TESTIMONY: "Heaven" on Earth

"Heaven" on Earth

Dennievi Angela H. Florida
Batch 2000, Sta. Mesa Campus

When my grandmother died, I began to question God why He seems to take every person close to my heart. My mom died when I was just three months old. Because my mom was the only daughter, my grandparents requested to take good care of me. As young as 23, my father agreed and after five long years he decided to have his second family.

Being with my grandparents was like being in heaven for they did everything to provide all my needs in every way. I did not even feel that emptiness of growing up without my mom and dad beside me because of the presence of my grandparents. And when the most painful experience of losing my grandmother took place, I did not know what to do for I was used to depend on her in everything that I do.

Our relatives did not tell my father about what happened and they offered to support my schooling in high school. My cousin who was working in New York as a teacher volunteered to finance all the expenses yet I refused. Instead I took a test to be an scholar in The Sisters of Mary School and luckily I passed the test and interview which was conducted by the nuns.

For the second time, I found heaven on earth. A million thanks to Msgr. Aloysius Schwartz who established an institution for the poorest of the poor which provides free high quality of education, food, shelter, and clothing with great love and devotion. 

Staying in the Sisters of Mary for three and a half years was one of the happiest moments that I have experienced in my entire life. There I had a chance to meet a lot of poor and abandoned students with different stories. We were very much lucky to have been given a chance to attain the best academic, vocational and spiritual secondary education that an institution can offer. 

Life inside the four walls of this institution revolves around praying, playing, studying and working. I had a closer connection with God through the different activities that we were doing everyday. It even motivated me to become a nun. We played all types of ball games and indoor games during weekends and during our free time. We also spent our nights and weekends swimming in the pool.

We had the best teachers who were bringing only themselves plus their chalk and some visual aids. Studying in this institution was a great challenge because we were required to speak in English all the time except during the free time when we can use our mother tongue.

We were assigned in different tasks like sweeping the floor, washing the dishes, wiping the windows, arranging our blankets and pillows, arranging our shoes and slippers and cleaning the comfort rooms every after each meal. And because I was the smallest in our group, I was always assigned in arranging the books or putting the toothpaste in our toothbrushes. 

Everything from waking up at 6:00 in the morning until the sleeping time was a routine. Even the menu for the whole week was a routine. My favorite days of the week were Saturdays and Sundays which were spent in general cleaning, attending the mass, praying and playing all day. 

Because of this institution, I learned to design and to sew my own clothes. I can clearly remember that time when we had a class outing as an award for being the best sewers of our batch.  

I enjoyed typing through a typewriter and a computer. I gained knowledge about stenography and bookkeeping. There were also classes in electronics which I enjoyed especially when we fixed electronic gadgets and television set which we also used in watching noon time show.

If most of the first year students suffered from homesickness during the first weeks. Months before graduation, the students wanted to pull back the time so as not to go home yet. And I myself was not an exemption to this.

When my relatives did not allow me to enter nunnery, I wished I was a newly graduate pupil who was just about to enter The Sisters of Mary to study again and again and again…

But as the saying goes that everything comes to an end, I went back home but with a happy and grateful heart for I was once given a chance to find the heaven on earth which is no other than the Sisters of Mary School.

I am now a teacher with a family of my own. Numerous challenges still do come along our way but there are a lot of wonderful blessings that the Lord keeps on showering us everyday and I do believe that The Sisters of Mary School had been my stepping stone in attaining almost all of my goals in life. A million thanks to the sisters who never grew tired in guiding us while we were in this institution.

I do promise that no matter how much success I gain, I will always look back to all the people who extended their help and support for me to be where I am right now. I will not be where I am today without all of them.

With all these experiences, I firmly believe in the saying that “ God will never leave us empty. He will replace everything we lost. If He asks us to put something down, it’s because He wants us to pick something better. Doors may close but surely windows will be opened because everything happens for a reason and it surely makes us a better person.

Because of all the roller coaster rides in my life, I began to understand more about God’s purpose. I would have not felt the genuine love and support of my relatives and that of The Sisters of Mary family if my mom and grandparents were alive. 

God really sends us challenges in order to teach us a lot of life’s lessons. In times when we think that we are in the middle of our greatest challenge and that God had seemed to abandon us,  we will come to realize that it is God who lifts and carries us to get through our hardest times. Its just that we tend to focus more on how we feel due to our loss that is just but normal.  

The best part is when we are awakened from our deep slumber and we realize that life is like a mahjong in which God is the best player who mix all the tiles. And in the end everything shall be arranged. God let us experience hardships in life when everything gets mixed up but eventually God himself shall fix everything for us in a way far better than it was before. All we have to have is faith, hope and love to our creator who will not let a single event to take place without a reason to make our lives better. 

We must always remember that there is sunshine after every rain and there is a brand new day after a storm. Everything happens because the Lord wants us to appreciate His presence both in good times and in bad times. 

God may have gotten my mom and my grandparents too early but He replaced them with relatives and The Sisters of Mary family who proved to me that there is really heaven on earth and from that time on, I stopped questioning why things happened that way. I began to understand that it all works for my own betterment.

Since the time when The Sisters of Mary was established up to the present time,  it has touched thousands of lives. It has made a difference in the lives of its students as well as their families through free education plus a decent job after graduation. And I will forever be thankful because a lot were called by God to be a part of it yet only a few were chosen and I am very much lucky to be among them. Indeed there is no place like The Sisters of Mary. It is truly a heaven on earth.

Dennievi, an educator by profession, together with her beautiful and happy family

Originally published at: https://fatheralschwartzmyhero.blogspot.com