I Felt a Fire

With a prayer in his heart, Eduardo sat down one hot summer day in a shady spot in the backyard of his home. "There," he says, "I determined to make the attempt."

María says she never would have imagined what happened next. As she worked in the kitchen, she listened off and on as Eduardo attempted to sound out letters and words. "Suddenly I heard him speaking rapidly," she says. "I listened and realized that he was reading—fluently. Less than half an hour had passed, and he was reading!"

Eduardo was so immersed in his attempt that he hadn't realized he was reading. But as he read, he recalls, "I felt a fire burning within me." Frightened and surprised, Eduardo called to his wife, "Mami, what is happening to me?"

"It's the Spirit of the Lord," María replied. "You are reading fluently!"

As she recalls the experience, María says, "It was something we can never deny."

Eduardo adds, "The day I learned to read is also the day I gained my testimony of the Book of Mormon and its power."

From then on, Eduardo began arising at 4:00 a.m. to read the Book of Mormon before going to work. He then read the Doctrine and Covenants, followed by the Bible. A library now graces the Contreras home, where few books were found before 1987.

As Eduardo's and María's gospel knowledge grew, so did their testimonies. When their son Osvaldo died following a traffic accident in 2001, their testimonies—coupled with powerful spiritual experiences during prayer and in the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple, where they and Osvaldo had been sealed—helped them deal with their loss.

"Perhaps some parents would have gone crazy," Eduardo says, "but we felt a calmness that said, 'Your son is well.' Of course we wept. He was a good son, and we miss him. But we have been sealed in the temple, and we know where he is."