“Not One Was Lost”

Venerada Baquedano de Lagos had just given birth to her tenth child, a baby boy she named after a missionary who served in their ward in Choluteca, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Tegucigalpa. Then, on Tuesday, October 27, 1998, Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras. Venerada and her husband, José Delios Lagos, bishop of the ward, watched the rising waters of the nearby Choluteca River with concern.

“On Wednesday, the rain grew stronger and the river rose higher than we had ever seen,” recalled José. That night, he took his family and nearby members to the meetinghouse. In the middle of the night, torrential rain fell. José ran out in the rain to the homes of the rest of the ward members and evacuated them to the meetinghouse. By 1:00 a.m., 220 people sheltered together in the meetinghouse.

Over the next two days, the members had little to eat, but their primary concern was the steadily rising floodwaters that began to gather around the meetinghouse. Venerada huddled with her new baby and frightened children. “We found ourselves all cooped up, with all our belongings lost. We were helpless,” José said. “We began to pray with as much faith as we had.” That night at around 3:00 a.m., the waters finally began to recede.

When the storm abated, they learned that the entire neighborhood was now just a field of mud. A new bridge over the river, roads, melon fields, shrimp ponds, and cars had also been washed away, and 1,200 people in the area had been killed. Hurricane Mitch was the deadliest Atlantic hurricane in more than 200 years. It caused approximately 7,000 deaths in Honduras due to the flooding and left one in five of the population homeless.

Shipments of Church humanitarian aid soon arrived, including food, clothing, bedding, plastic sheets, and rope. Members who lost their homes sheltered in Church meetinghouses. They helped distribute aid containers with supplies for a family of five for a week, including rice, beans, cooking oil, salt, soap, and powdered milk. Food was airlifted to members in isolated areas. Full-time missionaries spent weeks doing cleanup work.

Within a couple of weeks, Church President Gordon B. Hinckley traveled to San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa to comfort the struggling Saints. “As long as the Church has resources we will not let you go hungry, or without clothing, or without shelter,” President Hinckley told them. “You are our brothers and sisters. You are as precious to us as are the members of the Church in Salt Lake City. When you suffer, we suffer. When you are put in great stress, we feel that same stress.”

“After that experience, each person felt closer to God,” José said. “We had a very difficult time, and we were sad because we had lost our belongings, but we were also filled with joy because we all had our lives; not one was lost.”