Luis Puig (Photo: Karen Elliott Greisdorf)After receiving three painful blows in his young life, encountering the ideas of Initiatives of Change was also a shock to Luis Puig - but a good one. It changed the course of his life for the better. He looks back with gratitude

I first encountered Initiatives of Change (MRA) when I was 25 years old. I learned about four moral standards of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love and about how to make ourselves free from resentment and forgive others. This left me feeling somehow disoriented! I had done many wrong things in my life and, if I was to forgive, it had to begin with my own my mother whom I simply ignored! Getting to know IofC was like receiving a blow of goodness after three nasty blows that I had received growing up.

The first blow was the divorce of my parents when I was six years old. One day I woke up and found that my mother and my small sister were not there. Days passed and nobody explained to me what happened until a relative said to me, ‘She left you and took your sister with her’. I felt as if I had been beaten physically! Since that time I did not want to see or know anything about my mother. My paternal grandmother raised me.

The second blow was when my very active grandmother was accused of conspiring against the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico in Guatemala. She was imprisoned and tortured. My father was thrown out of the army. After several months of hardship and bitterness, they found out she was innocent, released her and my father was reinstated to his military rank. I began to resent the dictator. I was eight years old.

The third was when I was 12 years old. My father died in a military hospital. During the same dictatorship, somebody suspected that my father - already a Staff Captain - was also conspiring to overthrow Ubico. He was poisoned, slowly (perhaps to make it look like a disease), and he died. But he was innocent! I left my faith in God and began to study Marxism and Leninism in secret. I got to live as I pleased! Latter General Ubico resigned and was replaced by another general. When I was 17 there was a revolution against the dictatorship. I joined the Party for Revolutionary Action.

Eight years later I met Initiatives of Change. It made me think. I thought about it for a whole month until I finally asked Olga, my sister, to arrange for me to meet my mother. Upon seeing her I humbly apologized for the 17 years of rejection. She had wanted many times to see me, but I simply refused. Crying, she told me what had really happened between her and my father and also asked for forgiveness. After the divorce she had formed a second family and had eight children! The next day I went to meet my younger half-brothers and sisters. They received me with open arms. Today my wife and I are full of gratitude because now, spontaneously, in our old age (I am 84) they help us economically and with much affection!

Initiatives of Change and that act of forgiveness opened the doors to other changes: I stopped drinking, apologized to other people, stopped lying and repaid what debts I could. I returned to the Catholic Church and went to communion for the first time at the age of 26.

I met Evelyn and we have been happily married for 43 years. We have two sons, a grandson and a granddaughter. My wife was born in Austria and was a Nazi, the head of a group of hitlerjugend (Hitler youth). After the Second World War she learned about the atrocities of the Nazis against the Jews, of which many young Austrians were unaware. She wept and apologized to several people. She also encountered IofC and also returned to the church. For more than half a century we have engaged in the fight for these ideas of IofC. The fact that we are Catholics does not prevent us from being part of this global action alongside people of many different religions and ways of thinking.

We both met Frank Buchman, the initiator of Initiatives of Change and we learned something fundamental, that if we spend time each day - ten, fifteen minutes, an hour or more - to listen in silence to our conscience and seek guidance for our acts, we discover many valuable things for ourselves, for those around us and for our country. God has a plan and each one of us has a part in His plan!

Luis Puig comes from Guatemala but has lived for many years in Brazil. He and his wife have worked with Initiatives of Change for most of their lives.

NOTE: Individuals of many cultures, nationalities, religions, and beliefs are actively involved with Initiatives of Change. These commentaries represent the views of the writer and not necessarily those of Initiatives of Change as a whole.