Relatives, friends and church members gathered Monday at the Onita home in Missouri City to mourn the loss of two ambitious sisters from the Houston area who perished in a Sunday plane crash in Nigeria that killed all 153 passengers. 
 
 Josephine and Jennifer Onita, of Missouri City, were in Lagos to attend a wedding. 
 
 They are the middle children of Solomon and Lola Onita, pastors of a Missouri City congregation affiliated with the Nigeria-based Redeemed Christian Church of God. 
 
 The airliner went down in a densely populated area of Lagos, leveling buildings and apartments that are believed to have been occupied. The cause of the crash remains unclear, but investigators said pilots reported engine trouble minutes before impact. The U.S. State Department could not verify the number of Americans on the flight. A spokesman late Monday said that U.S. officials are working with the Nigerian government to ensure all next of kin have been notified and expect to announce an accurate toll on Tuesday. 
 
 News of the deaths stunned loved ones who gathered Monday night to sing and pray at the Onita residence. The story also made headlines on Nigerian, Nigerian-American and Nigerian expat news sites. 
 
 "Josephine always made people laugh. Jennifer is sweet," said their older sister, Christiana Onita-Olojo. "These are angels." 
 
 Engineering degree 
 
 Jennifer Onita, 28, graduated from the High School for the Engineering Professions in Houston, earned an electrical engineering degree from Texas Tech University and recently worked in aeronautics engineering for a NASA contractor. She was a graduate student at the University of Houston studying biomedical engineering. 
 
 "She wanted to do biomedical research and probably work in a hospital," her older sister said. "She was a very fun-loving person." 
 
 Josephine Onita graduated from Hightower High School in Missouri City and studied accounting at the University of North Texas. 
 
 The 23-year-old managed all five locations of Financial Planning and Tax Office, which was founded two decades ago by Solomon Onita after immigrating here from Nigeria with his wife in the early 1980s. 
 
 "It was a family business passed down to her from my father," Onita-Olojo said. 
 
 The Onita daughters had an added sisterly link as members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. All four Onita offspring pursued higher education. Their youngest sibling, Solomon Jr., is scheduled to graduate from college in December. 
 
 Lost without sisters 
 
 Already "lonely" because her husband also was in Lagos for the same wedding, Onita-Olojo said she will be lost without her sisters. 
 
 "I talk to them all the time every day. I don't know who I'm going to talk to anymore," she struggled to explain. "We talk about everything from TV shows to serious stuff. If I hear something silly on the radio, I call and we laugh. 
 
 "I couldn't wait for all of them to get back." 
 
 Funeral arrangements are pending. 
 
 cindy.george@chron.com twitter.com/cindylgeorge ||||| Connecticut Family Of Six, Houston Sisters Among Dead In Nigerian Crash 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Emmanuel Arewa /AFP/Getty Images Emmanuel Arewa /AFP/Getty Images 
 
 "A torrential downpour and strong winds prevented emergency crews from returning Tuesday morning to a devastated neighborhood where a commercial airliner crashed, killing all 153 people aboard the plane and an undetermined number of people on the ground," The Associated Press reports from Lagos. 
 
 The wire service adds that: 
 
 "Charred metal from the plane, rubble from destroyed buildings, thick mud and standing water await the emergency workers. A three-story apartment building at the site struck by the nose of the MD-83 aircraft began shaking Monday as rescuers dug through debris, and they are afraid it might collapse. " 'It's going to be messy,' said Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency." 
 
 Before the rains tore through, 137 bodies had been recovered, Voice of America says. The Dana Air jet crashed Sunday. Its crew had reported engine problems, according to Nigerian officials. 
 
 Among those killed, the Hartford Courant writes, were six members of a Connecticut family — a couple and their four small children — who were on their way to a wedding. They're identified as "Maimuna Anyene of Elmwood, and her husband, Onyeke, of Nigeria. ... Flying with them were their four children: Noah, 5 months; Kaiyen and Kaima, 1-year-old twins; and Kamsi, 3, according to the children's godmother, Mari Sifo." 
 
 Also killed: "two ambitious sisters from the Houston area," according to the Houston Chronicle. The newspaper says Josephine and Jennifer Onita, of Missouri City, Texas, were also in Nigeria for a wedding. ||||| Anxious families and diplomats crowded into a hospital in Lagos on Tuesday and tried to identify corpses from a plane crash that killed the 153 people aboard the airliner and an unknown number of others on the ground. 
 
 A rescue worker walks past the wreckage of a plane in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. The passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government officials... (Associated Press) 
 
 A rescue worker points to where he believes there is the body of a plane crash victim at the site in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers collect bodies at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers search for bodies at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers search for bodies at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers search for bodies at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers collect bodies from the scene of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers collect bodies from the scene of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers collect bodies from the scene of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers search for bodies at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government... (Associated Press) 
 
 A crane lifts up the tail of a crashed commercial airplane in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. Emergency workers in Nigeria used cadaver dogs and cranes to search for corpses Monday at the site where... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers look on at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government officials... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue workers collect bodies at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government... (Associated Press) 
 
 Nigeria president Goodluck Jonathan, 2nd left, and Lagos state Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, 2nd right, visit the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying... (Associated Press) 
 
 Rescue search for bodies at a site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government officials... (Associated Press) 
 
 The remains of a plane at the crash site in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government officials said.... (Associated Press) 
 
 The stench of the dead carried outside the air-conditioned morgue. Guards parking cars outside wore surgical masks to block out the smell. 
 
 Professor David Oke, the chief medical director of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, told the dozens of families that the morgue had received about 40 bodies. He said among those already identified were the bodies of a Chinese citizen and a Canadian. 
 
 Outside the hospital, Ugonna Nwoka said his uncle had been aboard the Dana Air flight that went down in a congested neighborhood on Sunday, turning much of it to rubble. Nwoka said he tried to go to the crash site on Monday but was pushed away by security forces. 
 
 "We stayed for hours trying to plead to see what happened," Nwoka said. Asked why he needed to see the crash site, Nwoka said if he didn't it would be "all like a dream, like a drama, like it's not real." 
 
 On Tuesday, he went to the hospital to see if his uncle's body was there. He had worked for the aviation ministry and needed to take a last-minute trip to Lagos, Nwoka said. The flight had originated on Abuja, the capital. About 10 U.S. and Chinese diplomats also joined the families at the morgue. 
 
 By midday Tuesday, searchers with police dogs recovered 150 bodies, including those of a mother cradling an infant, according to Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency. It's not yet known how many people died on the ground. Emergency workers were still looking through the debris for bodies, and one damaged building seemed on the verge of collapse. 
 
 After the hospital's director spoke to families, Jennifer Enanana leaned against a car, quietly sobbing. She said her younger brother had been on board the flight. She said her other brother had died within the last year. 
 
 "We are without eyes," she said, her sobs growing louder. "We don't have anybody that will protect us that can stand like a man and defend us. Dana stole him." 
 
 The MD-83 plane went down in Lagos' Iju-Ishaga neighborhood, about nine kilometers (five miles) from Lagos' Murtala Muhammed International Airport. The crew radioed the tower that they had engine trouble shortly before the crash, but the exact cause remained unclear. The weather was clear at the time. 
 
 A torrential downpour and strong winds that flooded roads and downed power lines and trees prevented emergency crews from getting to the site early Tuesday morning, said Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency. The rain had stopped by midday. 
 
 The scene is marked by charred metal from the plane, rubble from destroyed buildings, thick mud and standing water. A three-story apartment building at the site struck by the nose of the MD-83 aircraft began shaking Monday as rescuers dug through debris, and they are afraid it might collapse. 
 
 "It's going to be messy," Shuaib said. 
 
 Late Monday, emergency workers recovered both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, said Tunji Oketunbi, a spokesman for the Accident Investigation Bureau, which probes airplane crashes in Nigeria. 
 
 "We will take them abroad for decoding and that will help our analysis," Oketunbi said Tuesday. "We will know what happened to the aircraft shortly before it crashed." 
 
 An investigator from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board also is expected to join Nigerian authorities on Tuesday to help them determine a cause for the crash, Oketunbi said. 
 
 President Goodluck Jonathan wept as he visited the crash site Monday and pledged to make air travel safer, but the crash called into question the government's ability to protect its citizens and enforce regulations in a nation with a history of aviation disasters. 
 
 Some U.S. citizens were aboard the flight, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, but he could not provide a firm number. A woman from West Hartford, Connecticut, her husband and four young children died on board the flight. The Tuesday edition of the Hartford Courant newspaper identified the family as Maimuna Anyene, her Nigerian husband Onyeke, and their children, a 5 month old, 1-year-old twins and a 3 year old. 
 
 The Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday that the crash also killed Josephine and Jennifer Onita, sisters from Missouri City, Texas. 
 
 Others killed in the crash included at least four Chinese citizens, two Lebanese nationals and one French citizen, officials said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Jon Gambrell can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellap.
– As the dust settles on Nigeria's devastating plane crash, victims' identities are emerging, and so far, they include at least eight US residents. A Connecticut family was on board, as were two Houston-area sisters. Four Chinese citizens, a Canadian, a French citizen, and a pair of Lebanese nationals have also been identified, but officials have a long way to go as victims' families pour into a Lagos morgue—particularly in the face of heavy winds and rain at the crash site. Officials are also concerned that a three-story apartment building nearby could crumble after having been hit by the plane. "It's going to be messy," says a Nigerian emergency official. Some 150 bodies have been recovered so far, among them a mother holding a baby, the AP reports. Meanwhile, details on the killed Americans are emerging in local papers, via NPR: The Connecticut dad was Nigerian, and the couple's four kids were all younger than four. The Texas sisters were both in their twenties; one was an engineer, the other an accountant, according to the Houston Chronicle. Both families were en route to Nigerian weddings.