The following is Andrea and my recollection of comments by Elder Ence from St. George, made at the new chapel in Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico, yesterday, on 18 March 2006:

"My companion and I were caught in the floods last year in Tapachula when the, what is it called, yes, when the hurricane came.  We had to swim in the river to get to safety.  We saw millions (sic) of people die.  It is a long story.  You have time?  You want to hear the whole story?

It had been raining for three days.  We lived in an apartment on the second floor.  We were studying, and my companion got up and looked out of the window.  He saw several people out in the rain and mentioned it too me.  We thought it was a little unusual, because when the rain comes, it is like a river coming down out of the sky.  We went back to our studies.

About an hour later, my companion got up to stretch again.  He looked out the window, and this time there were many people out in the streets.  They were carrying boxes and hurrying away from the river.  This did not look normal.  So we decided to go downstairs and see what was happening.  As we walked out into the street the water was up to here [pointing to a little above the ankle], but that was normal when it was raining a lot.  So we didn't think anything about it.  And we went to where all of the people were moving.  

Then the water started to raise very quickly, and in just a moment it was up to our waist.  People started to climb on houses.  We helped some people.  There were other people being carried away in the water.  We could not help them, or we would have been carried away in the water.  We climbed on top of a house and helped a young boy and his little brother who was about 8 years old get to a safe place on one of the houses.

Then a big wall of water came down.  It was probably 30 feet tall.  And there were people being carried in the water down the river.  The river runs through the center of the city.  When the big brother saw it, he took off across the top of the roofs, and left his little brother there with us.  We could not go across the top of the houses, because they were just aluminum sheets, and they would not hold our weight.  We did not know what to do.

We saw a man push through his roof, and climb onto the roof.  There were dozens of hands reaching up to be lifted onto the roof.  Then the whole house was taken by the river, and all of the people were gone.  Then the big trucks started coming down the river.  One was wrapped around a big tree.  Then big rocks, as tall as this room, started to come past us.  I have pictures standing next to these big rocks that were at least as tall as up to there [pointing to the top of the hallway ceiling at about 10 feet].  The earth was shaking, and there were these big noises.  Everyone was screaming.  My companion and I were very scared.

We knelt down on top of the roof and said a prayer.  We asked for help to know what to do, and to be protected from the storm.  And when we got up from our knees we were not afraid anymore.  My companion said "I will follow you, and do whatever you tell me to do."  We decided to go across the roofs.  The people told us we were crazy to be doing this.  We had to leave the younger brother where he was.  The good news is that he was later rescued, and he was OK.

This was when the first miracle happened.  We walked across the roofs, and they held up our weight as we walked across them.  We got to a place where we could see a place to go to.  I did not know if my companion could swim or not.  I told him to follow me, and we jumped into the river and swam as hard as we could.  This was the second miracle, we went right to the place we had identified.  We were able to pull ourselves up out of the river, and walk along this ridge for a ways.  

There was a large gas storage tank about 20 feet from us.  It was leaking gas.  There were power lines close to the water, and they were sparking.  The sparks were dropping down in the middle of the gas.  This was the third miracle.  The sparks did not cause the gas to explode.  We saw an old man swept down the river.  We could do nothing to help him.  Then we went back into the river and swam to another place, where we got out.  

There was a mother here, with a new born infant that was only two weeks old.  My companion picked up the baby, and carried the infant out of the river.  There was a blind old lady, who had also lost her legs.  The river had taken away her wheel chair.  I picked her up and carried her.  As we walked up the road the people started to clap their hands and to cheer for us.  We had put our missionary tags in our pocket.  We pulled them out, shined them off, and put them back on.

Finally we were able to find a telephone and call our Mission President.  He had no idea about what had happened.  I was not able to sleep for five days and five nights.  The noise of the earth shaking and the big rocks kept ringing in my ears.  Our apartment was on the second floor, and all of our things were OK."