Mormon missionary is assigned to Porterville after Hurricane Maria

In Bayamon, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 20, Elder Asa Clayton Bradford, a young missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, now stationed in Porterville, saw a miracle right outside of his house.

“All of the trees around the Mission Home were pulled up by the roots and fell toward the Mission Home, except one,” he said.

“That one was the biggest,” and he gestured with his arms to indicate about a 3-foot diameter. “It would have crushed a room where a senior couple was sleeping, but it fell the opposite way, away from the building, doing no damage. To all of us it should have fallen right on the building, but it didn’t.

“All 155 of the missionaries were safe and were taken out of Puerto Rico,” Bradford said.

He said that on the night of Sept. 20 when Hurricane Maria hit, all of the missionaries were at the Mission Home in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. His area was Ponce, about 10 minutes away.

“It started calm and quiet,” Bradford said, “Then about 2 a.m. the wind howled super loud. Transformers were exploding. Trees were crashing. Wooden houses were being torn apart. We had put plywood on the windows, and the Mission Home was made of cement, so it was all right. The rain came in under the front doors and the back, and the sewer backed up, but otherwise the Mission Home was safe.

“The next day we put on yellow Mormon Helping Hands t-shirts and spent the day cleaning up downed trees at a hospital with 160 patients,” Bradford said.

But throughout Puerto Rico there was no food, no water, no electricity, no sewer, so the Church decided to bring out all 155 of the missionaries and send them to other missions until services and basic necessities are met.

“We went to the stores to buy food,” Bradford said, “but there was nothing there. We all had tickets to fly out on commercial planes, but there were no flights. All commercial flights were cancelled.”

Finally, after three days the Church sent a private plane and took all of the missionaries to Miami where they caught different commercial flights and were scattered to Spanish-speaking missions all over. Three missionaries were sent to the Fresno Mission, which includes Porterville.

Elder Bradford who is from, Blanding, Utah, is assigned to the Spanish-speaking branch in Porterville, with Elder Dines and Elder Ennis.