Sunday, October 19, 2008

Sis Alvarez y Scott Zimmerman

My whole life I have told people about sis Alvarez en San Martin de Porres in Lima and how she was responsible for all the baptisms we had in San Martin (24). She was amazing. Last night we went to the airport and we picked up the Zimmermans who are here to be proselying missionaries in the East Mission. Scott was a missionary here in 1964 to 1966. In his patriarchal blessing he was told he would be responsible for many people coming into the church. He worked in the office for 11 months and that is not real productive for baptisms and he worked in Arequipa and in those years that was not a real productive place. He worked in San Martin and had a few baptisms there. Sister Felicita Teresa Alvarez was baptized there by Scott and his companion. Her husband and children were baptized too, but she was the key. Twenty years later when we came as mission presidents, I had a conference in Palao, which was the next door stake to where she had lived (She died in 1981 or 2) I was talking about her and I could feel a current of comment, so I asked the question of how many in that conference of 900 were the products of her work (this was 8 years after her death) and about 2/3rd of those there stood up. It was one of the highlights of our time there to see what one woman could do. Elder Zimmerman knew this was true as he had followed her too and knew that his patriarchal blessing had been fulfilled. What a blessing to have them here again.

5 comments:

mumovearls said...

That is so Neat!-nena

Samantha said...

Wow, cool story.

Peggy Dee said...

That is so inspiring! I visit your blog but don't often have time to comment. We miss you!

duke of earl said...

Great story...but what gets me is how you consistently make connections with people and happenings. It seems unnatural. Awesome

Tom Earl said...

I love those stories!