A Travesty and a Triumph of Love

Chapter One
That Fateful Day at Encanto Park

It was springtime in Phoenix, Arizona. Even though Phoenix has an extremely hot desert climate in which the temperature may soar to 115 degrees in midsummer, it is better known for its balmy winters and beautiful springtimes.
It was on such a day in the early spring that our Ninth Annual Phoenix Folk Traditions Music Festival took place at Encanto Park, the largest and most beautiful park in our city. Saturday, March 21, 1998, was a day that changed the rest of our lives forever, and had an effect on you, Posterity.
On this day, a certain man was to do his one-man guitar performance at noon in the boathouse, where people rent small boats to travel the waterways of the Encanto Park Lagoon. On the day of the festival, the boathouse was being used as an activity center, and this man’s performance was one of several scheduled there.
In the audience sat an attractive, well-dressed, auburn-haired woman. She was there to see the man’s performance. Her name was Donna—Donna James was how he had once known her. But that had been years ago.
After the man’s performance, Donna approached him. He recognized her. “You look familiar,” the man remarked.
Donna was slightly upset that he didn’t immediately remember who she was. She countered curtly, “I should!” Then she continued, “Don’t you remember where we met? Saul’s house?”
Shocked, the man remembered. He was suddenly filled with fear that this encounter would cost him his present marriage. He listened as she went on to remind him of the son they had conceived together so many years ago.
Donna misconstrued his look of fear as embarrassment and denial. She grew even more upset. “Oh, by the way,” she finally snapped, “your son happens to have a lot more talent than you ever did!” Quickly, she turned and walked away.
A few moments later, he suddenly felt compelled to follow her outside. He saw her disappear over the nearby bridge that forded one of the waterways behind the boathouse. Even though she momentarily turned to look back at him, he did not call out to her. He let her walk away.
The man drove around for an hour, wondering how to finally tell his wife about the woman who had been part of his life twenty-eight years before. He had kept this secret from his wife for a long time. He had always planned to reveal it someday, especially after he and his wife joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints fourteen years ago. He spent those years praying from time to time for the Lord’s help in finding the right time to reveal the secret to her. By the time the man returned home that day, he had come to recognize that this whole incident was an answer to that very prayer. Yes, the time had come at last to tell his wife.
My story is about far more than this man’s fear of telling his wife about Donna James and their son. My name is Sandra, and I am the wife of this man.
The man is David Rivero, your ancestor. To help you understand the scope of my story, I must take you back to the very beginning, to the root of the reason I was never told about Donna.
My story describes in detail how Satan can destroy a family by strategically orchestrating his tactics against its weakest areas. Satan uses his best temptations, which are applied at the right times and by the right people.
This, Posterity, is a story of how he almost destroyed mine.