Solutions April 2019 | Page 31

I was in my mother’s womb when she was converted. Before I was born, she prayed, Lord, I want him to be a preacher of the Gospel. And that seems to have worked out! She told many stories like this as I grew up, which reinforced in me the feeling that first came in boyhood—before I fully knew what it meant to be a Christian! Luis, I felt inside, you’ve been called to preach the Gospel. You’d better do it! This prayer of hers, even as such a young believer, shows the pure sincerity of her seeking. The same quiet commitment that made her search for inner peace, even though all the trappings of outward religion had been hers, motivated her to a constant, deep spiritual life that overflowed for her husband, children, and neighbors. My mother centered her life on God. I can hear her voice still, hushing in prayer, rising in praise. She read the Bible constantly, almost always on her knees. She quoted many verses to us from memory, and she insisted that we memorize the verses we were given in Sunday school. Of the many verses that my mother loved, one sums up perfectly the lesson that she taught me: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). What a simple promise. But how profound! Like the surrounding verses in Matthew 6 ask, my mother trusted God innocently and completely, like the birds of the air or the lilies of the field. Little did she know how much that trust would be tested. My father died when he was only thirty-four. I was ten. When Dad passed, he left no paperwork: no will, no estate plan, no paper trail for much of his property, and no real organization of his business interests, which were considerable and complicated. My mom, who knew nothing about business, was left to fend for herself. There she was, thirty-three and expecting my youngest sister, with six children and widowed. She tried to settle my dad’s accounts but could do little in her state of grief and shock to counteract the people who were demanding money or making claims to the Palau company. It was a terrible time for her. In only a matter of months, our family went from well-off to essentially destitute. It was a heart-wrenching time for my mother. We had no source of income. “I don’t know what to do,” she’d say. “The Lord has to protect us. He has to provide.” We depended fully on the Lord. We had absolutely nothing. Sometimes we had a cup of coffee and one loaf of French bread, torn into seven parts. That’s it. Yet we would get on Solutions • 31