“Out of Darkness into Light”

Francisca Ortega and Francisco Dominguez Peña of Las Palmas, Canary Islands, were first introduced to the gospel and the Book of Mormon in the mid-1970s by Jesús Gómez Vega, a close friend who had been baptized in 1973 while working in Madrid. Francisca sometimes came home from work late at night to find Francisco reading the Book of Mormon, his eyes red from crying. “I want you to read this book and to know how beautiful it is,” Francisca recalled him saying. Though she teased him that what he called a beautiful book seemed to be only about wars and people fighting, Francisco encouraged his wife to continue reading. She grew to love the words of Moroni and the other prophets, and when she read a pamphlet about Joseph Smith, Francisca recalled, “I knew he was a prophet because of the intense feelings I had as I read.”

Francisca remembered being afraid of what would happen and how people would react when she and her husband decided to change religions. Francisco reassured her by pointing out the difference between the name of the church they were leaving, the Catholic church, and the name of the church they would be joining, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They agreed that they had found the true Church of Jesus Christ, and they wanted to be baptized.

However, because missionaries had not yet been sent to the Canary Islands, and because Jesús had not received authorization to perform the ordinance, there was no one there who was able to baptize the Peñas. Francisco and Francisca reached out to the Spain Seville Mission requesting baptism, and finally, after several years of waiting, Hugo A. Catrón, the mission president, came to Las Palmas to perform the ordinance. The Peñas were baptized on June 13, 1979, along with their teenage son, Javier, and Juana Vega Garcia, Jesús Gómez’s mother.

As the first converts in the Canary Islands, the Peñas laid the groundwork for the growth of the Church. After Francisco was baptized, President Catrón ordained him a priest in the Aaronic Priesthood and authorized him to bless the sacrament in his home and to direct the Church in the Canary Islands. Sacrament and other meetings were held in the Peña home until missionaries arrived and another location was found. Even then, it was Brother Peña who provided benches for the new meeting place through his work at the Las Palmas airport.

At a 1990 celebration of the second anniversary of the creation of the Spain Las Palmas Mission, the Peña family was honored for their pioneering role. Reflecting on the remarkable growth of the Church in the Canary Islands, the Peñas expressed their gratitude, saying, “All of this was thanks to the Book of Mormon that took us out of darkness into light.”