Gratitude

Last Saturday I got a shocking call from President Crickmore, telling me that the Stake President in our area had not approved our having a meeting here in Ayapango, and that I needed to call the people and cancel the meeting for the next day. After I hung up all I could think about was what have I done to these poor people. They were so excited about the possibility of having a branch in their town. I was the one who had built up their hopes and now they were suddenly gone. A number of less active people had started coming to our little meeting, and I worried about what would become of them. Chrise and I wanted to argue with someone that it was wrong to jerk peoples lives around like that, but then after we had talked for a while, we decided we must follow the Lord’s anointed and do everything we could do limit the damage.

I knew I would have to face the bishop of our ward the next day, and that President Crickmore had also mentioned that my bishop was against the meeting. Although my feelings inside were still raw, I smiled and greeted everyone as I always have. I told the Ramirezes, the strong active family in Ayapango, that I still had hope and faith that one day they would have a branch. After sacrament, the bishop pulled me aside and said that I did not have the approval of the stake president for the meeting. I said I understood and agreed and that we had already canceled the meeting. Then I expressed my concerns for the people in Ayapango. He asked me how many had attended the meeting the week before and when I told him thirteen, he was surprised.

Then he surprised me. He said, “The stake president told me that if you had at least three less active or investigators, you could continue the meeting. You need to let me know how many are coming, Elder.” I was shocked, and wanted to shout for joy right there and then. My fervent prayer had been answered. But this was the bishop talking and not the stake president and the last time that I thought I had approval it had come from a counselor in the stake presidency.

President Crickmore, when I told him later that day said we needed to get direct confirmation from the Stake President and that he would do it. I waited all week for his call. It didn’t come. Last night I sent a text to President Crickmore asking him what I could do or whether it was just over. He said when he got the text he tried the same numbers he had tried to call all week, still with no success. Then, on a chance, he called the stake center. He got direct confirmation that we could have the meeting. I was so grateful to see those words.

This afternoon Chrise and I talked about our feelings of being here in Mexico. Chrise was in tears when she said how grateful she was to be here and the wonderful blessing that we feel, not only for ourselves but for our family. I could not agree more.

The Land of Mormon

Since my arrival here, I have felt the Spirit very powerfully. I believe that a big part of that feeling is the beautiful people who live here, the Lord’s love for them, and the future that they have. They don’t have all the material wealth of those in the United States, Canada, or Europe and it is not because they are any less intelligent or work one wit less. I believe it is the Lord preparing them for what lies ahead.

This morning as I was reading “The Book of Mormon”, my heart burned as I read the following passages:

3  Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble.
4  And thus did the Spirit of the Lord work upon them, for they were the very vilest of sinners. And the Lord saw fit in his infinite mercy to spare them; nevertheless they suffered much anguish of soul because of their iniquities, suffering much and fearing that they should be cast off forever.
Mosiah 28:3-4

Those verses very much described the feelings that I had before I was called to come to this land for the first time, almost forty-five years ago. I found the similarities unnerving and the fact that we were probably called to come to the very same place. 

This morning in Sacrament meeting I related another modern story with wonderful similarities to The Book of Mormon. It was related to us by our Mission President, Benjamin Parra, several years ago. When President Parra was a boy, he went with his father to rescue two missionaries held captive by an angry mob. When they arrived, the scene was very scary. The mob carried machetes and other weapons and were worked up into blood thirsty frenzy, at the point to kill the two young missionaries. Young Benjamin slumped very low in his seat in fear, but his father boldly got out of the car and walked through the mob to the building where the elders where being help captive. Without hesitation, he opened their jail, took one missionary on each arm and turned and faced the now quieted mob. “If any of you touch us, he will die,” Benjamin’s father said in a loud voice, full of the Spirit. The mob cowed away in fear, parting to let them pass. No one touched them and they drove away safely.

I do believe that this is the land of the prophet Mormon.

Journey into the Past...Present

Alvarados and us by a fountain in the city center.

Friday was our field day or day to relax. With our friends from Mexico, the Alvarados, we drove an hour and a half to Puebla Mexico. Puebla was just as beautiful as I remembered from my youthful mission days.

Cathedral of Puebla

All of the streets are cobbled and the cathedrals are some of the oldest in Mexico. But for me what I loved most was the way the streets and buildings stirred memories of a time long ago in January 1972 when I had walked them as a junior companion.

A park I walked as a youthful missionary

My current companion is much prettier

5 Sur was the street where we had our apartment or so my memory told me. I remembered walking in the park in the center of the city with my companion, Elder Angeano, and him telling me that he was jealous of the way that that chicas were looking at me, the north American. I hadn’t noticed. The more we walked the streets that I had not walked for forty-three years the more my memories stirred.

After a while, I really wanted to meet someone in Puebla. I had recorded a list of names of people that I had taught in a bible. My daughter had photographed those pages and emailed them to me, but I had little hope of meeting anyone. The youngest would be in their fifties by now and the oldest over a hundred. As I was thinking this, suddenly the Alvarados called to us from behind. They had just met a woman with whom they worked in the Mexico City Temple. She lived here in Puebla. What’s more, when she heard who I was and why I was here, she gave up her plans for the day and spent the rest of it with us, helping us find LDS churches and giving us the numbers of stake presidents. The Lord had heard by thoughts as a prayer.

The Alvarados, me, and Marta, the sister that spent the day with us.

The Church in Puebla has grown incredibly in the last forty years. When I was there, there were only eight of us missionaries. Now, there are four missions and hundreds of missionaries and several stakes. My only disappointment for the day was that no one we talked to knew anything about the fifteen people that I had helped baptize. But at the end of the day, the wonderful sister who had given up her day to spend with us, wrote done all the names and said she was going to find them.  

Memories

Coming to this part of Mexico has awakened memories that have mostly slept for more than forty years. Today was fast and testimony meeting. To give you an idea of how powerful the Spirit was, my wife cried nearly the whole time. We had people who were not even baptized giving powerful testimonies of the gospel in their lives. A young hermana bore what would be the last testimony of her mission before a ward and a very old hermano bore by his words the last testimony of his life. Though I hadn’t planned on it, I too gave my testimony.

I told the congregation that one of the first Mexicans that I had known really well was my mission president, Benjamin Parra. President Parra arrived in my mission when I was nearly through my two years. Almost immediately a great change took place. President Parra was a man of tremendous faith and love for us and his country. He inspired us all to do things that we thought were impossible. We worked incredibly hard, exercising our faith and the Lord blessed us. There were only eighty missionaries in a mission that covered a third of Mexico but the Lord blessed us to be able to baptize more than a thousand people in one month. We all looked back at what our faith had wrought in total amazement and gratitude.

Being here has awakened these memories so vividly. What a wonderful and inspirational time that was in my life. As I look back on the years that followed those eventful months I realize how profoundly they have affected me. I have made many mistakes in the ensuing years but because of the faith that President Parra inspired in us, and the power we discovered in it, I have never given up and never stopped moving forward. From that time and events in my life before that, I have always known that my Savior not only lives but loves and deeply cares for me as for all Father’s children. Over and over again he has been there for me when I have stretched my faith as I learned to do under my beloved president.