Choosing Faith

“I felt I had entered the kingdom of heaven,” Horacio Tulio Insignares said after he; his wife, Dora; and their two oldest children, Hugo and Dionne, were baptized in August 1976. The family became very active in the branch in Bucaramanga. Although Horacio could not receive the priesthood, because he was of Afro-Colombian descent, he served as branch secretary and district financial secretary. Shortly after they joined the Church, questions about the policy preventing Saints of African descent from holding the priesthood flooded his mind during a Sunday School class. “Why can’t I have the priesthood?” he thought. “Am I not as worthy as others in the branch who do?” Horacio was hurt and offended by the discussion. “I am not going to go anymore,” he told Dora as she prepared to return for sacrament meeting that evening.

Dora ran back to the meetinghouse to get the help of the branch president and the missionaries. “I knew we could not leave the Church,” she said. When they arrived at the Insignares’s home, they found Horacio had been praying for the Lord to take away his confusion. “The Lord helped me,” he recalled, “and pulled me out of the confusion I was feeling.” Horacio attended sacrament meeting with Dora.

In September 1978, three months after Church President Spencer W. Kimball received the revelation that ended the priesthood ban, the mission president scheduled an interview with Horacio and Dora. “Satan got into my head,” Horacio said. “You shouldn’t go to that interview,” he thought. “They are racists.” Horacio again prayed and felt the Lord’s Spirit prompting him to go to the interview.

The next day, after Horacio received the Melchizedek Priesthood, he and Dora embraced and cried joyful tears. They realized that the change in policy also meant that they could receive the blessings of the temple and be sealed as a family. Later that day, Horacio was called as president of the branch in Bucaramanga. The next year, Horacio and Dora traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah, where they were sealed in the temple. In November 1981, when the Bucaramanga Colombia Stake was created, Horacio was called as stake president.