Top Mormon leader Uchtdorf visits Houston, encourages helping hearts and hands regardless of religion

Tomball, Texas • There was LDS leader Dieter F. Uchtdorf at the pulpit, addressing some 800 assembled Mormons and talking about God, faith and love. You know, Sunday fare.

But this was no typical Sabbath and no typical service. For proof, you needed only to look at what many worshippers were wearing. For starters, the white-shirted Uchtdorf ditched his usual Sunday tie and encouraged the male leaders to do the same. Other attendees had donned boots. Even more sported bright yellow T-shirts.

Why? Well, there was work to be done — outside — cleaning up and rebuilding a city devastated by Hurricane Harvey.

“This is the sign of true saints who are helping to move forward and helping others,” said Uchtdorf, second counselor in the governing First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Regardless of who they are, of which religion they are coming from.

“This is our mission — to serve,” he said. “It’s our mission to help others.”

The visiting Uchtdorf reminded the Mormons in the Cypress LDS Stake in Tomball, Texas — where four wards, or congregations, had gathered to worship — that they show their faith by serving others in crisis. It marked the first service for the stake since Harvey and the resulting floods destroyed about 100,000 homes here.

After the service, Uchtdorf put on his own yellow “Mormon Helping Hands” shirt, standard apparel for LDS service laborers.

“When I look at the helping hands,” he said, “it really says helping hearts. It is helping hearts.”

These volunteers then walked into the hot Texas sun in search of homeowners to help.

Uchtdorf toured damaged buildings and neighborhoods that included the Utah-based faith’s Houston Temple, which sits in a neighborhood that became severely flooded during a record 50-plus inches of rain that inundated parts of the region.

As he and LDS Presiding Bishop Gérald Caussé entered the temple, which still had some water inside, a dank smell rushed out toward a group of reporters that wasn’t allowed in the building. Six other Mormon buildings have been flooded and 20 more had minor damage, according to a news release from the church.

Caussé, who oversees the faith’s facilities and vast business ventures, and Uchtdorf later visited the Wimbledon Estates neighborhood north of Houston, which saw severe flooding after the storm.

Standing outside, on the narrow streets of his neighborhood, Patrick Dougal recalled a harrowing night waiting out the rising water that forced him, his wife, Tiffanie, and two daughters upstairs to wait for help.

They brought what they could upstairs, where they listened to the eerie sounds of furniture falling while water overtook the first floor. It was the first time his house had ever flooded.

“We went downstairs and saw the water was now four feet,” Dougal said. “We looked outside and saw the water was rising so fast that now we couldn’t leave.”

The following day, the family was rescued by boat, which drove right up to the front door of the house.

The Dougals stood Sunday in the street, where neighboring front yards for miles in each direction were littered with the guts of their homes — drywall, insulation, carpeting, washers, dryers, toys, blankets, you name it.

But the Dougals weren’t alone. Moving in and out of nearby houses were dozens of people in yellow shirts and boots who helped clear about 65 houses.

Caussé said in an interview that the LDS Church responds to devastation across the globe, noting aid the faith sent to victims of the recent deadly mudslide in Sierra Leone and flooding elsewhere.

The disaster in Houston brought some of the top Mormon leaders, including general authority J. Devn Cornish of the Seventy, in part because the region has about 85,000 members. Of those, more than 2,800 have been displaced and nearly 800 reported damage to their homes from flooding.

“It was very important to be in Houston because it’s one of the natural disasters that has been closest to the members of our faith,” Caussé said. “Wherever people are in need, we are ready to help.”

Flooding lingers in pockets of Houston, and some cities hit later during the storm remain inundated. As tens of thousands of Houstonians rip the guts out of their homes, try to remove or prevent mold from spreading, and regain normalcy, there will be months of work ahead and plenty to do in Texas.

“It is the symbol of the purpose of the church,” Uchtdorf said. “To serve God, and to serve our fellow men. By this, we show that we love God and we love our fellow men.”