Parents' faith brings children back to Church

Friday, Apr. 10, 2015

OGDEN — Not until their parents passed away did it really hit the children how important faith was to the family.

Tina Zisumbo and Irma Zisumbo, who have seven other sisters, were raised Catholic, but took their faith for granted.

Then, after going through a divorce, Tina started fading away from the Church.

“After that [divorce] I went to a horrible black hole …. I felt that I didn’t belong anywhere … but it was through my mom that I found my way back to the Church,” said Tina, adding that through her mother’s faith she was able to return to the Church and to start learning more about it.

“When my mother died three years ago, right before fading away I believe that she was really talking to God,” said Tina, who soon after that became immersed in the Bible study group at Saint Joseph Parish in Ogden.

“I also started reading the Dynamic Catholic [program] and I felt completely motivated and I knew that I needed to be more involved in the parish and in the community,” said Tina.

Every day, she said, she has present her mother’s teachings about helping one another.

“We shouldn’t be waiting to be asked; we should just do it by ourselves. I just find that doing that it has helped me grow emotionally, to feel that I belong, that this is where I need to be,” said Tina, who also began bringing all the children of the whole family to church.

“Tina was the one taking my kids to church,” said Irma, who had left the Church but, unlike her sister, didn’t respond to her mother’s encouragement to return. Then, when her mother died, Irma found her words had meaning.

“I wasn’t able to have children and I used to say, ‘I don’t understand why I can’t have any children,’” said Irma. “It wasn’t until I start going back to church that I felt that there may be something else that He wanted for me.”

That “something else” was adopting three children. 

“I know that that’s what He wanted from me. … He wanted me to take care of these kids as my own because He knew that I could not physically have any, but He did want me to be a mom,” said Irma, who  required a hysterectomy several years ago.

“It’s kind of funny  because I had to have it on April 15, and if I didn’t have it that day I would probably have chickened out,” she said. Then, the very next day, she learned that her first son had been born, also on April 15.

“Now I am able to thank God for all the light that He has given me, for the trust that He has in me to raise these children as my own,” said Irma. “I truly believe that had I not ever listened to my mom, and hadn’t had God back into my life, things would have been different.”

Finally, Irma decided to start bringing her kids to church, and to her surprise, one day her son, now 13, said, “Mom,  I want to become a priest.”

“It had to take my mother to die for me to realize that I needed to go back to Church; I needed to be the one that took my children to church to tell them about God,” said Irma.

At this year’s Easter Vigil, her three children were baptized and received Holy Communion. 

Tina and Irma now firmly believe that people just need to believe and trust in God.

“You  need to go to church. God will tell you what to do, and He listens. Even though you don’t see Him, you feel Him in your heart,” said Irma. “He will show you the way. Believe in Him.”

Tina said that she enjoys going to church and helping out because “I think it brings me closer to God, and it is what He wants us to do. He wants us to be faithful, to spread the word to everyone, and my life has changed completely.”

Tina, Irma and their seven sisters were brought up by their parents in the Catholic faith; they also excelled in school, said Father Ken Vialpando, pastor of Saint Joseph Parish. “All of these nine girls went to Weber State, graduated with degrees and are now all successful in their own careers, which to me, is a credit to  their dad and mom’s faith,” Fr. Vialpando said.