A POWERFUL TESTIMONY: A touching testimony of an angel I came to know, and so blessed that God gave me an opportunity to know someone like her.
Meet my dear Ate Arlene Vigilia. I came to know her through my in-laws when they met her for a missionary trip in Baja, California in Rosarito, Mexico. My mother in law was amazed with her due to her proficiency in their native language, Spanish.
Ate Arlene was an obstetric nurse who had assisted many deliveries in the US and was a certified medical doctor in Mexico. Her father was an Adventist pastor who migrated to the United States together with the whole family when her firstborn sibling petitioned them all. She came from a family of 9, Ate Arlene was the second to the youngest.
She studied Nursing in the United States and at the same time, while working, she took her medical degree in Mexico that helped her to be a very good Spanish conversationalist, both to my in laws and to all her Hispanic patients in the US to think that their language of instruction in Mexico is Spanish. She was a certified and licensed doctor in Mexico. In 2007, she was trying to get a medical license in the United States. She tried twice, but hadn’t got the US Medical license. She stopped trying after the second try and just continue to do her nursing job in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles California where she worked until she retired in 2016. Her desire to be a doctor was rooted on her desire to better serve the community where they do mission trips during her younger days. I met her when she was 57 years old already. She never stopped doing her missionary trip from her younger days till she fell ill last year.
A missionary by heart, just like Paul, a tentmaker, she worked her nursing shifts and spends it for missionary purposes. She already had set plans every year on her scheduled mission trips and saves money for those trips. She has been to different parts of the world from America to Asia to do medical missions, church building and outreach programs. With a frugal lifestyle, she supported different ministries both in the US and in the Philippines. One of those is the “It is Written ” ministry and supporting lay pastors in the Philippines. One involvement she had recently, was being a medical director for Uganda of Farmstew.org directed to help the people in Africa. She was fully retired from her job as a nurse in 2016. She dedicated all her time in this ministry where they were inculcating education, water supply building, feeding and health teaching on nutrition and healthy lifestyle. Teaching them how to cook different indigenous vegetables available in their community.
She was a selfless person; whose desire was to help people to draw them to Jesus. I never had dull moments staying in her house. With complete books of Ellen White and nursing, medical health books she has, it was like I was inside a huge library! I remember when she was driving with me going for Mia’s prenatal appointment, she will gaze up to the sky and say, “Elvie, I’m only waiting for Jesus to come.” With gospel music in the car, it felt like Heaven on Earth already. God has prepared the path already before I came to the United States then. I delivered in the hospital where she worked. She was my nurse at home during my labor hour doing internal examinations where she was completely equipped for any emergency home delivery, she drove me to the hospital the at the same time doing her morning shift, she was beside me in the delivery room, she was my postpartum nurse on duty to the hospital, she took me home with her since I lived with her for six months in Norwalk, California. She was the one driving me back and forth for pre- and postnatal appointments when I had Mia. She helped me to go through the passports of my Mia and Emma, driving back and forth to Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. She fetched me from San Diego to Los Angeles the time I had postpartum hemorrhage for a uterine atony because of overstretching my uterus for my Emma who then weighed 8.3 pounds! She arranged my surgery in the same hospital where I delivered Mia, where she was working at the same time. Since she was working there, the hospital gave me a priority for a surgery the next day and a hospital discount! What a blessing! The concern she had during that time I called regarding the postpartum hemorrhage that she was so worried of, coming from a night shift when I called her that morning, she said that she’ll ask one of our friends, Jennifer, to drive her to fetch me in San Diego since she couldn’t drive 2 hours long due to some car accident that partly debilitated her back to endure a 2-hour drive. I stayed with her for a month till it’s a day before my flight going back to Dubai. She always said that her house is the house of God. Anyone who is a missionary or any one in need of shelter were welcome in her house! She was with me with my first travel back to the Philippines from the US. I’m so blessed how God arranged that trip that she can go for a holiday on the same departure date I have from the US to the Philippines.
I will always have fun memory of her, after her mission trip in Aklan, Philippines in 2008.She spent a week with us in Batangas. she would just get a knife, go to the field, get some fresh vegetables, flowers, anything she can use to make a meal at home. She would cook her fresh harvest and voila! We have instant squash, alugbati, moringa, and saluyot soup fresh from the farm! She was indeed a star chef! Not only that, she taught me about spiritual matters, cooking styles and techniques but also preparing for the future! I remember that when I came back to the Philippines in 2008, I encouraged my parents to get an estate for cemetery. I learned that from my Ate Arlene! She showed me her piece of memorial lot in California, even her Funeral program is ready! She arranged all the programs just for her not to be a burden to her family in time that she needs to rest while waiting for Jesus to come if Jesus will not yet come while she was still alive! That’s how ready she was!
Sadly, at the end of May 2017, she died of breast cancer. Up to now, when I think of her, there is an ache in my heart. I thought that with the healthy lifestyle she had, both body and soul, I could see that she would so much of her future ahead of her, that she would experience a crisp old age. The only thing that I don’t have any gauge of was her mind. She came from a broken marital relationship that time when I came to know her, she was already a year divorced when she got married. They had no children since she got married when she was 56 years old with her husband who was 16 years junior than her, who then during that time, was working as a lay pastor from another Christian denomination. I can feel her pain every time she tells her story to me. 6 years have passed since the last time I was with her in 2007. Even when she came for a visit in the Philippines in 2008 and 2011 and when I was there in the US in 2012, I could still feel her pain when she talked about her estranged husband. Despite their separation, she still extended her support to the local ministry where her ex-husband was in the Philippines, and she did her medical mission trips in that place every time she visited the Philippines for a vacation. Her heartache doubled when she learned that her ex-husband is going to be married to a Filipina residing in their community in Aklan, Philippines.
Her family in the United States asked me if I knew anything about it or if Ate Arlene told me about any health concerns she had. It was only some fainting spell two weeks before she died that they came to know that she was already in her terminal stage of cancer. Ate Arlene was a very stoic person, she didn’t complain even when she felt any pain in her body. She frequently kept that to herself. Rather to be in the hospital during the last two weeks of her life, she chose hospice care and waited for her time at the house of her sister in Glendale California. I was able to speak to her, that night before she died, and prayed with her. She couldn’t talk anymore as what the family told me that possibly she can’t utter any word to me since she was already not talking to them due to her tremendous pain. But during that night, she spoke in a very soft hoarse voice telling me, “Elvie, don’t cry, don’t cry!”
Just as how my husband describes her, “She was a lady with a big heart!” I’m seeing an awesome angel sent from above every time I think about her. She was very loving, caring and an inspiring angel to me. I don’t look at her as a friend, I look at her as my mother. I even told her that when we retire for good in the Philippines, I invited her to live with us in Batangas and continue to do her mission work there. She was so glad to do her ministry with us. Ate Arlene will forever occupy a space in my heart…
Sadly, she left us, but gladly, she is now resting to wait for what she’s dreaming of every time in a different scenario. No longer waiting, but now, beside our Savior Jesus when He comes. Just like what 1 Corinthians 15: 55,57,58 says:
Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
I AM WITH YOU 