Paulo Perez

For Paulo these were no new feelings, the lump in his throat from the shortness of breath, the electric like tension he feels all over his skin, and rise in body temperature. The uncontrollable shaking. Maybe that’s just how his body reacts to the hormones, maybe it’s the sense of guilt he feels, maybe it’s a mix of the two. But that is neither here nor there, the fact is after going straight for four months, Paulo was looking at pornography again.

He puts his phone down and starts thinking to himself, I’ve been here before, I know it’s not a good place to be, why can’t I just quit? He knows the dangers of this habit, his dad always showed him those bulletins from the East Idaho news which covered the story of a child sex offender that had a pornography problem, some being former BYU or BYU-I graduates. He’s heard the stories of husbands confessing to their wives about their pornography problems, and their subsequent infidelity. The effect pornography had on married life, children, and in time the viewer's self worth were not a matter subject to dispute on Paulo's mind.

The catch though is that it simply was not enough to know the dangers, he knew that. He tried a number of things; a seven day fast from all social media, cold turkey, or just simply weaning himself off. Nothing works, at least, nothing short of actually confessing to it to his parents. Easier said than done.

What he knew for certain was that he couldn’t do it on his own, he needed help. If required professional help, help from his family, and in a way, help from the divine. Now for some the concept would be rather strange. But for Paulo this was just his way of processing his situation. You see, the Perez family were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It all started with his grandfather who lived in El Salvatore at the time. His name was Pablo Perez, he had a job in a textile factory, a small house with wife named Liliana, four kids, and a drinking problem that became bad enough that Liliana threatened to run off if he didn’t start making some life changes.

It was one Saturday afternoon that Pablo went into his room and said a prayer. No one ever really taught him how, so he just said a prayer in his own way. Not too soon after he saw two well dressed men. Had they come at any other time, he would have turned them away. When Lilliana came into the living room and saw those two men, she grabbed a broom, and tried to scare them off. She heard some really colorful stories about the missionaries. But Pablo took her by the arm and said, “Lilliana, Let’s hear them out.”

The missionaries started with the story of the restoration, the way this would have been done back then was with a flip chart, and Pablo recognized the picture of Joseph Smith. He told the missionaries of a dream he once had when he was working in a field when he was attacked by a giant serpent. He tried to fend it off a machete, but when he was about to be subdued he saw two persons, one was Joseph Smith who held the snake in place, and the other, who he would decide was Jesus Christ who crushed the snake’s head with a rock.

Pablo agreed to read the Joseph Smith pamphlet provided by the missionaries, and also the Book of Mormon. And just months later, he was baptized on June 3rd 1973, the same day the San Salvatore first stake was organized. Lilliana was a little slower to be convinced. Since this first encounter she had felt that there was something in what these missionaries had to say, but she wanted to think the matter over before committing to baptism. And she had thought the matter over for 18 months.

Throughout that time a dozen missionaries had taught her, and dropped her, until sister Johnson and sister Lovel came along. Sister Lovel was a Cookeville girl, before her mission she was saving money building fences, it was hard work, and most occasions she was sleeping in a horse trailer, but she got good money out of it.

When they were first teaching Lilliana, it seemed to sister Lovel that she could remember just about every discussion she had with the other missionaries, and when discussing matters of doctrine, she spoke a mile a minute. Sister Lovel bore with her with the same tenacity she would have taken to have built fences, and Lilliana began to take a liking to her.

Most of the questions she asked had to do with the atonement of Jesus Christ, what that would mean to a Latter-day Saint is Christ taking upon himself our sins, and also our affliction, so that we may be able repent, that we may be able to be resurrected, and return to our father.

One time she asked Sister Lovel “In a way I can understand the atonement paying the price for sins, but how would it also help with one’s afflictions?”

“That’s a good question, let’s open our scripters to Alma 7, verse 12. Will you read it for us?”

“And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.”

Lilliana looks at that page for a minute, her attention was drawn to verse 15 and begins to read it out loud to the missionaries.

“Yea, I say unto you come and fear not, and lay aside every sin, which easily doth beset you, which doth bind you down to destruction, yea, come and go forth, and show unto your God that ye are willing to repent of your sins and enter into a covenant with him to keep his commandments, and witness it unto him this day by going into the waters of baptism.”

“Do you think it at all wrong that I am thinking the matter over for so long before deciding whether or not I want to be baptized?”

“Not at all” said sister Johnson, “Brigham Young thought the matter over for two years, and he was faithful ‘till the end.”

“What convinced him?”

“The funny thing is, it was a man who wasn’t a great speaker, and couldn’t say more than, ‘I know by the power of the Holy Ghost that Joseph Smith was a prophet.”

Sister Lovel than asked Lilliana, “Do you remember what Moroni says in the last chapter of The Book of Mormon?

“Yes, he says that if I read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, I would receive a witness by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

“Have you been praying about the Book of Mormon?”

“I have.”

“Have you received a witness of the truthfulness of it?”

Tears had begun to stream down Lillian’s face, “just now.”

Sister Lovel had started feeling a sharp pain in her right leg, and had begun to limp. The Doctor wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it, but he gave her a few shots of penicillin. It got so bad that sister Lovel, had to be boarded with a senior missionary couple, the Romney’s, and sister Johnson was reassigned to a tri-panionship.

While she was lying in a bed ruminating about her situation she had received a telephone call, she could recognize that hyped up voice that came from the speaker from anywhere.

“Sister Lovel, this is Lilliana, I just wanted to tell you that I am going to be baptized on the 6th of August, and I would really love it if you came.”

“Lilliana,” sister Lovel answered, “I don’t even know if I’ll be in El Salvatore on the 6th.”

Sister Lovel couldn’t hear anything on her end, on the other end of the line Lilliana was inconsolable.

The sixth came, and sister Lovel was well enough that she could go, and when Lilliana saw her, she began to break down in tears. Her speech was a little muddled, but she said something to the effect of, “this is my sign, I was very nervous about making this decision. But now that I know you’re here. I know I’m making the right choice.”

A week later a doctor from the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake would come down and gave sister Lovel an X ray. It turned out that she had Osteomyelitis. Had she had not received that penicillin weeks before, she would have lost her leg. She was to continue the four remaining months of her mission walking with a slight limp.

Lilliana was baptized, and like brother Brigham she was faithful ‘till the end. Now it was her turn to be a missionary. Her son Javier was twelve years old when she asked him, “Javier, do you believe the church to be true?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Do you know it to be true?”

“No, but I believe.”

“That would be good for a while, but at some point you are going to have to know for yourself.”

She gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and invited him to read it.

The year was 1983, and the Perez family was saving for some time for a trip to Mexico City’s first dedicated temple. Pablo fell into hard times, and the bishop was suspicious that he wasn’t a full tithe payer. So when he was interviewing Pablo for a temple recommend, he refused to sign Pablo's temple recommend.

Pablo was offended, and when he went home he told his wife that he was going to leave the church.

Lilliana look at him square eye and said, “look if the church was true when we have found it, it is true now. This is the Lord’s church, not the bishop’s, and I’m ready to look back on parents, spouse, and children to live in it.”

Fortunately, Lilliana didn’t have to make that decision. Pablo decided to stay in the church. Later that evening they received a phone call from the bishop. He said that he was wrong, asked for Pablo’s forgiveness, and told him that he had signed his recommend and that he was to interview the stake president at 6:30 pm on Saturday.

And in January of 1984, the Perez’s were sealed as a family for time and all eternity in the Mexico City temple.

Javier's parents spared no pains in sharing what they believed, and he didn’t doubt that they knew it. But he could only warm himself with the fire of borrowed testimony for only so long.

His older brother Jared left on a mission really only because his parents had wished it. And at one point he ran off. When he talked to the mission president he asked him what was going on. He told him that he read The Book of Mormon for the first time, and had not received a burning testimony of the truthfulness of it. The mission president told him that there was an intellectual element to receiving personal revelation. This was something that Jared simply couldn’t wrap his head around. He came home early on his mission, and in time left the church.

This would be confounding to some, Jared would have been old enough to remember his parents the process, and yet he simply didn’t understand that testimony simply isn’t something borrowed. The catch though is that the reason behind why people do what they do doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else, it just has to make sense to them.

Javier and Jared were still on speaking terms. Being a snotty little 17 year old, Javier once rebuked Jared for his decision. Jared snapped back by talking about some questionable things that happened in church history. This frankly wasn’t enough to convince Javier. Than at one point Jared said,

“You're just a Mormon because your parents are, you’re so brainwashed that you’ve never considered to at the facts.”

Javier was so determined to have the final word, and tried to hurt Jarred the worse way a younger brother could. He told Jared,

“When I was eight years old, you picked me up by my arm pits and yelled at me for something I didn’t do.”

Jared stood speechless from a moment, and then just stormed out. Javier related this incident to his father, Pablo took a while to answer,

“You know. I really shouldn’t have been as hard on him as I was. I’d recommend apologizing to him for what you’ve said.”

Javier was stunned, “you’re kidding me? After all the things he said about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young I had a right to remind him that he was no Mary Sue either.”

“I’m not asking you to forgive and seek forgiveness because he’s a good Christian, I’m asking you because you are.”

Daddy Pablo sure knew how to hit below the belt.

Anyway, Pablo took Javier to his brother’s house. Javier apologized, and Jared forgave him. Jared never came back to the church, but that really didn’t matter. What mattered was that the two brothers were reconciled.

After ruminating over what his brother said about Javier being a Latter-day Saint because his parents are. True that comment said more about Jarred than it did about Javier. But it left Javier in a crisis of faith, not about the truthfulness of the restored gospel, but on the sincerity of his conversion. Was he a member because he honestly believed, or was he a member, well, because he’s a member?

The first question he asked was, if I were to sum up the doctrine of this church into four principals, what would they be?

First, that all persons of all nations are literal sons and daughters of God, and are entitled to receive that same status. In John 10:34 it says, “is it not written in your law, I said ye are gods.”

Second, that the same institution that Christ himself organized in the New Testament, with its priesthood, with its prophets and apostles, with its evangelists, pastors and teachers, as one would find reference to in Ephesians 4, has been restored upon the earth, and that there is a prophet residing over this institution today.

Third, and this is the crowning principle, that Jesus suffered, died and rose again, that we may repent continually, that we may do good continually, and return to our father.

These three are the primary principals, the rudiments of the restoration so to speak. This fourth principal is secondary. That God gave us agency to determine for ourselves if these things are not true. In Moroni 10:4 is says,

“And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

Javier had already read the Book of Mormon three times, he was already familiar with Moroni's promise, and he thought the invitation alone was grounds enough to be convinced. But now he has learned with some reluctance that it simply wasn’t enough to be convinced. So kneeling on his bedside, he did a quick review of the last ten chapters in Moroni, and committed himself to prayer. He anticipated a sudden gust of emotion, but what followed was a clear quiet notion that he had known, and that he had always known, that still small voice. The burning that followed was just the excessive zeal of Javier Perez.

In time he would serve a mission in Roseville, California. He was the only three people to be baptized, but he did befriend a sister missionary. He asked her what her plans were, and she said she was going to Ricks College, in Rexburg, Idaho. He decided to follow that route, and then spend four years in Utah State. Then he got a job as a religion professor at Brigham Young University-Idaho. (formerly Ricks)

What did these stories mean to Paulo? True an overarching theme of these is the foundation of conversion. But also of the atonement of Jesus Christ, that he may be able to repent continually, that he may be able to do good continually, and return to his father. The end all be all is perfection, but that does not mean sinlessness. It’s What our sins make us in the end.

He was as the Robert Robinson hymn goes, “prone to wander,” he surely felt it but here was his heart, and he was going to petition the almighty to “take and seal it.”

Paulo kneels down and prays to his heavenly father, he asks forgiveness for what he’s done, and he asks for the courage to confess all these things to his father.

Javier was in his room, sitting on the blue sofa, watching some reel on Facebook. There was Paulo, trying to disregard the tremor in his hands, swallowing what felt like a lump of air in his throat, then he spoke, “Dad, can I talk to you for a second?”