It was late afternoon
Friday January 21st, 2005; the north east coast of the United States was
expecting a major blizzard that would last roughly two days.
Most of the
north Midwest of the country was already buried under eighteen inches of
snow of what was being called the worst blizzard for 2005 and New York
city was next in line.
With temperatures
at 9 degrees and wind chill factors of 20 degrees below zero, this storm
would leave most of the tri-state area of New York buried under sixteen
to eighteen inches of snow and I couldn't wait for it to begin. This is
just my kind of weather. Ever since I was a young boy I enjoyed rainy,
cold, icy and gray snowy windy days.
Weather like
this brought back wonderful memories of my childhood when my mother
would make homemade hot chocolate and cookies.
My sisters
and I would play Monopoly or Parcheesi during rainy days or as snow storms
would bury us in the winter days. How wonderful! When everyone seemed to
be miserable because of the weather, I seemed to be at my very best. I
enjoyed staying in playing with my trucks and train, board games and reading
my comics.
As an adult,
I cherish sitting by the warmth of my fireplace, reading a good book and
of course drinking hot chocolate as I cuddle under a warm blanket
to stay warm.
This night
was no different than any other. Yes, this was a night when the entire
city could see its own breath. A night when just the sound of the wind
could give you a chill in your bones. It was a perfect, perfect night.
As I looked
at the millions of stars transparently shining over the clear cold night
sky of New York city the night before the storm, I pondered on the exhausting
two hour conversation I finished having minutes earlier with one of my
editors, in which for the most part he did all the talking, all the questioning
and all the answering.
I meditated
on the first four chapters of this book, which according to him were obscured
deep inside my soul and needed to “come out” and be put on
paper.
Since “The
Providence of Prayer” was already finished, and so I thought, and ready
to go, I was convinced that this was another tactic of the enemy to delay
the publishing of this book.
Valuable time
I felt, was being wasted adding extra chapters to the book and would delay
its publication which in my estimation was already late in being published.
Since this
is my first compilation of what I contemplated to be personal encounters
with God through prayer in the course of my entire life, not only did the
book have to become personal, according to him, but it had to in turn encourage
those who through a series of mishaps, in their lives, were deviated away
from an encounter with this same God I was writing about.
Well, maybe
my editor has some hidden pearls under all that talk of his after all,
I said to myself.
This entire
book is meant to help and guide those who in their search for answers are
seeking for a direction that would in turn lead them to acquire a personal
relationship with God.
But where do
I start, where do I come up with a beginning for a book that has already
been finished?
Perhaps I should
start back in the nineteen sixties or in the nineteen fifties when life
was good.
Yes, perhaps
that would be a great place to commence a life story that through its earthly
journey learned to come to the realization that through prayer all is possible.
Yes, life is
good when through prayers to Him as we look up to heaven and see the stars
and the planets or when we see the galaxies and the vast immeasurable universes
that just with His Word He created, nothing is impossible.
And so as with
divine new optimism, I began the four new chapters of my book under the
expectation of the worst storm for 2005.
THE
EARLY YEARS
Yes, life was
good indeed, and life was good during the 1950’s in an island of six million
people; my family came from a hard working class that seemed to enjoy all
the commodities of a world power nation.
Our parents
had found a place in a young oriented society where the up and coming in
Cuba had an opportunity to enjoy life to the fullest.
Both my parents
descended from very traditional Catholic Spanish families with high moral
and social standards.
This led them
to arrange their wedding day to take place on December 25th, of the year
1955.
It symbolized
a new beginning, figurative of the celebration of the birth of Christ,
the birth of our Savior.
Considering
the circumstances and conditions surrounding my upbringing, my infancy,
in lieu of being gloomy, I would say was a very happy and fulfilled childhood.
We were engulfed
by a never ending parade of birthday parties, weekend trips to the country
side and yearly vacations to beautiful resorts still considered the most
stunning and elegant in the world.
These holidays
sometimes would last longer than thirty days; I would say that life was
without a doubt good.
My immediate
family is large, consisting of seven people, two adults, Dad, Mom and five
children.
Three beautiful
girls and two boys of which I am one, the first born. I was born on October
22nd and the year was 1956, exactly ten months after my parents married.
From my fathers’
side I have nine aunts and one uncle, from my mother's side, three uncles
and one aunt.
Not only did
they all seem to be in competition for who could hold the conversation
going the longest, it seemed that they were also competing to see who would
have the most children.
If it weren't
for my parents losing three boys at the time of their birth, being born
with their umbilical cord wrapped around their neck, they would have been
the sole winners of this uncontrollable baby making competition.
In the early
part of the 1960’s Cuba was experiencing a lack of professionals, especially
in the medical field.
A large portion
of the medical professionals had defected the country due to Castor's new
regime.
The “so-called
doctors” throughout the island, those in green uniforms assisting in hospitals
at the time, who in their medical ignorance were working for the Castro
revolution, were not familiar with delivering babies; as a matter of fact
they were not familiar with medicine at all.
In consequence,
Cuba was beginning to experience not only a lack of medical professionals,
but was beginning to suffer from a lack of everything in general.
About 380 private
enterprises were seized by the new Cuban regime on October 15th, 1960.
Private homes,
cars, boats, all kinds of businesses as well as religious and private schools
were being closed and nationalized by the government.
The private
Catholic school my sister and I attended had being taken over by the government
and nationalized as well.
Jewish Synagogues
and temples were being closed as well and as a result of this, the United
States had called for an embargo on Cuba on October 19th, 1960 for most
products other than food and medicines.
The Friendship
University Of The People opened in Moscow in October 1960. With opened
invitations by Nikita Khrushchev to the youth of Latin America, Africa
and Asia “to receive a superior education” which could be brought back
to their country, children from all over the island of Cuba were being
sent to the Soviet Union against their will.
This great
news from the Soviet Union was of course going hand in hand with the panic
rapidly spreading through every Cuban mother.
The rumor was
that the government was now thinking of taking over legal guardianship
of all the children from the age of three through seven years old.
The children
would be allowed to stay with their parents until the age of three at which
time they would have to be given over for physical and mental education
to a complex network of governmental agencies that would be run by state
nurseries.
Parents would
still be allowed to visit them twice a month, but the children would be
under strict supervision by the government of Cuba.
Since Lenin
had once being quoted as saying that the “Revolution is impossible as
long as the family exists,” mothers through the island were frantic
and making vows that they would rather kill their children rather than
to hand them over to Castro.
The year was
1961; Castro had asked the American Embassy to carve down to eleven people
from an eighty-seven person staff.
The American
Embassy was one of the first to be accused of being responsible for counterrevolution
actions.
On January
2nd, 1961 on the third anniversary of the Cuban revolution, Castro used
the gathering of 100,000 strong ones in Havana to celebrate the commemoration
of the revolution for his best interest. On that day he declared that he
“was going to eliminate all terrorists and counter revolutionists in
Cuba and all who supported it.”
The Cuban nuns
were being sent back to Spain and the priests silenced in their Sunday
mass.
Those who courageously
spoke against the new regime and defended their ideals, those who defended
their faith were taken away at night while everyone slept, were tortured
and then shot.
Their bodies
sometimes left out in the streets for everyone to see, then picked up and
taken away by men in green uniforms.
Sometimes the
cries of families were heard in the middle of the night while the head
of the family was been beaten and brutalized; they were put in a government
jeep and forcibly separated from their loved ones.
They knew that
this would be the last time they would see each other again, they would
disappear into the night with men dressed in green uniforms never to be
seen again.
The next day
the neighbors would quietly go about their business as if nothing had ever
happened.
People were
coexisting in pure fear, fear of having the same done to them and their
loved ones.
In
My Own Words,
Edmund DeSoto
END OF
CHAPTER ONE
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