Now, this same Jose Barretto is a very remarkable character.  He was formerly Superintendent of the Manganese mines near by and very active in politics.  If any questionable work needed to be done in order to influence an election Jose was called upon to do it.  He is a great, strong fellow, more than six feet in height and weighs, perhaps, 250 pounds.  He was a violent man, fearless and desperate.  I noted many scars on his face which were evidences of many dangerous encounters.  He did not deign to steal the ballots, but would take possession of the ballot box, extract from it the proper number of votes, destroy them, seal the box and allow the count to be made.  No one dared withstand him.  He was just as violent in his opposition to the Protestants.  He declared that he would beat any Protestant who should ever come into his house.

Well, one day his own brother-in-law came to see him.  This brother-in-law was blind and also a Christian.  After a while Jose and his wife were commiserating the brother over his blindness when he said, that though his eyes were clouded, his soul saw the light of life.  His sister said to him, “You must be a Protestant.”  He replied, “Yes, thank God, I know Jesus Christ.”  She was so frightened that she fainted, because she had visions of her burly husband pouncing upon her blind brother and beating him to death.  Her husband resuscitated her and soothed her by saying, “I know I have said all of these things about what I would do to the Protestants, but I hope I am not mean enough to strike a blind man and certainly I would not injure your brother.”  That night the brother asked them to read the Scriptures.  They had no Bible, but did possess a book of Bible stories, one of which the sister read, and then the brother asked permission to pray.  Jose Barretto had always been reverential, and so he knelt in prayer.  So earnest and childlike was the praying of the blind brother and so fully did he express the real heart hunger of the great, strong man that when the prayer was finished, Jose Barretto said very sincerely, “Amen.”  He became deeply interested in the gospel.

When the brother left, the Spirit of God so impressed Jose that he felt he must look up a New Testament which he had taken from an employee some time ago.  He had looked at this book which he had taken from the employee’s hands, and finding no saints’ pictures in it, concluded that it was that hated Protestant Bible the priests were trying to keep from being circulated, and had thrown it into a box in the corner of his office.  Now he went to this box, fished out the New Testament, brushed the dust from its pages and read from it the word of life.  The blind brother, in the meantime, had gone to Santo Antonio and told what had happened.  The chief of police of the city, who was a Christian and the President of the Baptist Young People’s Union, declared that he was going out to see Jose.  “I have been afraid to go,” he said, “because Jose has been so violently opposed to the gospel.”