Blanca was just four years old when she lost her mother to typhoid fever. She was left with a gaping hole in her heart.

“I was sad all the time,” she says. “Not being able to remember a kiss or hug from my mother was very hard. I do not doubt that she loved me, but I have no memory of her since I was very little when she died.”

Blanca and her sisters moved in with their grandmother in her home in Mexico. She only finished junior high school. Since childhood, Blanca has searched for a higher power even though she didn’t know Jesus. “When I was in junior high, I prayed a lot though I didn’t know who I was praying to,” she says.

When Blanca was 14, her aunt moved into her grandmother’s house. Blanca’s aunt had lived a tough life; she typically accepted jobs that were not the best morally, but that paid enough to support her family. But this time, something was different. Blanca’s aunt was talking differently, she dressed differently. She was a completely changed person because she had accepted Jesus.

“I asked my aunt who Jesus was, and she told me that He was the Son of God who had given His life for us to forgive our sins,” she remembers. “In that moment, I understood for the first time that it was Jesus to whom I always prayed.”

But this knowledge didn’t change Blanca’s heart immediately. She attended church a few times but continued with her sinful life.

Years later, in the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Blanca’s husband contracted the virus. Blanca did not work, and her family relied on her husband for all financial support. She panicked and began to seek God for help.

“Someone at my husband’s work had given him a Bible, but we never read it. We kept it in a closet,” she remembers. “I felt miserable. I was crying about our situation. I was terrified to get sick. I was begging God to heal my husband. Suddenly, the name of Jesus came to my mind, and it was like my eyes had been opened.”

Blanca began reliving those days at church with her aunt. She was singing the worship songs in her head and began to feel something different: hope. She began reading the Bible to her husband. Thankfully, he healed from the virus.

And there was a spiritual healing in Blanca. She began to reach out to the God she always knew was there with her. Because of the pandemic, local churches were closed, but her nephew shared his church’s online livestream so Blanca could learn more about the Lord. When the churches opened, Blanca was there every chance she got. The pastor enrolled Blanca in a Bible League Project Philip Bible study where she learned more and more about the love of Jesus, a void that she’d been longing to fill since her mother died.

“I don’t cry as much for my mom as I used to,” she says. “Now I can remember her with love and not with sadness.”

Blanca’s life has changed through studying God’s Word. “My family and neighbors have noticed differences in my character since I began to study God’s Word. I am kinder to people and try not to criticize or get into the lives of others,” she says.

“I still have a lot to learn, but what I have learned I share with my family, and they realize they need God in their lives, too. I have not yet become like a full-grown person, to look just like Christ and have all His perfection as the Scripture says, but I have complete confidence that God will work in me and my family.”