What Amazing News!

When Robin and I were married, he was the only one in his family who was a member of the church. After being married for a couple of years, he and I went to Ecuador to visit his family. At that time they all lived there. (Now his sister Rocio, her new husband and two of her children moved to Spain. Two little ones were born there and aren’t so little anymore. We also have a nephew in New York who we still haven’t been able to visit since he moved to America.)

When we went to church in El Triunfo, the city where Robin is from, we attended the meetings on the third floor of a building that had a business on the bottom. There was one pair on elders (who acted as the branch president and a counselor, from what I remember) and a pair of sister missionaries and a small group of local members. The only ones singing the hymns who had ever heard them sung correctly were the missionaries and Robin and me. Not a note seemed on key, but it was beautiful to me because it was my first experience being in a setting like that, seeing a group of people doing what they felt guided to do by the Spirit even though everyone around them was against it. It was not and still is not easy to be a member, carry your scriptures to church, not drink, not look at pornography, and many other things that are not only acceptable, but actually considered normal to do and abnormal not to do.

Years later, the church had grown in the area, and they built a chapel in the city and it just happened to be a few blocks from my in-laws’ home. My sister-in-law Jaqueline and her family live in a different city in Ecuador. They were the first to be baptized. We were so happy for them. Then recently my brother-in-law Yito was baptized and just this month he got to baptize my mother-in-law! It is so exciting for us and it was a bit of a surprise when Robin found out on the phone that she was going to be baptized. For the month that my mother-in-law was visiting us here, the missionaries came and taught her many times. She was very polite to them, but when they left she said that there were things she didn't believe. I can't wait to hear her budding, but real, testimony.
I hope that there are strong members there who can befriend them and teach them little by little so that they learn to love the gospel as much as we do and to be close to our Heavenly Father. I just imagine someday being in a temple with them. That will be such a great day!