Behind the Yearning for Zion Gates

When asked about the raid that took their children, one mother says it "turned [our lives] upside down and inside out."

Another mother gets emotional when describing being separated from her children. "I got up early to quickly pack their things, and I separated all of the boys' clothes into individual bags with their names on them because we knew that when they took them, they were going to take them from each other," she says.

She says she didn't cry—at first. "I went over there and hugged each of my boys individually. The children didn't understand what was going on," she says. "As I hugged each one and told them, 'Just be sweet, just say your prayers, heavenly father will bless you to come back to me.' And they started crying."

It was when she placed her youngest son in her oldest son's arms that she cried. "I know there's no human person that could ever describe the sound in that building," she says. "I don't think anybody could ever forget the terrible, terrible sound. Just crying, crying, screaming children. Crying mothers. People shouting, 'Go here, go there.' It was the most horrible thing."

To reassure the children that everything would be okay, she says all the mothers started singing. "It helped us, and it helped them."