This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2009, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Venderlei Lira

Brazil

After a successful LDS mission, Vanderlei had few options but to dig ditches and clean sewers.

As an LDS branch president for six years, his congregation grew from 18 to 110 members. At the same time, his family sometimes suffered from lack of food and decent housing.

Vanderlei often visited a nearby technical school, admiring the students and dreaming of going there one day. After eight years, the Perpetual Education Fund gave him a loan to enter one of Brazil's finest schools. He did so well in his 14-month course in occupational safety that the school offered him a job as safety manager of a large new campus. Under his management, accident rates at the school fell by 80 percent.

His salary shot up fourfold, he repaid the loan and the school paid for advanced education.

Vanderlei's stake president describes the young man as "a giant who has been liberated by opportunity."

José Miguel Bueno

Dominican Republic

Miguel, an LDS convert, came from a poor family.

The church helped support him as a missionary, and, after he returned, offered him a Perpetual Education Fund loan to pay for training in computerized accounting.

"From that time, my choices changed 100 percent," Miguel wrote to PEF administrators. "Before that, the jobs I had were always as a helper, carrying things, for example: duty-free operator, tailor shop, lathe operator, house painter."

Even before completing his coursework, Miguel had a better job as a data-input production worker, administrative assistant and replacement-parts warehouse man. Now he is a manager at a super-warehouse with an inventory valued at $5 million.

"The best thing about all this is that my income has increased some 400 percent in the last two years," Miguel says, "and I was able to practically pay off my debt to the fund in three payments.

"If we want great blessings in our lives, we have to rise to the levels of those blessings," says Miguel, who is president of an LDS branch in one of the British Virgin Islands. "That is achieved through studying and being responsible in the companies where we work."

Sandro Roberto Machado Fagundes

Brazil

Sandro had not completed the eighth grade before his LDS mission, so he wondered what kind of job he could land when he returned home.

All he could find was an early-morning job unloading trucks of frozen chicken. When Sandro met his future wife, he was ashamed to tell her he had not finished school.

Eventually, Sandro finished high school and, then, while serving as an LDS bishop, he applied for and received a Perpetual Education Fund loan to take a technical course in work safety.

He secured his first job in the field while in school and within six months became a manager. He now works for a multinational firm and heads the Curitiba Jardim do Sol LDS Stake.

"When President [Gordon] Hinckley announced the Perpetual Education Fund, I knew that it was an inspired program," Sandro wrote PEF administrators. "The questions that I had about what I was going to do after the mission fell silent in the revelation from a prophet of the Lord."

--Source: PEF files