By Leisa Parsons, Area Media Specialist
A prompting led to the discovery of several burst water pipes at the San Antonio North Stake Center, helping to minimize thousands of dollars in damage. Elder Syme, was on exchanges with Elder Roberts. They brought food to a couple of other elders who, like many missionaries in the area, were unable to get out and get groceries on their preparation day due to the deep freeze that gripped South Texas and the lack of anything on local store shelves. Wednesday morning they picked up Elders Corriveau and Vincent to bring them back to their apartment to cook the food, since Corriveau and Vincent had no water or electricity.
On their way back home, Elder Corriveau felt prompted to get his hydroflask water bottle that he had left at the Stone Oak building earlier. The prompting was urgent enough that he said, “I feel like I need it now.”
As soon as the four elders entered the Stake Center they realized why the prompting had come to get the water bottle “now.” Elder Syme said as they entered the building it “looked like it was raining from the ceiling — it was really heavy.”
A couple of the elders looked around to ascertain what water pipes had burst, while the others quickly contacted the local bishops. There were several burst pipes, one by the water heater near the Mother’s lounge. In another hallway from the nursery to the stake offices there was over two inches of standing water from other burst pipes. Underneath the floor in the cultural hall, near the basketball hoop and stage, more water was discovered later.
Sister Haws and Stoddard, currently serving in the North Stake’s Deerfield ward were sitting down for zone conference on Zoom when they were told that the building was flooding and help was needed. Their zone, which covers the North Stake, responded quickly. Sisters Haws and Stoddard said the first thing they did was to remove everything off of the floors, moving chairs, tables and pianos to areas that weren’t flooded. “We used towels, brooms, dust pans and trash cans, anything we could find to get the water out,” said Sister Haws.
There was no power in the cold building. Sister Stoddard said, “We were working hard enough that we didn’t feel the cold until we went outside. We were mostly barefoot because the water was getting into our shoes.” Sister Haws added, “Even with my rain boots the water kept getting in.”
“What was so cool,” Elder Syme said, “was in about 30 to 40 minutes we went from four elders to about 100 people at the Church helping to clean up.” Many members brought shop vacs and about 10 gas generators, since the building had no power, and helped get the water out. Elder Syme was impressed that so many members “dropped everything in their busy schedule to help the Church.” Sister Stoddard also echoed Elder Syme, she said: “It was really cool how many people came together. We were working hard, singing and having fun and even though it was a disaster, it was great to see the response.”
Unfortunately, the Stone Oak building wasn’t the only building in the area to receive extensive damage. The Judson road chapel in the East Stake also had pipes that burst with a great deal of water damage. The story was similar to that in the North Stake, members moved quickly with shop vacs to help clean up the building. In the Hill Country Stake, the Indian Springs Chapel had a minor drip in the foyer from a sprinkler head. Their stake center lost a lot of water due to a busted water line in the auxiliary pump room away from the building. There were other busted pipes in the lines that lead from the well that feed the main water storage tanks for the building. It isn’t clear yet, when either the Stone Oak building or the Judson building will be ready.
