“The Progress of the Work of the Lord”
Bartolo Chi grew up as the eldest child in a farming family of seven brothers and six sisters in San Jose Succotz, a village in the Cayo District. To help his family financially, he left high school and joined the police force in 1974, transferring to Belize City, Punta Gorda, and San Ignacio. In 1980, he and his girlfriend, Blanca Olivia Tzuncal, married and rented a small house in San Ignacio, where they encountered Latter-day Saint missionaries.
“I had some bad habits, I would call it,” recalled Bartolo. “That was a challenge then, in listening to the elders and trying to see that it was good for my life. [Blanca] gave me a lot of encouragement, and that’s why we continued to listen to the teachings with the missionaries.” Eventually Blanca and Bartolo moved to Belize City. In August 1982, just as Blanca was about to give birth to their first baby, they met missionaries again. On September 26, 1982, they were baptized in the sea at a place called the Bird’s Isle.
Thereafter, Blanca and Bartolo served in the fledgling Belize City branch. “It required changing the job,” Bartolo said. At that time, his job as an immigration officer required him to work at the airport on Sundays. “So I went to the Lord one day, and I told him, ‘Father, I want to attend Church. My wife has two kids [who are] very small, and I want to be with them.’” Two weeks later, the local inspector offered him a job that gave him weekends off, allowing him to work in the Church and be with his family more regularly.
Bartolo and Blanca longed “to come back to where we came from” in the Cayo District. Bartolo wondered how he could make a living in his home village “without any qualification.” He went to the Lord in prayer again. Afterward, a friend, who was a tinsmith, came to him and said, “Come to my place where I’m working and I will teach you this job.”
“I never knew nothing about tinsmith[ing],” recalled Bartolo. “But the Lord knew that I could learn, and he knew that I had that talent.” Bartolo began learning tinsmithing in the evenings. Eventually, he learned the trade and was able to work full-time as a tinsmith, making household items to sell to stores all over the country.
Bartolo’s new trade gave the family financial independence. They could live where they wished. They traveled to the temple in Guatemala to be sealed with their two children. They also shared the gospel with family in San Jose Succotz. Both of Bartolo’s parents and several of his siblings eventually joined the Church, but Bartolo’s mother, Angela, was baptized first.
“She was so happy when she heard that I had changed, because she knew me when I grew [up] with her and she knew the difference,” Bartolo remembered. “I saw the progress of the work of the Lord.”