The first time Eduardo Ayala and his wife, Blanca, attended Church in Santiago, Chile, a single gesture changed the course of their lives forever.
"Sunday School had already started, and when we got to the door and stuck our heads in, we saw that the chapel was full," recalled Elder Ayala, sustained to the Second Quorum of the Seventy during general conference March 31.One of the elders who had been teaching them was playing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" on the piano, he said, but playing "very passively," which Elder Ayala demonstrated by humming in a plodding way. Suddenly the elder saw the couple walk in, and he began playing very enthusiastically and majestically.
"You know, that sole gesture changed our lives immediately," he said reflectively during an interview with the Church News. "I knew then we'd be accepted, that we'd have a good relationship with the members. The happiness the elder had felt was transferred to us."
That was 21 years ago. And since that day, Elder Ayala declared, "we've never missed one Church meeting! It's been marvelous."
The 52-year-old Chilean and his wife were baptized June 21, 1969, six months after being contacted by missionaries knocking on doors. ("My wife thought they were selling something; that's why she let them in," he explained with a chuckle.) Within eight months of their baptisms, he was called as branch president in Santiago.
"Though I was still very new, I began to serve quickly in the Church, and received a very strong training," said Elder Ayala.
The Church was young then in Chile, affording what he called "an ideal opportunity" for leadership, but its numbers grew rapidly. Soon he was called as district president in Santiago, and when Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Council of the Twelve went to Chile to create a stake from that district in 1974, he was called as stake president. Later assignments included regional representative twice, mission president in Montevideo, Uruguay, and temple sealer.
His calling to the Seventy, however, came as a complete shock.
"We haven't come out of our amazement yet," said Elder Ayala, the first General Authority from Chile, and the third from South America. "As I told President [Gordon B.] Hinckley, it's been the highest honor of my life. I know the Lord has His paths, but never in my life had I thought this would be possible."
Born and raised in the small town of Coronel, nestled in southern Chile where snow-capped volcanoes and lush green meadows are ubiquitous, Elder Ayala studied to become a textile technician. At age 21, he met the young woman who was later to become his wife.
"We met at a funeral of a relative of mine," he explained. "It was very funny, because we didn't get along well at all at first - it was a choque [crash]."
Sister Ayala concurred wholeheartedly. "What I didn't like about him was that he was always telling jokes," she reported with a twinkle in her eyes. "My temperament isn't like that - I like to play, but not tell jokes. I said, `I can't believe how people can put up with that man who's always laughing!,' but I never thought that man who was always laughing would be my husband later."
After three years of dating, it was, in fact, she who proposed to him. When her sister sent the 18-year-old Blanca two boat tickets to visit her in Punta Arenas, near the Strait of Magellan, she gave Eduardo an ultimatum.
"This is it," she told him firmly. "If you really love me, let's get married Tuesday (the day was Saturday). If we don't get married, I'm leaving."
Eduardo considered it "for about 10 minutes," recalled Sister Ayala, and said, "Well, OK."
They were married that Tuesday at the Civil Register, Feb. 7, 1959.
"It was an adventure, but a marvelous adventure," she said. "More than 30 years we've been married, and the adventure continues."
"What you see [in me] is the product of her work," Elder Ayala was quick to say. "She is my architect. Everything I am belongs to her. She changed my habits, my customs, my way of walking, my way of talking."
"The only thing I couldn't do," interrupted his wife, "is make him grow more!" Elder Ayala and his wife are both about 5 feet 5 inches.
Shortly after their marriage, they moved to Santiago, and Elder Ayala took an administrative job with an electrical company, where he helped with planning and administration of the 10 most important industries of the capital city. It was during that time that the couple, then with three children, met the missionaries.
Today, their 30-year-old son, Patricio, is the bishop of their ward in the Santiago El Bosque Stake, and he and his wife have two children. Their 27-year-old daughter, Viviana, lives in Japan with her American husband, and they have one child; their youngest son, 25-year-old Ricardo, studies at BYU and teaches at the Missionary Training Center in Provo.
In 1974, Elder Ayala began to work as director of seminaries and institutes for the Church Educational System, and Sister Ayala served as a seminary teacher, in addition to her work with non-member drug-addicted teenagers. Because of their extensive work with youths - in addition to having had children of their own - they have developed a great love for young people.
"I believe we have marvelous youths in the Church," said Elder Ayala emphatically. "It's so beautiful being among them. They know who has a better life, between one who accepts the principles of the gospel and lives them, or one who knows the principles and has them outside of his life."
His wife added, "We're living in very difficult times, and maybe living too hastily. Sometimes the youths believe they should try everything before life escapes them. . . . If only they could think that within them, each one, there's a divine potential, it's the most important thing they should learn.
"Adults have to have more patience, more tolerance, more time to listen to the youths," she continued. "When I worked with the drug-addicted teenagers, they were addicts because they didn't have the attention that all humans need. For youths to change their lives and live as the Father would have them live, you have to make them feel loved."
Asked if he had any advice that he would give to members of the Church, Elder Ayala paused thoughtfully and said, "Accept the principles of the gospel and live them.
"Never, never go away from the Church," he counseled. "Trust in the goodness of the Lord, and love Him. I hope that my position as a new member of the Seventy can help Church members to come unto Christ, to understand how marvelous it is on that path."
