A Letter to God by Gregorio López Fuentes is a story of extreme faith in God. A natural calamity leaves Lencho, a hard-working farmer, in distress. The farmer writes a letter to God asking him to send money. The chapter concludes in a very ironic situation.
Summary
Lencho was a poor but hardworking farmer. His house was on the top of a hill and that was the only house in the valley. He hoped for a good crop, but his fields needed rain or at least a shower. He waited for the rain and it did come. One day, it started drizzling. In the beginning, Lencho felt the falling raindrops as ‘new silver coins’ falling from the sky. But gradually, the rain transformed into a hail storm. The hailstones fell for an hour. It destroyed his crop completely. Lencho’s soul was filled with sadness. He thought that they would go hungry the whole year unless they found someone who could help them. Suddenly his heart was filled with hope. He had firm faith in God. Lencho knew how to read and write. The following Sunday, he wrote a letter to God mentioning his destroyed crop and asked him for money so that he could sow his field again. Then he put the letter in an envelope, addressed it to `God’ and went to the post office. He affixed a stamp on it and dropped it in the mail-box.
The postman, who took the letter out of the mail-box saw the letter and showed it to the postmaster. Everyone in the post office had a hearty laugh. But immediately the postmaster realized the man’s predicament and unshakable faith in God. He decided to help the man. He discussed with his colleagues and all of them decided to part with some money for an act of charity. They collected money, put it in an envelope, and addressed it to Lencho. This letter contained a single word in the form of a signature: God.
The next Sunday, Lencho went to the post office. The postmaster handed him the letter. Lencho was not at all surprised on receiving a letter from God. He had an unshakeable faith that God would reply in the form of money and he did receive it. He opened the envelope but became angry on counting the money. There were only seventy pesos in the envelope, whereas he had asked for one hundred. He knew God could not have made a mistake. Immediately, he wrote another letter to God, put it in the mail-box and went out.
The postmaster took out the letter from the mail-box and opened it. Lencho had requested God to send the rest of the money i.e., thirty pesos as he had received only seventy pesos. Lencho had a feeling that the people at the post office had cheated him by taking out some money from God’s envelope. So, he wrote that God should not send money through mail as according to him, the post office employees were a bunch of crooks.