I remember being very young and having to go with my mom to find my dad, because he wouldn’t come home. And that was very sad. The earliest memories of seeing my mom crying were looking for my dad. So fast-forward a few years, and we moved to a different area, which back in 1983, maybe, was considered a “little Utah.” A lot of members of the Church. There was a school that was sponsored by the Church down in Mexico City [Benemérito de las Américas school]. And we didn’t know this but we lived just down the street from it.
So eventually a girl from school and her grandma, was the one who, after a couple years of knowing her, she one day knocked on the door with two young men with ties and a little name tag. And interestingly enough, my grandfather, who had been a big influence in my dad’s life, he had passed away the year before. And I’ve always felt that if the missionaries would have come when he was alive, my dad probably wouldn’t have joined. But this sister, she came, and she told my mom, “These guys are missionaries and they have a message for you and your family. And I’ve been praying for a long time for you and your family. And I felt this was the time to bring them.” My mom was a little scared, because not not too long before that, I had another friend from school who had invited us to go to church with them. My mom wanted something different—my mom was looking for something different. And she wanted to go and she told my dad and my dad said, “Ugh. I don’t want to have anything to do with anything that’s religious.” So when the sweet old lady came to knock on our door, my mom’s like, “I already know the answer.” But she didn’t lie. She said, “Well, my husband is not home. So can you come back when he’s home?” And so she came back a couple hours later with the missionaries, but this time my mom told my dad, “You go get the door.”
That’s exactly right. That’s right. So after a few discussions, my dad felt something. There are centuries of tradition in our culture, and he said to them, as best as I can remember, “I’ve lived thirty-some years, and my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents believed something different. You’re gonna come in and tell me that they were wrong?” And thankfully, the missionaries—there was a guy from Utah and another one from Chihuahua, Mexico—and the one from Chihuahua, he kind of stepped back, and the guy from Utah took a deep breath, and [to]my dad, he gave him Moroni’s Promise, and that night he prayed. And the beautiful gospel principle that we have as members of the Church is that of eternal marriage. And that is what really interested my dad, because in the Catholic Church it’s “until death do you part.” And my dad—who’s a total romantic and has always been—he used to tell my mom, “If there is life after death, I’m gonna love you forever.” So thankfully they love each other so much that that is what— That did it for him. And he told [my] mom if she wanted it, “I want to do it, but I’m waiting for you to decide.” And then after that we joined the Church and I had a baby sister.
So I was baptized—I had just turned nine when this happened, and obviously, my sister was not old enough. My mom had wanted to have more kids—she loved the idea of having more because she already had two girls. But she didn’t want to have a boy with the lifestyle that we had before. So eventually, she prayed and prayed for a son and about a year later, right before we were sealed in the temple, my mom was pregnant. So she was certain it was going to be a boy. And fast-forward couple years after that, and she had two boys. And then a year after she had my baby brother. We are very richly blessed.