legged on a platform before them.

At least 4,500 people were killed at Thailand and another 6,541 were missing as of yesterday, according to the Associated Press. A woman who volunteers at the temple, Chomphatsorn Tangchittsumran, said she lost a schoolmate whose family ran a resort near Phuket. The childhood friend perished along with her husband, mother, sister, and son. “I tried to call the hotel and couldn’t get through,” Ms. Tangchittsumran said. “They were all dead.”

She said the ceremony offered solace by allowing participants to send blessings or “merits” to the deceased. “The monk is just like a postman to us,” she said. “We pass everything through them and they deliver it.”

One of the monks who led the service, Phraphansak Imporn, said the tsunami killed many people who were not yet “meant to die.” According to Buddhist teachings, he said, all spirits must wait for their appointed hour of death.

“If people did good things, there’s a place to wait,” he said, a place where all their needs would be satisfied.

Mr. Imporn, 32, spent 13 years training to be a monk in his native province of Kalasin. He considers the tsunami a harsh reminder to “be a good person, to share what you have.”

Those who gathered at the ornately gilded temple, Wat Buddha Thaithavornvanaram, seemed to have gotten the message. Dozens of plastic bags full of donated clothing sat outside the main room. Parents handed their children envelopes to stuff into a donation box decorated with Thai flags. A final count revealed that $11,474 had been donated on Sunday alone.

“On behalf of the Thai government, I want to express my appreciation and offer my condolences,” the consul-general in New York, Pisanu Chanvitan, said, teary-eyed. Mr. Chanvitan had just returned from Bangkok.

The City Council member who represents Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Corona, Helen Sears, also attended the service. Draped in a black shawl, she was making the rounds in her district, one of the city’s most ethnically diverse, visiting different communities affected by the disaster. But she said she feels a special bond with her Thai constituents, having spent time on Phuket, a resort island devastated by the tsunami.

“The Thai people, in their spirituality, are never kept down,” Ms. Sears told the mourners. “In life there is death and in death there is life.”