Finding old baptisms - a missionary's dream come true

This blog is about a missionary’s dream story.  

Just before we left on our mission I
found two photos of La Banda and
the Orellanas.  Here my comp and I
met the town mayor and gave him
some gifts

When I was on my mission as a young elder in 1970, my companion and I had the chance to be the first set of missionaries in the town of La Banda.  It is a small to medium sized country town near Santiago del Estero.  Almost all the roads were dirt and it was the door way into the ranches and farms further out.  We got there in the middle of the summer which would be like Gilbert, Arizona without air-conditioning.  We spent the first couple of weeks looking for a place to live as we tracked.  Each night we traveled 20-30 minutes by bus back to Santiago to sleep on the floor of the apartment of the elders there.

One evening we met a young man that seemed to be very interested in the gospel.  He invited us to go to the home of his parents for diner.  As we walked with him, we found part of the reason he wanted to talk to us was because he was so mad at the Catholic Church.  He had just gotten married in the Catholic Church but they charge for marriages and he did not pay as much as the couple before him so they had them step aside and literally rolled up the red carpet in front of them and his guests because he had not paid for it.  He was so embarrassed that he promised never to go back.  We got to the home and his family was some of the nicest people in the world.  The parents treated us like their own sons. 

The Orellanas are on the left with a family that was fellow-
shipping them at a stake center we traveled to.

On our walk home that first night, the older son and his wife and child walked with us since they were going in the same direction.  The wife said to me, “I am already a member, now we just have to baptize my husband.”  We were happy and excited and searched out her membership and sure enough, she was a member.  She had joined with her brother as teenagers in another town. Within weeks of becoming members, the family moved to La Banda and with no Church there they hadn't seen a Mormon for 4 or 5 years.  Remi was a golden person and contact and was soon baptized.  He told me his side of the story just recently.  It turns out that they had lost their first child about 6-8 months earlier. It was a little girl a little over a year old.  They, of course, were devastated.  He went out into the country to a family he knew where he adopted a little girl about the same age.  I knew this part of their story and it was a wonderful thing for them and their marriage.  What I didn't know was that they were still in shock and were searching to find answers to her death and what would become of her.  The gospel held the answer they were praying for and that was why they accepted it so readily and so whole heartily.

We also discovered that he was extremely well known because he was one of the best soccer player of the province’s pro-team.  He was the first member baptized in La Banda.  We got on a radio program and a visit with the city mayor because of him.  Another part of the story I did not know until I got back here was that the branch in Santiago del Estero still had a missionary as the branch president 3 years after I had left.  An Elder Daniel Moreno, who actually now works in the office with me, was sent to Santiago del Estero with the goal to find a local branch president before he left.  He wrote the Mission President that there were two men that could be it but Remi Orellana was the best candidate but he was a professional soccer player and so missed many Sundays playing soccer.  He called Remi in one day and told him he needed to quit soccer.  Remi asked how could he do that when he was making as much money with each game as he did in a year at his regular job as a school teacher in a college level trade school.  He finally said he would but he had to play 3 more months to finish the year because his team had qualified for the national play offs.  He became the first local branch president and later the principle of the school and an accomplished soccer news caster.

When Joan and I arrived I did a search and found that he was now one of the bishops in La Banda and his son was a branch president in another.  In fact, most of his family are now members.  He told me that even though his parents loved the missionaries and treated them like their sons they were very unhappy with them for joining the Church.  (His mother felt she needed to take care of the missionaries because she knew how she would feel if her son was a long way off in a foreign country.)  He told, first his sister, then his mother then his sister’s boyfriend that if they would listen to the missionaries and do everything they asked (like read the Book of Mormon) and did not believe it he would quit the Church.  They each in turn took him up on it and each in turn joined the Church.  The boyfriend even postponed their wedding to go on a mission to the dismay of Remi’s sister.  All ended well and there are now three generations of members from this great family.

Anyway, to explain the pictures, I asked an area seventy over that area to look him up for me.  So, when he went there for a leadership conference he pulled Bishop Orellana aside and gave him the phone number of my office and told him an Elder Boyle wanted him to call him.  It was so exciting to talk to him and hear all the rest of the story.  He told me about Daniel Moreno and and I immediately went down the hall and got filled in on more of the story.  It turned out that in a couple of weeks Remi had a temple trip planned to Buenos Aires with some of the members of his ward (about an 18 hour bus ride).  So Wed Aug 7 Remijio and Marta Orellana came to the office around 4pm.  It was such an emotional meeting and Remi has such a loving spirit about him that two of the secretaries had to come to see what was going on and one was crying she said because she could feel his spirit, love and emotion from the other room.  Daniel Moreno came and we sat in the VIP sala.  Elder Gonzalez even came in for a few minutes.  We had a lovely evening then came to our apartment for a while and talked some more then went to dinner at Trapiches.

Here we are with the Orellanas and the Morenos at the BA temple

It turns out Daniel Moreno had been the area seventy in charge of the re-dedication of the BA temple and was now a sealer there.  So the next day, Aug 8, we went to the temple with Daniel Moreno and met the Orellanas there and did sealings together.  You would have to say it was the end of a missionary’s fairy tale story.

I have had another amazing experience with the Quinteros family, but that is another story!