Saint Behind Enemy Lines by Olga Kovářová Campora

Author:Olga Kovářová Campora
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2016-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

11

Miracles of Conversion in My Family

While managing and organizing summer yoga camps, I thought about my parents all the time. How wonderful it would be to have them there and to see their lives lighten up as they came in contact with the restored gospel! I prayed constantly from the day of my own baptism to be an instrument in the Lord’s hands in their conversion. There was nothing more important to me. They were great parents, and I knew that they wouldn’t have to make major adjustments to be ready for baptism. They lived the Word of Wisdom already, and their lives, based on principles of charity and moral integrity, were always exemplary to the rest of my family. The more I thought about them, the more I longed to have the right opportunity to tell them the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The ground needed to be prepared carefully. Religious thoughts or topics certainly weren’t a common part of our family discussions. The beast of Communism had cast its shadow on our family too, and we didn’t openly discuss God. The Church wasn’t recognized publicly, and Latter-day Saints were persecuted. Above all, there wasn’t a branch in my hometown. I was the only member of the Church there. These are a few of the issues that made it a challenge for me to be a good missionary to them. When I look back on my high school days, I can see that I was a hungry, searching teenager who wanted to ask questions on a sensitive topic but didn’t have enough courage to take the first step. There is a Czech expression “Chodila jako koãka kolem horké ka‰e”—she was walking like a cat around a hot pot—that described me exactly.

Headaches! They are painful and nobody likes them, but I am grateful for them because this common malady turned out to be the key to a great missionary tool that worked for me many times. Because of the help of a secretary at the sport club who suffered bad headaches, I had opened my first yoga classes, which had opened the door to many people who had embraced the gospel.

My mom suffered not only headaches but severe migraines in her late fifties. She knew nothing about yoga, and I didn’t really think it could help her all that much. However, it was painful to watch how much she suffered, lying on the sofa with a cold towel around her head. The whole family engine stopped, and we felt lost and helpless as we walked quietly around her and changed one cool towel for another. I began to study as much literature as I could find that might shed some light on the nature of headaches.

“Mom, I want to teach you how to relax and strengthen some muscles in your neck. It might help you,” I said to her one Friday night in 1983.

“Well, you know that I always trust you,” she said. In a few minutes we were sitting together and my dad joined us.

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