Faith to be healed

Lay your hands upon the sick, and they shall recover. Return not till I, the Lord, shall send you. Be patient in affliction. Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. (D&C 66:9)

Hispanics give each other really cool names sometimes. Take, for example, the Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca who explored the Americas. His last name translates to “cow’s head.” Maria Del Rayo, one of our converts, had one of those cool names. Maria Del Rayo means “Maria of the Lightning Bolt.”

Maria was a neat lady. She was a municipal judge and she worked at the Civil Registrar’s office, registering marriages and divorces, etc. I don’t remember how we met Maria, or what sparked her interest in The Church. I do remember that there were a lot of obstacles leading up to her baptism. One of her biggest challenges was her husband. Maria and her husband had a rocky marriage for years. Although he was always very polite to us when we were at their home or if he saw us in the community, he did not like his wife meeting with us. He pressured her in many ways to break off the discussions. After many lessons, Maria decided to accept our invitation to be baptized in spite of her husband’s wishes. We set a baptism date that was a few weeks off, due to some work and family related travel she had scheduled.

We kept visiting Maria whenever she was in town to keep her progressing. The Enemy was working hard on her but she was determined to be baptised on schedule. We were very proud of her, and we held weekly fasts for her benefit.

Finally, the day of her baptism arrived. I woke up with a strange feeling in my gut, but I was excited for the baptism and I just ignored the feeling. My companion and I went through all the steps of preparing: filling the pool, double checking the assignments, making sure the members were invited, etc. As the day wore on I felt increasingly sick. The strange feeling turned into disorientation and vertigo. Then nausea set in. Next a fever and a pounding headache. I was so sick we had to go back to the apartment for me to lie down.

To complicate things, that morning Maria’s husband threatened to leave her if she went through with the baptism. She called us to let us know that the baptism might be canceled. I was bedridden, too sick to move and Maria needed our support. There were about four hours before her baptism.

My companion and I prayed about what we should do. We both felt that if I showed the faith to get out of bed and go see Maria, that the Lord would help us and her. My companion gave me a priesthood blessing, and blessed me that I would be cured and able to help Maria that day.

Still feeling terrible, I stumbled out the door behind my companion. My head was throbbing and a couple of times I had to stop because I thought I was going to be sick. By the time we had walked about three blocks, however, I was feeling slightly better. It felt as if each step towards Maria’s house was a physical improvement. By the time we knocked on her door, I felt completely healthy and strong.

We bore our testimonies to Maria of the gospel and expressed our great appreciation for her and our support for her. We told her we would be waiting at the font at the appointed time, said a prayer with her, and left to set up the chairs at the church.

Maria was baptized on schedule.  

La Llorona

There is a bridge that crosses the marisma and becomes a road running past a large empty field filled with gravel, sand, dust, and the occasional stubborn bush or shrub. This field is sandwiched by the marisma on one side and a busy thoroughfare on the other. The houses that look across the thoroughfare have an uninhibited view of the field and the marisma on the other side.

SIDE NOTE: Once, a member of the ward was walking with us across this field and he freaked us out by telling us that there was quicksand in that field. It seemed legit to me, since we knew that the field actually used to be part of the marisma and there could be pockets of moisture welling up below. It turned out he was just trying to scare us; it worked. We were terrified. 

The Robles family, a part-member family that we loved dearly, lived in one of those houses overlooking the vacant field and marisma. My companion and I were teaching the entire family the discussions and they were progressing enthusiastically. We tried to schedule our appointments with them last so that we could end our days on a high note.

On one of our evening visits we were teaching the second discussion. We arrived at the principle of the Holy Ghost (Espiritu Santo). The family listened respectfully, but we could tell that something was wrong. They all seemed uncomfortable, and the warm cheery feeling in the room abruptly left. We pushed through the principle and asked them questions to see if they understood and find out how they felt about the Holy Ghost, to which they politely murmured the acceptable answers but the discomfort of the room became almost palpable. Finally, I confronted them directly about the elephant in the room. I looked them directly in the eye and said, “Brother and Sister Robles, we have noticed that you seem uncomfortable with this principle. Is there something specific about the Holy Ghost that bothers you?“

Brother Robles stared at his feet. Sister Robles looked steadily at us but said nothing.Their teenage daughter who was usually silent, leaned in and asked solemnly, “Elder, do you believe in Ghosts besides the Holy Ghost?”

My companion and I looked at each other and replied something like “Maybe. Depends. Tell us more about what you believe about Ghosts.” That's when things got really creepy.

The daughter (whose name I cannot remember) leaned in closer and told us the story of La Llorona (The Weeping Woman) in hushed tones and with great conviction. We were sitting around their living room on lawn chairs, our feet resting on the dirt floor, dimly lit by a single bare light bulb. I can’t tell the story the way she did, but I will do my best to summarize it:

Long ago, there was a young woman so beautiful all the young men who saw her competed for her affection. She would have none of them, saying that she would only marry the most handsome man in the land. One day a stunningly handsome young man rode into town. He was so manly, he would only ride wild untamed horses. He was so handsome all the women young and old would swoon to see him pass by.  He was the wealthy son of a rich Ranchero. The young woman caught his eye and they were soon wed. As time wore on, she bare him beautiful children that he loved dearly. However, as she aged, his attentions turned to younger women. One day she took the children for a walk along the river. Her husband rode by driving a team of horses, with an enamored young woman on his arm. He stopped and spoke lovingly to each of the children but did not even look at his wife. Then he rode off. In a fit of rage, the young mother flung her children one by one into the deep waters of the river and they were dragged by the swift current to their deaths. Regretting what she had done, the woman returned every day to the river and wailed, crying out for her children, “¡Ay, mis hijos! ¡Mis hijos!” The woman was dubbed, “La Llorona.” Her apparition has been sighted stalking the banks of bodies of water by night all throughout Latin America, wearing a long, flowing, brilliantly shining white dress and wailing forlornly for her murdered children.

SIDE NOTE: Hispanic mothers have been telling their children this story for years to scare them into obedience. In certain versions of the story La Llorona snatches misbehaving children and drags them to the bottom of a river with her where she spends eternity. 

The daughter finished the story and leaned back in her chair, and Brother Robles looked at us and said, “Hermanos, nosotros hemos visto a La Llorona muchas veces (Bretheren, we’ve seen La Llorona many times).”

Then they took us to the back patio where we looked out across the now vacant thoroughfare and the large empty field. We could vaguely make out the dark form of the marisma at the opposite end of the field. Pointing at the marisma, Brother Robles told us how at least once each week, they saw a glowing apparition accompanied by eerie wailing late at night. Every time it appeared to travel along the bank of the marisma before suddenly being extinguished.

Thoroughly creeped out, my companion and I gave many logical alternatives for the sightings: Light from passing traffic reflecting off the waters of the marisma. Gases venting off the rancid water. The wind. Over-active imaginations. It was after dark and close to the time of our curfew, so we finished up our discussion quickly, left with a prayer and started the walk back to our apartment.

As we crossed the field, we could faintly hear the wind softly moaning. The moans seemed to take shape into actual words, unintelligible at first but then seeming to say “hiiiiijooooosss.” Knowing I was being paranoid, but wanting visual confirmation that I was imagining things, I looked over my right shoulder towards the marisma. It may have been my imagination, but I can still see in my mind’s eye a glowing white form moving slowly away from the bridge along the marisma.

SIDE NOTE:I am certain that I was so spooked by the story and the chilling way it was told, and from being in that part of town after dark, that my imagination was running wild.

The Head in the Marisma

I was surprised to learn how permeable the membrane is between economic classes in Mazatlán. While there are definitely “rich” and “poor” parts of town, there are bits of rich mixed into the poor, and bits of poor mixed into the rich. Typically, in the United States, if a poor person comes into money he will move to a better house in a better part of town. In Mazatlán, often they will stay in the same neighborhood and just improve their home. As a result, you will find neighborhoods where a house literally made out of spare car parts and shipping pallets sits next to a well-constructed, three-story home with a swimming pool in the back.

However, there was a part of Mazatlán with no rich mixed in. It was a part that I wouldn’t dare set foot in now that I am not a missionary. Whenever some lucky soul would find a way to move out, they would take it. What made this particular neighborhood so bad was the Mazatlán marisma.

The marisma is a saltwater marsh that rises and falls with the tides. It has the appearance of a slow moving river, but it is actually connected to the ocean, and the flow of the water changes directions based on whether the tide is ebbing or flowing. It smells like raw sewage that has been fermenting in a dark, warm space for months to a ripe stew. Since plumbing in this part of town was not always reliable (or present), it is very possible that what we were were smelling actually was raw human waste dumped into the marisma in buckets.

SIDE NOTE: The Mexican Spinytail Iguana (ctenosaura pectinata) is a large black, yellow and brown iguana that lives in and around the marisma and can be found there in abundance. Locals told me that they used to eat them, but they had been rendered inedible by the pollution of their habitat. They actually nicknamed them “kakeros” (which roughly translates as “crap-eaters”). They are currently listed as a threatened species.

The worst part of this neighborhood consisted of a street (it was actually a dirt path that somebody eventually gave a name to) that ran directly along the edge of the marisma. Both the families that we baptized lived on this street, so we ended up spending a lot of time there.

The Mazatlán Marisma

My companion and I were on our way to an appointment with one of these families. As we walked along the marisma, we noticed a group of about seven people huddled near the waters edge talking and gesturing excitedly. One of them looked up and saw us approaching. He ran towards us with a manic expression and, throwing his hands into the air, yelled “¡Miralo! ¡Miralo! ¡Les dará el susto de la vida! (Look at it! Look at it! It will give you the fright of your life!).”  Against our better judgement, we looked into the water close to the edge of the street.  There, gently bobbing in the brown, scummy water, was a severed human head.

We heard distant sirens slowly growing louder. Someone must have called the police.

It was gruesome scene, but I felt completely at peace. My companion and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and kept walking to our appointment.  I remember being confused that I was not more shocked by what we had just seen. At our appointment we told the family about our experience, and contrasted the panic in the man’s face and voice as he described the “fright of your life” with the peace we felt. We bore our testimonies to them of the peace that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings even during disturbing times and situations. It was a message I believe they understood differently than I, perhaps better. They lived everyday in that environment, while I only experienced it in passing.

We learned later that the head belonged to a 70-year-old homosexual man who was murdered, dismembered and tossed into the marisma by some local gang members.

SIDE NOTE: This was another surprise to me. It had never occurred to me that Mexican men could be homosexual. In my mind they were all cowboy-boot-wearing truck-driving hard-drinking meat-eating macho hombres. While the United States common culture appears to be rapidly accepting and even championing homosexuality, in Sinaloa, Mexico, homosexuals (especially men) were often aggressively persecuted.