M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

What If I Hadn't Said, "Please Come In..."
The story of Laura Garaycochea
As told to Peggy Proctor

Can you imagine the wide eyed amazement of two sister missionaries, at having a stranger walk into the chapel, stop them and say, "I want to be baptized on May first." May first was a week away!

As an outsider, I thought that would be perfectly normal. Now I understand how hard missionaries have to work. ---To have someone just walk in and say, "I want to be baptized," was a miracle.

Some two-and-a-half years before, we began to have very disturbing experiences occurring in our home. I could not figure out what was happening and decided there was only one solution -- to bend my knees and ask for the help and protection of God.
I was at a loss. What could I do to "undo" what was happening?

Two weeks later a pair of elders knocked at my door. I was standing on the kitchen countertop cleaning the tops of the kitchen shelves. I thought it must be my neighbor coming to have coffee and responded to the repeated knocking -- "Please come in. I can’t get to the door." To my surprise two young men stepped in. I was so embarrassed that I had invited them in that I could not be rude and ask them to leave. Instead I got down from my perch and listened to their message. They gave me a Book of Mormon and some tracts; it was all very interesting.

My husband was anti-religion of any kind and very adamant about having no relationships with any religionists. He had not known that in those two previous weeks I had attended an evangelical church on the corner hoping to find an answer and should he discover that I had invited missionaries in, that might be worse!

I put the book and tracts in my apron pocket and when I went down into the basement in the evenings, I would close the basement door behind me and sit on the stairs in the dark, using the light filtering in from a window with which to read. If I heard footsteps I would quickly conceal my prized possessions again and go back up the stairs.

The elders continued coming. I got to the third discussion. The next appointment met with a surprising end. My husband worked away from our city and this night he unexpectedly returned early in the evening. The elders, instead of meeting me at the door were met with a very angry man who tossed them off the doorstep! The elders said a prayer for me and left.

When I returned to hear what he had done I felt my heart heave and sag in my chest. I had felt something different in my heart during those few discussions and I wanted to know more, but I could never possibly invite those elders back. I was too embarrassed at how my husband had treated them. I went to the basement stairs again, this time to say a prayer and ask for the Lord to bless the elders ---and to remember me.

My husband and I were presented with an unusual opportunity to take a home in a new sub-division that the owners had not been able to sell, -- and rent it. I decided also, at this time, to look for a change in employment. We lived in a small city, of about 400,000, in which, I later discovered, were less than 200 active LDS members --sort of like the "needle in a haystack."

We moved into this new house that just happened to be one door away from an LDS family –and at my new employment, there happened to be two LDS coworkers. I know it was more than coincidence. The family that lived next door brought me a loaf of bread and the sister invited me to her home. When I visited with her and shared with her my views on life, tears came to her eyes. I felt somewhat ashamed that I had opened up so much and I stopped talking.

A few days later she invited me to go to a homemaking meeting. I loved learning the new things and felt very comfortable and at home there. About this time, my husbands’ abusive behavior took an awful turn for the worse. I could not handle it anymore and made the decision to take our two children and leave.

I saw a lawyer and made arrangements quietly to have a legal separation before I set foot out of the house. Saturday I also made arrangements for help in moving. Before I was able to leave, my husband came home and threatened to explode into violence --so I just left. Later he called my parents and told them he had put my things on the patio.

There was no rhyme or reason to what he threw out on the patio --and it was raining. Much was ruined. ---To my amazement the Book of Mormon was in with the belongings. I could not figure out why he put it there. In his present state, he would have destroyed the book---but there it was. I placed it on my bookshelf where it held a cherished spot --and from time to time I would pull it down and lovingly flip the pages and rub its covers.

My apartment had extra rooms and I decided that a mother with two children to support could use the extra cash and company so I advertised a room for a single woman.

One evening, Michael, my brother’s friend, stopped to see how I was doing. While he was visiting, someone called in response to the advertisement. It was a male voice; I listened to his inquiry and then replied by saying that I was not interested in having a male renter. He could hear Michael talking and laughing with my sons in the background, and to my utter surprise, identified Michael’s voice and asked to talk with him. It turned out that they were high school chums.

I hung up the phone and Mike and I talked about the unusual encounter with this old high school friend. At the other end of the concluded call, Vern was thinking that if Mike was associated with me, I must be someone he should take more of an interest in, so he called me. At the end of our conversation, Vern asked if he might call me again.

Some days later he called. He did not seem put off by my reluctance to befriend another male. He just kept calling over a couple of weeks and then persuaded me, with Mike’s help, that he was not a scary person and that it would be okay to go for a donut.

As he walked me to my door he said, "I don’t know why I am going to say this, because we have just met, but --- I am Mormon and I won’t get serious about anyone that is not of my faith." "Wait a minute!" I excused myself and ran down the stairs to the bookshelf and whisked off my copy of the Book of Mormon. Breathlessly I ran back out to the porch. "Is this what you believe?" I asked excitedly. "Of course," he replied, "yes."
"I want to go to church on Sunday. Will you take me there?"
That is how I came to join the church. I found the sister missionaries and told them, "I want to be baptized."

I, later, married that wonderful young man. There is a tender other side to my conversion. This young man that I married was a returned missionary from Spain. He had spent a couple of years waiting for the "right one". Sometimes some of the elderly sisters would lean over and tell him they had a "special sister" to introduce him to and though he was polite and courteous about being introduced, none of them were "right."

He had just had an interview with his bishop. During the interview Vern said that he planned to go to BYU to find a companion. The bishop sat listening thoughtfully and then said, "I will make you a deal. ---I know that your companion is here. I don’t know yet who it is, but if you go, you will definitely miss her. You stay for another three months ---and if at the end of those three months you haven’t met her, then we will just chalk it up to my indigestion, okay?" Vern protested and they laughed together and then he reluctantly agreed. He told me later that in part he wanted to see how the bishop was going to get himself out of this one.

During that three-month time, we met and two years later we were married.

It pays to listen to the bishops’ "indigestion!" And as for me, when I bend my knees in prayer, it pays to be listening for an answer---that may come in some unexpected way, --- through a knock at the door. What if I hadn’t said, "Please come in"?

Vern and Laura were married eleven years ----when her story took another unexpected turn and Vern was killed in an automobile accident. She knows this is not the end. ---They can be together forever.

Click here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.