“Truly, We Were Preserved”

When Martin Guillermo Rivas was 13 years old, his father died of cancer. “From that point,” Martin said, “the world changed for us completely.” Martin’s mother, Leticia, took care of him and his five siblings, but they struggled financially.

In 1976, Leticia rented a room to two Latter-day Saint missionaries. That same year, the family joined the Church. “The fact of having known the gospel,” Martin said, “literally, I think, saved our lives.”

Leticia emphasized the importance of education to her children. Martin’s father had wanted him to become a doctor who set time apart to care for the poor. Martin did not have the resources to attend medical school and pursued a career in accounting instead.

Leticia also taught her children to pay their tithing when it was hard. They asked her, “Why pay tithing if you know that we need shoes?” She replied that she knew if she paid her tithing, they would never lack food in their house. Martin connected his mother’s lesson with the hard times Nicaraguans and the local Church faced during and after the 1979 civil war. “It required a lot of the members’ faith,” he said.

While living in Bello Horizonte, Martin and other young men watched over the local chapel, although leaders told them to not resist if a mob tried to use violence. One night, Martin was at the chapel when such a group arrived and evicted him and the other youth.

Visiting missionaries to Nicaragua were sent home around this time, and locals took charge of the work. Martin served as a local missionary. One night, he was returning home carrying a bulky projector and was alarmed when a vehicle from the National Guard approached him from behind. Martin was alarmed because the National Guard had been assassinating young people they found on the streets because they suspected them of being guerilla fighters. The large projector could be seen as explosives, making Martin appear as more of a threat.

The car’s headlights projected his shadow on the wall. “It was not my shadow; it was the shadow of an adult, and I realized that this was the reason they did not detain me.”

Leticia and Martin were also worried about the Nicaraguan government’s obligatory military service for young men at the time. They did not want Martin and his brothers to fight in what they saw as a fratricidal conflict. For a while, they hid from the call to service but over time pressure from military officials intensified, causing Martin to be fired from work, and the family moved to avoid neighborhood informants.

When Elder Gene R. Cook and Elder Richard G. Scott from the First Quorum of the Seventy spent the night at the Rivas home while on a visit, Leticia asked Elder Scott what he thought they should do. He promised Leticia and her sons that if they served in the military and were obedient to the commandments, they would survive. The promise was fulfilled. “Truly, we were preserved,” Martin said.