He agreed to talk to me and bring me back into the church. In fact there was a trip planned to Tsuwano where their were Japanese who were tortured and died in the name of Christ. Father Anderson even allowed me to receive Holy Communion on that one occasion and said I had to make a general confession etc. then I would be allowed to receive Our Lord regularly. I will never forget the wonderful feeling I had receiving Our Lord again. I returned to the Church and within a year, my son saw many wonderful changes in me and he too decided to become Catholic at age 16. He started RCIA that year.

In February of 1995 I decided to go on a pilgrimage. I wanted to go to Medjugorge, but that was not meant to be. Someone told me about Betania, so that is where I was going!

David asked to go as well, I told him no. It would be too expensive flying from Japan across the world.

Upon making my reservation, I went to bed when a voice inside stressed the urgency of my taking David. I got up and made reservations for him as well. We spent a week at the [apparition] compound in Betania. David was always playing baseball and hanging out with members of Maria Esperanza's family while the group I was with pretty well hung among themselves.

Maria told everyone they needed to be more like David. We each had a special time with Maria, except that because David was with me, we were told to see Maria together. Maria told David that people would learn from him, that he would be a great teacher, and that his life would be one of spontaneous giving without expecting a reward and that God would reward him. She also told him he needed complete conversion. At that point Maria adopted David as her spiritual "grandson" and told him that from now on his life would be changed.

David was to become Catholic in April but the devil decided to make things complicated for him. We were not informed of the profession of faith on Holy Thursday and the chaplain felt David should wait to become a member of the church. When he talked to David, my son came out crying and said he really wanted to become Catholic and had he known about the service, he would have been there. It took everyone in the church to convince the chaplain to change his mind.

David became Catholic in April of 1995. In early September, Maria Esperanza bilocated to Japan and talked with David. When David got up that morning he told me he talked to his grandmom. I got upset because calling home from Japan is costly. He said I wouldn't believe him, but it was his Spanish grandmom who was there sitting on the bed talking with him and that everything in his life will become better. His whole persona changed.... seemed he had goals for his life now and started applying himself at school etc.

On September 24th a typhoon had passed through in the early a.m.; the remainder of the day was beautiful, so David and several friends decided to go to the river for a swim.

The river was flowing at about 18 to 20 knots and was muddy and full of floating debris, but one of the boys decided to go swimming anyway.

Halfway across, he was trapped in a whirlpool. David and a friend formed a human chain trying to reach the screaming boy when an undertow pulled them in toward the whirlpool.

They started screaming for help and three young Marines who were upstream jumped in to help. One Marine almost drowned while the other two managed to rescue two of the boys.

David was pulled back under and evidentially hit his head and was floating face down.

The Marine was unable to grab onto him because of the current. They recovered my sons body the next day! Two years later, I returned to see Maria with a very small group. Maria was again at the compound with her family but was not receiving visitors. I gave her son-in- law some pictures I had taken of David with her family and a ring that I thought David would like her to have.