Rosa de Tintí:

Serving Others in Guatemala

By Don L. Searle

Each time she goes to the temple, it is as though she feeds her spirit and then gives the growth to us,” says sixteen-year-old Henry Elliott Tintí of his mother.

For Rosa Cruz Cordoba de Tintí, the opportunity to work in the Guatemala City Temple has been a dream come true. She has always been a good woman and mother, dedicated to serving others, her children say. But her baptism in 1979 brought opportunities for even greater service through Church callings. Currently, for example, she is serving for the second time as ward Relief Society president. For her, though, foremost among the opportunities to serve has been her calling as a temple worker after the Guatemala City Temple was dedicated in December of 1984.

Even before Sister Tintí became a Latter-day Saint, “she always tried to teach us moral principles,” recalls her twenty-year-old daughter Reyna. Sister Tintí had accepted the good she found in the religion of her ancestors, but she was dissatisfied. “I felt there must be something better, but I didn’t know what it was.”

Rosa de Tintí discovered that “something better” through the help of her eldest daughter, Melida (a child by her first husband), who had joined the Church while living in the United States. Melida sent the missionaries to her mother and her mother’s second family in Guatemala. The Tintí children were baptized in 1978, but because their father did not join the Church, Sister Tintí did not feel free to be baptized until after his death the following year. A year later, in 1980, she received her endowment in the Los Angeles Temple.

Her mother has always been active in serving others, Reyna says—providing a temporary home for a young man turned out by his family, for example, and for a returned sister missionary. Both Sister Tintí’s goodness and her Church affiliation are well known among her neighbors. When someone in the neighborhood has a problem, Reyna notes, others will tell them, “Go see Sister Tintí. She will help you.”

Henry says his mother does a good job of teaching her children correct principles, “and then she lets us do what we know is right.”

Although his mother “doesn’t have the priesthood,” he comments, “she knows its importance in the life of a man.” And when Sister Tintí feels Henry may need the guidance of a man in his life, she can turn to one of her twin sons, Mauro or Estuardo. Mauro Tintí is first counselor to the bishop of her ward (La Laguna Ward, Guatemala City Guatemala Las Victorias Stake), and Estuardo Tintí is a member of the stake high council.

When the twins were young, long before she knew of the Church, Mauro and Estuardo were very ill. Sister Tintí recalls that she pledged to the Lord then that if he would heal her sons, she would dedicate them to his service. She remembered that pledge in 1980 when they were of age to accept mission calls.

The twins served missions at the same time, supported by their mother. (Rosa’s daughter Melida also served a mission.) How did a lone widow manage to support them? “I don’t know. I really don’t know. The only thing that made it possible was the help of the Lord,” she answers.

“I worked at what I found.” That included cooking for the custodian of the ward building, washing missionaries’ clothes, and even making and selling tamales. She toiled “until my hands ached from so much work.”

One important reason for her eagerness to serve is the spiritual motivation she has felt since joining the Church. She cites, for example, the manifestation that came to her in January of 1985, the day before she began her work in the temple. As she lay on her bed immediately after retiring, she saw the skeletons of many dead, and then saw an Indian woman, plainly from an earlier era, praying before a distinctive door. She lay awake for a time puzzling about what her experience might mean. But when she reported to the temple the following day, Sister Tintí was assigned to the baptistry where—she found that door!

“I believe I saw that woman so I would know who the people were who needed me,” says the 57-year-old temple worker.

Serving others takes a much higher priority in her life than amassing worldly goods. Recently, in talking to one of her Church leaders, she commented that she had nothing leave to children.

But she has since had second thoughts. “I’ll leave them the best thing there is: an example of obedience, and the knowledge of God.”

Profile photography by Eldon Linschoten