Havana Saint

Havana Saint
by Larry Day

PROLOGUE: This story begins in late April 1998 with a long distance telephone call from the departure lounge at Miami, International Airport to Merida, Mexico

Miami Airport International Departure Lounge, April 30, 1998
I was making my fourth trip to Cuba as a journalist. Pope John Paul II had gone to Cuba in January. I wanted to find out what was going on there in the wake of the Pope’s historic visit. I was going free lance this time, and wanted to do “people” stories rather than political stories.

Before leaving my home base in Pensacola, Florida, I had jotted down a telephone number and some cryptic words in my reporter’s notebook: Church members, Havana? Elder Carl Pratt, Mexico, and a telephone number. I hadn’t time to make a call. Other priorities prevailed.

The flight to Havana was scheduled to leave for Havana at 1 p.m. Passengers were told to be at the airport at 6 a.m. Tons of baggage had to be checked. Europe had the “Marshall Plan” after World War II. Cuba had the “Family Plan,” in the 1990s. Cubans living in Miami and other parts of the United States were allowed to visit relatives in Cuba and take goods to them. They did so with alacrity. Bundles, boxes, bulging suitcases, sports equipment bags, every description of container was lugged into the airport, duly passed by the inspectors and hauled out to the waiting passenger jets. Two or three flights a week from Miami, via Nassau. There were no direct flights to Cuba–the plane landed at Nassau, turned around on the tarmac, taxied back along the runway, and took off again. Then the plane flew back to the south coast of Florida, and on to Havana. People who are allowed to visit Cuba from the U.S. carried tons of stuff on every flight. Who could go? 1. Journalists, that was me. 2. People with blood relatives in Cuba. 3 People who had professional, academic or other legitimate business in Cuba. But they had to obtain a license from the U.S. Department of Commerce. No tourists. It was not illegal to visit Cuba. It’s just illegal to spend money there without authorization. The United States had maintained an economic embargo of Cuba since the early 1960s.

The six-hour check of baggage went well that day. I had a few extra things myself–bottles of Aspirin, bottles of deodorant, over-the-counter remedies. It was stuff that Cubans couldn’t get or couldn’t afford.

By noon I was in the international departure lounge with an hour to kill. I began checking my notes. That’s when I saw the Merida, Mexico phone number and remembered that someone had told me that there might be members of the Church in Cuba. I’d never seen any evidence of it in my previous three trips, but since this was a trip to see what effect the Pope’s visit had had, I thought there might be a story if there were indeed any member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Cuba. I went to a pay phone and dialed the number in Merida, Mexico, plugged in my credit card number, and heard the phone ring. I didn’t think anything would come of it. Blind calls seldom produce much. I looked through the immense plate glass windows down to the tarmac where cart afer cart of Havana-bound Family Aid was being loaded on the plane. The call went through. I told the secretary--in Spanish–that I was a reporter going to Cuba and that I was a member of the Church, and that I hoped I could talk with Elder Carl Pratt.

Next thing I knew he was on the line. I told Elder Pratt who I was and where I was going. I asked him if there were members of the Church in Cuba. He said something like, “Yes, there’s two women–a mother and daughter--whom we refer to as “Las Rusas” because they joined the Church in the Ukraine, and a man who was recently baptized. He’s a doctor, I think.”

“Do you have an address or phone number?”

“I have an address in Old Havana. He doesn’t have a phone.”

A doctor without a telephone. That was interesting in itself.
“Can you give me the address,” I asked. He gave me the address.

“Please get back in touch when you return,” he said.

“I will, I said,” and we hung up.

That was April 29, 1998. The next day I picked up my credentials at the International Press center in downtown Havana. On May Day I covered the parade. It ended up in Plaza Jose Marti in the heart of Havana. One of the big events in Cuba is the May Day parade. Older people will remember the television photos of the ICBMs on giant trailers being hauled through Red Square in Moscow on May Day in the 1960s and ‘70s. People, tens of thousands of them, not hardware, are the feature of the Cuba’s May Day parade. Fidel was in good speaking form that day. His speech was short, for him, about an hour.

I didn’t make it down to Old Havana until the next day or so. It was at night. The street was narrow and the light was bad. But I found Dr. Luis Verrier’s apartment.

And I wrote this story:

Havana, Cuba--Dr. Luis Almaraz Verrier gets up about 6 o'clock every workday morning and walks to a bus stop. Counting the time he waits in line, and the ride, it takes him an hour to get to the hospital where he is a highly regarded gynecologist.

After an eight- to ten-hour shift, Verrier, 49, catches a bus back home. As night falls, he hugs his wife and two daughters, greets his son-in-law, and crouches to embrace his 2-year-old granddaughter. The child shrieks with delight as he sweeps her up in his arms and whirls around.

Then Verrier goes back into the streets.

Dr. Luis Verrier and Marisol Vivo on a street in Old Havana, Cuba, on their way
to attend church services. Marisol meets with LDS members in Havana and is
studying the church (LDS nomenclature: she's an investigator).

For the next two or three hours, Verrier makes house calls, treating patients in his neighborhood. The Verriers live in Old Havana--a part of the Cuban capital whose architecture evokes scenes from "Les Miserables."

His dinner--rice and beans, a bit of broiled chicken, and some sliced vegetables--is waiting when Verrier gets home again, at around 10:30 p.m.

After dinner Verrier sits down to study the Book of Mormon for a couple of hours before going to bed.

"I have lots of energy," says the tall, wiry Cuban. "I love my family, I love my work, and I love the Lord Jesus Christ."

Verrier said it was love, energy and perseverance that propelled him past a plethora of obstacles to membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

His baptism last March in Havana was one of the first convert baptisms performed by the LDS Church in Cuba in more than four decades, according to Elder Carl B. Pratt, of the First Quorum of the Seventy. Pratt supervises work of the LDS church in Cuba. Currently the church has fewer than a dozen members in Cuba, and has no organized presence on the island.

Dr. Luis Verrier, in his home, dictating the history of his conversion to the
LDS church and his subsequent baptism.

Luis Andre Verrier Almaraz was born in the coastal city of Matanzas in 1949. That was 10 years before Cuban guerrillas led by Fidel Castro, overthrew the existing government and established a Marxist state.

Early on, the Cuban government embraced atheism, and for 30 years officially encouraged its practice. The government used a variety of social and job-related pressures to discourage people from participating in organized religious activities.

But in recent years large numbers of Cubans have been turning back to religion. The Roman Catholic Church, and various other religious groups, have been revitalized. Church goers have become increasingly visible and vocal.

Many people say the religious awakening in Cuba, ongoing now for more than a decade, reached a no-turning-back stage last January with the visit to Cuba of Pope John Paul II. Even Fidel Castro seems to acknowledge that religion will play a role in Cuban society from now on. Castro told a group of Catholic visitors from the U.S., "the genie will not go back into the bottle."

Luis Verrier's religious awakening came some years ago and an ocean away from his Havana home.

The Cuban government sent Verrier to the Cape Verde Islands, off the west coast of Africa, to serve as a member of an international medical team there. In the Cape Verdes, and later Guinea-Bissau, Verrier says, he began to turn toward God.

"It was a great experience, professionally, socially, and more than anything else, spiritually," he said of the assignment. Had he remained in Cuba, he said, Verrier would have continued to think of religious people as "old fashioned and backward" with no grasp of modern reality.

"The simple, good people of those islands awakened a spiritual dimension in me. Thanks to them I began to look for God."

Verrier's early life was marked by tragedy and disappointment. When he was three years old, Verrier's mother and father were killed in a traffic accident. He and his older sister were raised by their widowed maternal grandmother who supported herself and her grandchildren as a laundress and cleaning woman.

Dr. Luis Verrier at home. Left to right, Dr. Verrier "Dona Dolores," an elderly woman who
lives with the Verriers, Verrier's daugther, and his granddaughter.

His grandmother had Luis baptized in the Catholic Church when he was four years old--some six years before the Cuban revolution--but he never actively practiced the religion.

As a youngster, baseball was Verrier's passion. He was a pitcher whose smoking fast ball and batter-baffling change-ups propelled his teams to league championships in Matanzas Province where he was born.

As a youngster, he was named to the Cuban national youth all star team.

When he was 14, Verrier enlisted in the Cuban military to alleviate family economic pressures and to learn a vocation. By the time he was discharged nearly three years later he was a mechanic.

As a youth, Verrier was an indifferent student, but after his discharge from the military, he enrolled in a worker's education program. He earned a college-preparatory degree while continuing to work full time and play baseball.

Then came a life-changing trauma. Verrier injured the middle finger of his pitching hand, and a doctor amputated it just above the first knuckle. At the same time, perhaps from studying so much, he began having trouble with his eyes. Since he couldn't pitch anymore, and he couldn't see the ball well enough to be a top flight batter, Verrier lost out on his dream of becoming a star on one of the state-subsidized baseball teams in Havana.

At that point, he turned to medicine. As a youth, Verrier lived near a hospital in his hometown of Matanzas, and he always felt a desire to help the people he saw going there to be treated.

With his grandmother's encouragement, Verrier entered medical school in 1971 in Matanzas, and graduated with the class of 1978. During those years, his aging grandmother needed increasing care, and his sister, who married young and had children early, often sought his help.

"Everything came down squarely on my shoulders," he said of those difficult years.

Two years before he graduated from medical school Verrier fell in love with one of his classmates, Gloria Cruz. They were married in 1975.

After his graduation, Verrier rejoined the military where he practiced for several years. Toward the end of that tour of duty he began to specialize in gynecology. He completed a three-year residency in 1986.

A year later Verrier was sent to Cape Verde Islands and became interested in religion. He came in contact with all kinds of religious groups. At that time his interest in religion was still more in his head than in his heart, he said. He returned to Cuba in 1988.

It was in 1991 during a new assignment to West Africa--Guinea-Bissau--that Mormonism entered his life.

"This is my history, and I want to give a true account," he said.

"One day when I came to my room in the dormitory, there was a book on my bed."

It was a Portuguese language copy of the Book of Mormon. "The book just appeared there. I think God put it there, because my room and that building were kept closed. There's a lot of wind and dust over there, and we always kept things closed up." Afterward, no one ever approached him about the Church, or mentioned the book to him.

Verrier read the book sporadically, but circumstances seemed to conspire against his studying it closely. Side effects from an anti-malaria medicine affected his eyes. The book was printed in small type and in a language he understood, but which was not his own.

When Verrier got back to Havana, he wrote to the LDS Church in Salt City asking them to send him a Spanish version of the Book of Mormon, and other literature about the church.

Nearly a year passed and nothing came.

Then one day, Verrier's daughter heard voices outside in the street. The Verriers live on the second floor of a corner building on Calle Sol in Old Havana.

A man, with a foreign accent was asking, "Where does Dr. Luis Verrier live?"

Standing on the sidewalk in front of Verrier's house were LDS Bishop Victor Montoya and his wife, Rebecca from Mexico City. They had come to Cuba on vacation, but had been asked to deliver the Book of Mormon Verrier had requested.

"Señor Victor and Señora Rebecca sat down in my front room and we talked for nearly three hours. I took advantage of them, keeping them so long, but I had so many questions in my mind for which I had no answers."

"That was a marvelous day in my life. I obtained so many answers to questions about the church that I had been inquiring about.

"All the answers to the questions which Señor Victor gave me were answers which I knew deep in my heart were true about the Book of Mormon and the church. These were not the rumors that people had told me about the church."

Dr. Luis Verrier prepares an agenda for church services in the home of Irina and
Natalia Vasilievskaya, in Havana Cuba.

The Montoyas came back the next day. They were accompanied by a young woman, a 23-year-old Cuban-Ukrainian member of the church named Natalia Vasilievskaya Arias. The five of them talked for hours in Verrier's house and on a long walk through the streets of Havana.

Montoya also brought Verrier a Spanish copy of the book, "Search for Happiness," by LDS Apostle M. Russell Ballard, and a testimonial letter sent by Montoya's brother-in-law in Mexico. When Verrier offered the Montoyas coffee and tea, during their first visit, they declined, and told him about the Word of Wisdom--the LDS health code that prohibits members from using tea, coffee, alcohol and tobacco.

Verrier was a heavy smoker. He also drank quantities of coffee and tea, especially when he was on 24-hour shifts at the hospital.

"At the hospital we all used coffee, tea and cigarettes to keep us awake and functioning, especially on the night shift," he said. Verrier had never used alcohol because of the trauma of his parents' death in an alcohol-related car accident.

The next months were dark and difficult for Verrier. An astigmatic condition aggravated by the Malaria medication he had taken in Africa, made it almost impossible for him to read. More than that, he was night blind, and couldn't ride his bicycle to the home of Irina and Natalia Vasilievskaya, his only Cuban link with the church.

Verrier persevered. He quit drinking coffee and tea. He quit smoking cold turkey, and tried faithfully to keep the commandments he'd been taught. As he did, his desire to be baptized became a pulsating need. He said he feared he might die before he could be baptized.

The Montoyas made another visit to Cuba in March of 1997, but Bishop Montoya didn't have approval to perform the baptism. The church was not officially recognized in Cuba, and the political situation between the U.S. and Cuba was tense.

Verrier was deeply disappointed.

"People were asking me about the church, wanting to know why I quit smoking, wanting to know what had happened to me. I wanted to tell them about the gospel, but I wasn't a member. I didn't know how much it was right for me to say."

Verrier wrote to Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Council of the Twelve and pleaded with him to authorize the baptism. Months passed with no word from the church.

Meanwhile changes were occurring in Cuba's religious scene. Churches were being allowed more freedom. Fidel Castro went to the Vatican to meet Pope John Paul II. Castro invited the Pope to visit Cuba, and the Pope accepted. Last January the Cuban government and the Cuban people welcomed the Pope with an outpouring of respect and affection.

The Cuban government let the genie out of the bottle, and Luis Verrier became a beneficiary of its release.

One day last March--Friday the 6th to be exact--Verrier was visiting at his neighbor's house. The phone rang. The call was for Verrier. It was Natalia, his Mormon friend.

"Luis,I have a surprise for you," she said.

"The only surprise that you could give me is that Victor is in Cuba," he replied.

"Yes, Victor is in Cuba," she said.

"And what about my baptism?"

"He didn't say anything about that."

"This can't be. I've got to be baptized."

Natalia said that Bishop Montoya would come to Verrier's house the next day at around 9 or 10 a.m.

Dr. Luis Verrier and Natalia Arias.

"I was awake all night. I just couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned and waited for morning," said Verrier. "All I could think about was that meeting with Victor."

When Montoya arrived at the house he told Verrier that the church had approved the baptism, and proceeded with a baptismal interview. Montoya brought a letter from Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Council of the Twelve.

"It was a marvelous letter. A marvelous letter. I'm going to keep it all my life," said Verrier.

"The interview went well. There were no problems. I think I had been prepared for a long time. A long time," said Verrier.

Plans were made for the baptism--special clothing, transportation, other details--to take place the next day, Sunday, March 8, at a beach near the home of Irina and Natalia Vasilievskaya.

Verrier spent another sleepless night, "Thinking and praying and communing with God and Jesus Christ," he said. "I think I felt the way Joseph Smith felt the night he was visited by the Angel Moroni."

Early the next morning Victor took a bus to the Irina Vasilievskaya's house.

The baptismal party consisted of Bishop Montoya and his wife, Rebecca; Irina Vasilievskaya and her daughter Natalia Arias; Marisol Vivo Loza, a woman who was investigating the church; Patricia Wara Mogrovejo Cerruto, an 18-year-old Latter-day Saint from Bolivia, who was in Cuba on a scholarship to study ballet, and Dr. Luis Verrier.

Natalia Arias, left, and Patricia Wara select songs for an LDS church
service at Natalia's home.

The group went to Miramar, a beach not far from Irina's house. As soon as they saw the ocean, they realized there was a problem. The surf was up, and what Verrier described as grade four waves were crashing, one on top of another, onto the sandy beach.

They walked along the beach for some time, looking for a place sheltered from the waves, but found none. Then Irina spotted someone she knew--a man who belonged to a nearby social club.

A solution presented itself. The man offered to let them perform the baptism in the club's swimming pool.

But the idea of being baptized in a place where people were lounging around in swim suits, talking and drinking, bothered Verrier. He felt it wouldn't be conducive to the spirit of a baptism. So they declined the man's offer and kept walking.

Finally, rounding a curve a long distance from where they had begun, the baptismal party came upon a stone outcrop that jutted into the ocean. Nestled there in the outcrop was a small tidal pool, protected from the crashing waves, and deep enough for a baptism by immersion.

As soon as he saw it, Verrier said, he knew they had found the right place.

Dressed in white, the two men stepped down into the water. With the roar of the waves sounding in their ears, and ocean spray splashing over their bodies, Bishop Victor Montoya of Mexico City, Mexico, raised his right hand toward heaven, said a prayer, and baptized Dr. Luis Andre Verrier Almaraz, of Havana, Cuba, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

LDS church members in the patio of the home of Irina and Natalis Vasilievskaya
where LDS services are sometimes held. Left to right: Patricia Wara,
Marisol Vivo, Irina Vasilievskaya, Luis Verrier, Larry Day.

EPILOGUE: This story winds up in late September 2002 with a long distance telephone call from Lawrence, Kansas to Lisbon, Portugal.

For a while I kept in touch with Luis, Irina and Natasha. But little by little contact was lost. Phone calls are difficult to Cuba, and email traffic can be sporadic. Some weeks after the “Havana Saint” story was published Luis was posted overseas again by the Cuban government. He went to Africa and East Timor. Then Luis went to Europe and took an advanced course in microsurgery at an institute in Milan, Italy. He sought approval of his government to participate in the program but didn’t receive an answer either way, so he attended. Afterward a medical friend in Havana told Luis that he should stay overseas–that there were people who didn’t like his having stayed for the program in Milan without permission.

While he was in Africa, Luis became ill, and at the same time became concerned about his little granddaughter. He returned to Cuba to recuperate. That was in January 2000. Coincidentally, or by inspiration, Elder Carl Pratt went to Cuba at the same time. It was then, Luis said, that he received the Melchezdek Priesthood and was ordained an Elder.

I went back to Cuba last December (2001) with my daughter, a Physician, who had spent time as part of her family practice residency in Matanzas. I went to sacrament meeting in Irina and Natasha’s home in La Lisa. An American attorney who was in Cuba for an AMA conference, attended the same morning. There were two elders, a deacon, an investigator at church that morning in the home of Irina and Natasha. It was sunny and bright.

Luis said on the phone from Lisbon that he’s going back to East Timor in October.

I’ve lost touch with the Irina and Natasha, no phone or email. But I’ll keep trying to make contact. I want to tell Irina’s story next.

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