Children of the Promise

I have a friend in Peru, a young woman that I have known for about five years. She is of a fairly mixed lineage with beautiful Inca features: jet black hair, aquiline nose and high cheekbones. She is a staunch Catholic and got very burned by a radical Christian group several years back. Over the years, I have given her a couple of copies of the Book of Mormon and asked her to read it. She has never responded other than to read the odd page here and there.

She works for me now and I had pestered her about it just before year’s end and asked when she was going to read it. Anyway, I came back to Peru and met up with her after my three weeks trip home. I asked all of the niceties, how was your Christmas and New Years??? She said, “o, bien, bien… Adivina que estoy leyendo. Guess what I am reading.”

I actually had no idea and when she said, “The Book of Mormon!” I was surprised. She then went on to tell me that it was like a story and that it had her gripped and that she was already almost finished with 1Nephi. She is reading five chapters a night. She told me that she can see the people in her mind’s eye and that the book has come alive for her. She sees them as she thinks they might have looked. Then she said, “They are like my family.”

I felt that powerful impulse of the Holy Ghost and told her, “That, I think is more profound than you imagine. I think that that is literal because these are your family, your distant ancestors and this is a book, first of all for you and your people and not necessarily for me and mine.” In all of the years I have lived among the Lamanites of Peru 11 now, I have never felt a sense so strong of someone identifying with the characters in the Book of Mormon. I am still kind of overwhelmed by it.