OREM — She's never had to walk across a continent to practice her religion freely, tame a desert wilderness or build a temple with her bare hands.
Still, Reyna Aburto has lost all her material possessions, worked to get them back and lost them all again. And, like the Prophet Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail, she's wondered if God still cares and listens to his children in their moment of suffering.
That's why Aburto, a member of the Lakeridge First Branch, Orem Utah Lakeridge Stake, feels a close kinship to 19th-century Mormon pioneers.
On Dec. 22, 1972, 9-year old Aburto and her 10-year-old brother, Noel, who shared the same room and slept by her side, settled down for the evening in their adobe home in Managua, Nicaragua, excited like any child about the upcoming holiday. Later that night, however, sugarplums weren't dancing in her head.
"I had this strange dream. Everything was so dark, and I could feel this strong smell of loose dirt," Aburto recalled. "I tried to reach up, and I could touch something, but I didn't know what it was. From my waist down, everything was trapped. I heard this woman screaming, asking for help."
Aburto soon realized she wasn't dreaming. An earthquake had rattled the city — first a 7.5-magnitude strike, then two aftershocks that measured 5.0 and 5.2. About 20,000 people were injured, 250,000 homeless, and 5,000 dead. Aburto, not knowing what to think, was rescued from the rubble. Everything was gone — the house, the clothes, the furniture. But that wasn't as bad as the figurative punch in the gut she felt when Noel was brought out — he was one of those 5,000 who died.
Aburto's family rebuilt their lives and their home, thanks to the generosity of friends and neighbors. But after years of instability in her home country, she again forsook everything and moved to San Francisco in 1984.
"Today you have a house, tomorrow you don't know if you have it. And if you lose it, you (build) a new one," Aburto said. "One day you have a bed, and tomorrow you don't know where you're going to sleep. One day you get a dollar, and another day you get a different dollar, but they all look the same. What really matters is the family. Everything else is secondary. "
On Nov. 6, 1989 — a month after the Bay Area was hit with its famous World Series earthquake — Aburto found comfort in gospel teachings and a home in the church.
Eventually, Aburto married in the Jordan River Utah temple and has three children — a son who recently returned from a mission to Guatemala and two teenagers. She and her husband own a translating business that provides them with a decent living.
Aburto says her experience with the earthquake in her homeland's capital city has been a major influence on her life in the church. She now knows she will be able to see her brother again, and her husband and son were able to do Noel's work in the temple. Paying tithing has never been an issue, since material things don't matter to her.
"You just let it go," Aburto said. "When you give to the Lord, you don't need that money. It's his."
And like the Mormon pioneers 150 years ago, her knowledge that there is a God has driven her through inspiring difficulties. After once wondering if a creator even existed while hearing gunshots and watching bombs drop on villages during the Nicaraguan revolution, she now knows he does. She knows that Jesus Christ not only paid for her sins, but paid for the suffering she's witnessed as well.
"I'm here to have joy." Aburto said. "I'm not here to suffer and be miserable. Knowing that there's really a God … and that he's there watching is so important. I owe him everything I have."
e-mail: nnewman@desnews.com