President Ezequiel Sandoval remembers being saddened by the television news reports detailing the recent destruction by Hurricane Isidore in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. He knew many of Isidore's victims would be Church members — and those who did not belong to the Church were fellow countrymen and women.

Despite living far from the Yucatan, President Sandoval, who presides over the Puebla Mexico Cholula Stake in the southern part of the country, wanted to help. A stake high councilman contacted him with fortuitous news.

"The member was a truck driver who had to make a trip to the Yucatan. He said he had some room in the back of his truck if we wanted to send anything to help the hurricane victims," President Sandoval said.

The stake president immediately made contact with his bishops and issued a call for relief supplies. The local Relief Society leaders were enlisted and provisions to be loaded onto the truck were soon arriving.

"We asked the members to contribute water, clothes, materials to repair roofs and other provisions," President Sandoval said. While a few items might have been purchased for the ad-hoc relief shipment, "the majority of the supplies were out of the members' own homes."

The Cholula stake did not act alone. Several stakes from various sections of Mexico organized shipments of their own, providing a welcome supplement to the massive humanitarian shipment sent to the Yucatan Oct. 2 by the Church's Welfare Department. (Church News, Oct. 19, 2002)

The Tula Mexico Stake, Mexico City Mexico Anahuac Stake, Puebla Mexico La Libertad Stake and several members from Villahermosa in southern Mexico gathered and shipped relief supplies to stakes in the Yucatan area.

"We didn't ask for contributions," said Terry Spallino, the Church's director of temporal affairs in Mexico. Instead, local leaders in stakes throughout the country simply recognized a need and responded.

The Tula and Anahuac stakes gathered some four tons of relief articles, while members in Villahermosa sent hundreds of bags stuffed with beans, salt and other provisions, then hauled them to Merida, Yucatan's capital city, for distribution by stake presidents there, Brother Spallino said.

The damage left from Isidore's wake likely prompted sad memories for many Church members in the Villahermosa area. In 1999, heavy rains and flooding in southeastern Mexico forced thousands of members from their homes.

E-mail: jswensen@desnews.com