THE OLD BRICK BUILDING

The following story was told to me by a friend:

While serving as an LDS Missionary in South America, we were teaching a family that had a young female child that was acting in a strange, unusual way, as if she were possessed by an evil spirit. We asked the child’s parents about her contorted behavior and they told us that a “witch woman” had cast a wicked spell on her. My companion and I gave the child a blessing and cast the evil spirit from her and she became her normal self again.

We had heard many bad reports about this “witch woman” from others in the town and decided to interview her and find out if the rumors were true. Rather than just my companion and I going to visit her, we decided to take two more elders with us, so that four of us went to the old brick building where she lived. The foul odor emanating from that building was enough to make one sick.

We knocked on her door and a man’s voice said, “Who is it?” We identified ourselves and asked if we could visit with her for a while. She opened the door and we expected to see her and a man within, but when she told us to come in, we realized the man’s voice was coming from her. We thought at first that it was some sort of disguise, perhaps a man in a woman’s outfit but soon discovered that it was indeed a woman, with a male voice. The room was dark and unkempt and it seemed as if bathing was not practiced often. I can still see in my mind's eye where she dwelt and the remembered sight of it brings chills to my soul.

Not long after we arrived she pointed to me and said,”I know you. We knew each other in the life before this. You were one of the valiant ones. I am going to see to it that your mission in this country is destroyed and your work, unsuccessful.”

Despite her threat, nothing ever came of it. We thought about casting the evil spirit from her, but the Spirit of God told me that the two of them had dwelt in the same body so long together, that it would be better if we just walked away and so we did. Nothing before or since has given me more assurance that we struggled mightily with evil forces before we physically came to earth than this experience on that day.