In the kitchen of an LDS meetinghouse in this southern Honduras city - stirring a large pot partly filled with rice - Dora Maria Miron Carranza explained that it was her turn to cook.
What food was left, she said, was rationed for 10 families, those 60-70 people still living in the meetinghouse. She turned her spoon over and over as though counting the portions of rice in the pot.As she stirred, she told of the rains that fell in torrents and the overflowing river that rose and tore away her home and her belongings in just a few minutes' time.
"We lost all," she said, stopping her stirring. A flock of children played outside the door, waiting to be fed.
About the same time, a huge U.S. Air Force cargo plane approached for landing in Tegucigalpa, a city some 50 miles to the north. Within its ample hold was nearly 200,000 pounds of rice, beans, cooking oil, powdered milk, sugar, clothing and foam mattresses. These supplies were intended for the hundreds of families displaced by the storm.
A number of officials from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stood on the tarmac in Tegucigalpa watching the behemoth aircraft touch down. The group included Elder William R. Bradford of the Seventy and president of the Central America Area; Donnell and Nita Hunter, area welfare agents; Garry R. Flake, director of the Humanitarian Service Division in Salt Lake City and former president of the Honduras Tegucigalpa Mission; and a number of others.
They watched as the goods were loaded into trucks. The trucks soon traveled to a nearby LDS meetinghouse that serves as a central storehouse. At the meetinghouse, more than 300 people helped unload the goods, forming lines into the meetinghouse, passing the bags from one person to the next.
Those who would distribute the goods were well-instructed. Earlier on Sunday, Elder Bradford and his counselors, Elders Lynn G. Robbins and Julio Alvarado, met with about 350 stake presidents, bishops, Relief Society presidents and counselors. They were taught how to assist each needy family.
"If I give one needy family sugar, and there is no sugar in the stores for the rest of the families, all the ward will be after me for sugar," said one bishop. "The next day it will be powdered milk."
In response, Elder Bradford patiently explained the principles behind such a distribution - that the assistance was to preserve life, not to return the families to their previous lifestyles, and that the criteria for help was need, not worthiness.
Plans were put in place for more than 250 members to be on hand Monday to process the planeload of food into family-size packages that would be distributed immediately according to the discretion of local bishops.
Among those scheduled to receive assistance from this shipment were those living in the towns and villages south of Tegucigalpa, including Choluteca. These suffered seriously from the effects of Hurricane Mitch.
Mitch, a category 5 storm, settled over this hilly, isthmus nation the last week in October and drenched the land with 25 inches of water. The deluge raised the level of the river that flows through Tegucigalpa and tore away mud, trees, homes and streets. The rain softened hillsides into liquified earth that caused a plague of mudflows that buried low-lying homes and mudslides that cascaded down slopes, carrying or burying all objects in their paths.
The relentless rain became a monster that gouged hills, bit away asphalt roads, uprooted trees and killed people. Upward of 10,000 people are declared dead with a like number declared missing, of whom the vast majority will eventually be declared dead. Hurricane Mitch's death toll in Honduras likely will exceed 20,000.
More than 1,200 of those deaths occurred in Choluteca where the downward flow of the river gathered water and velocity. Outside of town it flicked away a new bridge completed less than a year earlier. At the town's entrance, it lifted up empty semitrailers and wired them around uprooted tree trunks. In town, it erased whole riverside neighborhoods. In their place it left fields of vacant mud.
It was in this region that President Armando Lorillo of the Monjaros Branch tried to tie down his belongings during the intense rains. He sent his wife, Rosalina, who is six months pregnant, two young sons and a 2-year-old daughter scurrying to find safety. As they ran through the torrent and ever-deepening water, they came to a dump truck. His wife and children managed to climb into the truck bed, along with a dozen of their neighbors, where they waited out the storm. Waves lifted the truck and rocked its bed, but it remained grounded and preserved the lives of those inside.
A few days later, the Lorillo family was back in its muddy, roofless home. It was there where President Kim B. Beckstead of the Honduras Tegucigalpa Mission found them. He delivered packages of food and offered to help them with housing in the city. The Lorillos declined.
"They wanted to stay and protect their property," President Beckstead said. "They were covered with mosquito bites. I left them some repellant and soap that helps repel insects."
He visited all the branches and verified that the members in the mission were accounted for. Mostly, he believed, his visits and food deliveries were for morale. But the food became a staple for many families.
President Beckstead also accounted for all the missionaries. Two missionaries had spent two days and a night on the lower roof of their home. As waters rose, they eyed a nearby tree, but the storm abated without more serious threats to them. They were in the rain but had food - peanut butter sandwiches. The pair was taken to Tegucigalpa to recuperate, said President Beckstead.
"When they returned, they found the members had cleaned the mud out of their house, dug out their belongings and even washed their white shirts. Copies of books and pamphlets were drying on the line."