EL PASO, Texas -- This strategically located west Texas community has provided hospitality for Church members for more than a century, serving as a gateway to Mexico for the Church.

In 1876, the first seven missionaries to Mexico entered through this city and traveled to south Chihuahua, seeking and finding audiences to listen to their messages.In 1912, some 2,500 Mormon colonists arrived here from Mexico by train. They were fleeing the Mexican Revolution that had started two years earlier and extended into central Chihuahua and Sonora where about a dozen Mormon colonies had been founded. The refugees included many women and children. They carried bedding and clothing and little else. Despite their grim circumstances, the refugees were received hospitably by the community. They at first found shelter beneath the roofs of lumber yards and later were relocated to apartments. While some left El Paso by train, never to return, others remained in El Paso and established a small branch that has grown gradually over the years. Members in El Paso today, which has a population of 700,000, comprise two stakes.

Reminders of the exodus from Mexico remain in the city. The train station where the refugees arrived is still in use, although the lumberyards where they were temporarily housed have been replaced by businesses. Another reminder of their travails is a refugees' cemetery, neatly maintained by youth of the two stakes.

A number of longtime Church members here have connections to that era, and their memories are a repository of the past, ranging from war stories to experiences of faith, from struggle to survival. These anecdotes reach back into time, radiate throughout the region and illuminate the history, progress and influence of the Church.

One of those with vivid recollections is Harvey LeRoy Taylor, who was born in the colonies in 1911, the year after the revolution started in Mexico. Using information given to him by his parents, he relates this account:

"In 1913, we were going from Colonia Juarez to Colonia Dublan in a buggy. I had red hair then, and I was sitting on Mother's lap. [Revolutionary Gen. Francisco] Pancho Villa had come to town, and he rode up. He joked that I was one of those red-flaggers (one of several competing rebel factions) he had been following. He messed my hair up, and I slapped him, so my mother told me. He messed my hair again and I slapped him again. He laughed and said, 'If those red flaggers were as tough as you, I'd have more trouble with them.' Then Villa rode off, leaving yet another anecdote of a man whose legend was larger than his life."

Brother Taylor was old enough to remember leaving the colonies in 1917 when U.S. Gen. John Pershing pulled out of Mexico. He also remembers a retreating Mexican general destroying by explosion a cannon. "For years we'd find pieces of metal around."

Wendell Pierce was a physician for 40 years in El Paso before retiring. He delivered hundreds of babies, including those of indigent mothers, "who could give you a smile and not much else." When Wendell was born in 1918, his father, Arwell, was bishop of the newly created El Paso Ward. At the time, said Wendell, the ward met in a rented Odd Fellows Hall. He remembers hearing the click of billiard balls during sacrament meeting. "I am sure that gave great emphasis to the building program."

Bishop Pierce, said his son, was very friendly and got along well with everyone. When it came time to build a meetinghouse, he approached local merchants and asked for the best price they could offer. Then he asked them for a donation to help build the facility, and again they complied. The imposing structure was dedicated by President Heber J. Grant in 1931, in company of the leadership of the city and many of its merchants.

"President Grant stayed in our house," said Brother Pierce. "It was sure good to have them; it was a privilege to have the General Authorities stay at our home."

Bishop Pierce was later called as president of the Mexico Mission and was instrumental in leading back to the fold a splinter group known as the Third Convention. Brother Pierce performed another important role for the members in Mexico in the 1940s when he and Harry L. Payne, president of the Mesa Arizona Temple, helped members from throughout Mexico travel to the temple to receive their blessings. Many of the second- and third-generation members in Mexico have strong ties to this temple.

Another longtime member is Joseph Devon Payne of the El Paso 5th Ward. When his parents arrived in El Paso, "There was nothing here then, just farmland," he said. "Dad and his partner, Jess Taylor, cleared a whole lot of the land that was a little farther down by the river."

He remembers farming there. "Mom weighed the cotton that people picked by hand. She sold cupcakes, cookies and soda pop. I was 4 years old and I can remember this very well."

Brother Payne, who later served in the stake presidency for about 10 years, graduated from BYU and had a young family, including a 9-month-old-baby, in the 1950s when the Korean Conflict began and United States' draft boards sharply curtailed missionary work. He was called to leave his family and served a 2 1/2 year mission in central Mexico.

"It was much harder for my wife. She had to take care of the family," he said of that era of missionary work. "I had a terrific wife. My dad lived next to us and he looked out for her. The Lord's work is the Lord's work, and you can do anything you want to if the Lord is behind you. He sustains you all the way. All we did was receive blessings -- real blessings.

"In Mexico, we baptized our 8,000th member in 1953."

Keith Romney of the Las Cruces 2nd Ward, Las Cruces New Mexico Stake, a longtime patriarch who served in the stake presidency with Brother Payne, remembered traveling to Safford, Ariz., for the Mount Graham Stake conference.

"It was about the fall of 1941, and we were having a real bad drought, about like it is now. President Spencer W. Kimball was the stake president and he sent word asking that stake members come fasting and praying for rain. President Kimball got up, looked this way and looked that way, and then he said, 'Brothers and Sisters, where are your umbrellas?' Of course, there weren't five people there who owned umbrellas.

"In the middle of that morning meeting, it started to rain. It rained hard and it rained all day long." After the meetings, he said, they started for home, driving through dips with water running through them. They came to one dip that was deep and 50 cars were lined up on both sides, waiting for the water to go down.

"We stayed there all night in the car. The next morning we took the fan belt off the car [so the fan wouldn't splash water on the spark plugs] and drove through. We spent the next two weeks helping people clean up after the storm."

E-mail: jhart@desnews.com