“I Will Stay with You”
In December 1972, a terrible earthquake shook Nicaragua, leaving about 10,000 people dead, including nine-year-old Reyna I. Aburto’s brother. Reyna was devastated by the loss. “Back then, I didn’t really know much about the plan of salvation. I just knew that my brother was dead and that he was probably in heaven, but I really didn’t know exactly what had happened to him.”
“It was maybe two years after the earthquake that I started having some kind of daydream,” Reyna said. “I would see him come to our door, knock on our door, and then I would go and open the door. And then he would be standing right there, and he would tell me, ‘Guess what? I’m not really dead. I’m alive. I’m just somewhere else, but I was not allowed to come. But now I can come to you, and I will stay with you, and I will never leave again.’”
About 40 years after the earthquake, Reyna, now a Latter-day Saint, was thinking about the Resurrection, and she remembered the daydream, understanding that it was not a fantasy. “I realized that it was really the Light of Christ that came to this little girl who needed comfort at that moment of her life.”
Reyna received a revelation in that moment “that he is alive and that one day we will be able to be together again, and then we will never separate again.”