Good morning, Mrs. Viviane!

While listening to Bishop Macedo’s meeting, when he spoke about people who are not willing to give up sin, I remembered a young woman from our Church here in Latvia. I kept trying to approach her because she was a firm member of the Church, but had become distant. I tried every way possible to speak to her: phone calls, text messages… But she seemed to always push me away. There were times that, before the meeting finished, I would stand at the front door so she wouldn’t leave without speaking to me. This was the only way I was able to speak to her, but she was still very standoffish.

On Sunday, she came to me. I was counseling someone else, yet she waited until I finished. She apologized because she had been lying to me. She told me she was living at home, and then that she was living alone; but the truth was that she was living with another girl and they were in a relationship. She explained that she was afraid to come speak to me, because she knew I would say what she was doing was wrong, and she didn’t want to give up this sin.

This young woman said that she had decided to stop making the same mistakes, and that she was not basing this decision on what she was feeling. She understood that her emotions were leading her to sin.

This week, I have already noticed a difference. She calls me; I no longer need to go chasing after her. She has been approaching us, which is completely opposite of what she was doing before.

She was a clear example that when a person is living in the world, in sin, they run away from us. They do this because they’re not willing to give up their sin. They know that it is wrong, but want to feel, to indulge in the “pleasure” sin gives them at that moment.

Giuliana Schapowal