I'm a Mexican by birth. I was born in Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. My parents happened to be down there at the time. I was raised there until I was about fifteen years old. During the last two or three of those years, the Madero Revolution was in progress. The rebels and the federalists were chasing each other through the country, each taking everything we colonists had, by way of arms and ammunition and by way of supplies. Finally we were forced to leave. I came out of Mexico with the Mormon refugees in 1912.

I remember I had a very thrilling experience on the way from where we lived to the railroad station about eight miles south of Colonia Juarez. We went in a wagon. . . . I was riding with my mother and her seven children and my uncle (her brother) and his family of about five or six children. . . . We had one trunk -- that was all we were able to bring. I was seated on the trunk in the back of the wagon. . . .

The Mexican rebel army was coming up the valley from the railroad station toward our town. They were not in formation. They were riding their saddle horses. Their guns were in the scab bards. Two of them stopped us and searched us. They said they were looking for guns. We didn't have any guns or ammunition. They did find $20 on my uncle -- pesos, not dollars. . . . They took that and then waved us on. They went up the road about as far as from here to the back of this room, stopped, turned around, drew their guns from their scabbards, and pointed them down the road at me. As I looked up the barrels of those guns, they looked like cannons to me. They didn't pull their triggers, however, as evidenced by the fact that I am here to tell the story. That was a very thrilling experience. One of my maturing experiences.

The rebels blew up the railroad track after the train we were on passed over it. Later, Father and the rest of the men came out to El Paso, Texas, on horseback. We never returned nor did we recover any of our property while my father lived.

Father and I went to work to earn a living for his large family. There were no welfare programs then. We had a difficult time making a living. We had to "root hog" or die. (Marion C. Romney, speech at Salt Lake Institute of Religion, October 78, 1974, quoted by James E. Faust, devotional address at BYU, February 21, 1978.)

All of my ancestors, since they joined the Church, have been driven from their homes because of their membership in this Church. I have often said that if there was any one of the Articles of Faith which my folks believed in above another, it was in being chaste [chased]." (British Area Conference, August 29, 1971, quoted in Howard, "Marion G. Romney: His Life and Faith," 48).

[While in El Paso, Marion sold newspapers to raise money for food. His father worked as a carpenter and soon earned enough money to move his family into a small frame home. After several months, the family moved to Los Angeles, California and later to Oakley, Idaho.]