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1 Across the Waters Practitioners Speak EVA FERNANDEZ BRAVO, YVONNE B. DRAKES, AND DELORIS SEIVERIGHT Faith, Hope, and Charity Eva Fernandez Bravo, Spiritualist (Transcription and English translation by Adriana Premat)* I am Eva Fernandez from Cuba. I’m going to speak humbly of things that may be small, but are very interesting. I am a 70-year-old woman, with six children, thirteen grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. I am a millionaire. I have been able to attain this wealth, to bring up my family, because of the spirits and because I have obeyed and have done what they have told me and not what I wanted to do. I came here today because I am driven by the spirits to seek out faith, to unite us, to strengthen the chain because faith, faith is now divided. The spirits have an important mission to the students, the sick; they are important for all needs; but today they are being divided by the monetarization [la metalización] of faith and charity. To save the needy, to give charity to the person who needs it, money [el metal] should not matter. What should matter is the love with which we are going to help human beings because that is what made us missionaries; that is what put us on this mission, making us missionaries who are not bought since we carry it from birth, because the mission cannot be learnt. No. This is a mission given us by the Almighty, wherein lies faith, hope, and charity. What is charity? That I am able to solve a problem for a brother or sister that needs me. But if I go with the money, that is not charity, it is not faith. And it is this faith that we have to seek, in order to continue maintaining it because I know something very great is approaching us in the spiritual field. And this great thing that we are awaiting, we must earn it with faith. And for this I have come here to *This translation is based on a transcription of an oral presentation in Spanish that was taped at York University, Toronto (1 November 1996). The translator has remained as faithful as possible to the original words of Eva Fernandez, even though this means leaving ambiguities in the English text. 18 Eva Fernandez Bravo, Yvonne B. Drakes, Deloris Seiveright share with you this faith, so that we may unite to make that faith greater and await what the Almighty has for us. In my faith, when it is time to give charity I invoke the spirits and they make an appearance [hacen trance] in my person. I’m not always conscious, but the spirit expresses what it wants to say. Then there are other brothers and sisters around us and they say what the spirit expressed and I do as the spirit orders me. Well, I saw the spirits when I was 8. My mother did not believe it because she was Catholic. She told me that I was not well. But when I was a young woman I visited the cemetery a lot because a friend of mine, an elderly blind man, had died. So I would pick flowers and I nurtured this spirit. A period of time passed during which I knew nothing more of these things. I got married. I still did not see anything, but I felt things and I loved Santa Barbara, very much. She was my friend. When I had my last son, I had had six children and I was twenty-four and a half. Then, the spirits returned. They made an appearance [hacen trance] in my person. I worked at a factory and my children were single. Two of them got married; there were two women and two men left. And the spirits took me out of the factory to look after my unmarried children and I would say, “Oh, how am I going to support them!” A spirit told me that we would not go without our daily bread. And with my faith, in my house, I worked the spirits. They all got married . And, look, now I’m single because they all got married and I’m grateful to God and to all the spirits. But it was with my faith, because I didn’t doubt when they took me away from work. My “head saint” [santo de cabeza] is blessed Santa Barbara and my ritual, after, is of the spirits. My humble...

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