placeholder
Read or listen to Ruth Bergqvist’s full oral history. Original interview in Portuguese. An English translation is also available.

But there’s something I wanted to say. I think about Christ a lot. Even more so now, because I’m having some difficulties that I didn’t have when I was younger. I could do until recently, right? As long as I used a cane, I could walk, but after I switched to a walker, it became a bit more difficult, because you need somewhere to stand, it’s a too much for me. But my son, the eldest, had to have an eye surgery, a cataract. I said, ‘Oh, Father, he won’t…’.

…Then he wanted to have the surgery and I thought, ‘Well, there’s a chapel in his town. So there are missionaries, because he says he’s seen missionaries in the street.’ And I was thinking about. I said, ‘Look, I’m not going to solve it’. Because I didn’t have the chapel address, I didn’t know who they were. It was on the middle of the week and maybe I couldn’t find anyone, right?

Oh, two years ago, three. I started praying. I’m diabetic, I can’t fast much, but I said ‘No, I’ll fast the day before the surgery’. I fasted so that he would do well in the operation. Then I said ‘There has to be someone to give him a blessing’. I wanted someone to give him a blessing. Because every time I went for a surgery or anything like, I asked for a blessing. Well, time passed by. The right day, I fasted. The next day, in the morning, around noon, he called: “Mom, you know what? Two missionaries came by…’

‘… and they gave me a blessing’.

I’ll tell you, it was very good. I know, sometimes we pray, and we don’t get what we want, but there’s no point in fighting with time and with God because you want something. No, you just have to get on with your life with the possibilities, right? Waiting. Because the answer doesn’t always come on the same day. Right? Not on the same day, no…! Sometimes it takes time. Mine didn’t, it took overnight. And the missionaries went there. It was very good, I’ll tell you!