Eyewitnesses in the Garden of Blessings

First-hand Accounts from Beneficiaries, Supplicants and Community Insiders in the Ang Dios Gugma Catholic Ministries, Inc. (God is Love)

N. Madera Aguilar

By

Copyright, 2012 By N. Madera Aguilar

All Rights Reserved By the Author

Note: This is the authors originally conceived work and his do-it-yourself (DIY) content creation intended for publicationon-demand (POD). Unless otherwise indicated, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission. All rights reserved. Quotations lifted from the Holy Bible, King James Version (public domain), are specified by the appended letters KJV.

~~~~~~~ In his book, Finding Pathways through the Community, this author restates the significant objectives of a group of Roman Catholic workers in faith who comprise the community Ang Dios Gugma Catholic Ministries, Inc. (God is Love). This is a community founded on the basis of man's quest for peace, happiness, love and forgiveness. Members thereof hold a prayer meeting every Thursday in the Sta. Teresita Parish gymnasium, De Leon St., Iloilo City at 6:00 oclock in the evening. It is the mission of members, who received the New Life through Jesus Christ, to unite themselves to testify to all nations the workings of the Holy Spirit in their lives. The Communitys vision and mission are posted in its Web site, www.adgiloilo.com. We Sing Songs in the Community In the Community, we utter words of supplication and gratification as well as sway our bodies as we dance to the tune of harmony in our relationship with God. Likewise, we sing songs expressing our praise and glory to the Lord. Thus O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! (Psalm 95:1) O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. (Psalm 96:1)

O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things. His right hand and his holy arm have gained him victory. (Psalm 98:1) I will sing of loyalty and of justice; to you, O Lord, I will sing. (Psalm 101:1) Beyond Physical Healing One morning in an early December, 2011 weekend, I woke up to a sleazy day and reached out for the things I necessarily would have to as part of my daily routine: a prayer book, a cup of coffee and the switch to put my computer on. After viewing the days headlines on the Web, I turned to the bathroom for a shower. The first drops of water hitting my torso and abdomen suggested it was unusually cold that morning. When the crystal-clear fluid splashed on my left shoulder, I sensed a penetrating rush of chill that travelled downward to my hips. I didnt mind it but instead continued with the bath until I rinsed the soap away and wiped my body dry. When I got back to the computer, I was daunted to discover I could not pound on the keypad anymore. Something terribly painful hit my shoulders and my back, down to my buttocks. My fingers no longer had the capacity to press the mouse while my neck was too stiff to bend towards the monitor. I spent the day enduring the pain and it ended without anything having been done by me. I took a paracetamol tablet to help me get through the night and then I prayed. The pain was there to persist not only for a day or two but for more than two weeks. After taking three
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tablets of paracetamol I discarded it. And I continued with my prayers. I opened my options as I continued to bear the pain which hounded me. Should I see a physician? Or, should I consult a rheumatologist? Or a therapist? None of the choices, however, was resorted to. Instead, I continued praying, occasionally touched the painful parts of my body with my finger dipped on holy water I obtained from a church and rubbed coconut oilwhich was sprinkled with holy water with the concomitant prayer and blessing by a priest after a celebration of the masson the same. And who says oil and water dont mix? Prior to the aforementioned recourse, fear had visited me. In fact, it bordered on panic, prompting me to pose a question upon myself: what if that kind of pain would no longer depart from me? I must admit I decided to finish writing the book after the sixth chapter was completed. I was on the verge of being contented with a one-hundred page product. What else could I do? My hands didnt move anymore. But, believing that oil and water really mix, and convinced that the Lords approval is in the same, I continued rubbing upon my body drops of the liquid through my palm. Portions of my back which I could not reach were taken care of by my wife whose welloiled hands were as effective as mineconsidering that we share the same prayers. Lord, these are not my words alone. These are yours, too, that needed to be imparted. Please help me, I prayed.
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Perceptibly, the forces of darkness didnt want me to continue. The agenda are not to their liking. But there is a greater force that comes from God, and that is what guides us to proceed towards the completion of something we do with a well-intended purpose. That is the same force protecting me, returning my strength and resolve to go on and putting me back on track. As a consequence of my struggle to overcome the hardship and the difficulty, I triumphed. The cold days of the month of December could not have brought me swift recovery but its the same month that we mark with the manifestations of our faith the month when we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. I was confident nothing could go wrong. Indeed, everything went right. We set out to attend the dawn masses which started on December 16, 2011, a Thursday. I was still reeling from the pains I endured resulting from a spate of coldness which jarred me a couple of weeks before. On the twenty-fourth day of the month, we completed the nine-day attendance to the Misa de Aguinaldo. The following day we joined the entire world in celebrating Christendoms most joyful festivitythe Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lordor Christmas as we have always known it since childhood. Amazingly, the pain was gone. It was my observation that as we progressed with our presence in the novena, my physical discomfort lessened. We celebrated Christmas the way weve always been doing, nothing less in the significance the season brings year in and year out. And before 2011 came to
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a close, I found myself sitting in front of the computer againstaring at the screen, clicking on the mouse and slowly beginning to send my fingers onto the QWERTY once more. While recuperating, it dawned on me that I got healed not for the sake of healing but because of something that I have yet to do and I need the energy to carry on with the task. God knows it. There is a mission that I impose upon myself and it is imperative that this should be brought into fulfilment. God cooperates with me and I am sure He will do the same with anybody else who will solicit His assistance and invoke His holy name. (The foregoing is an excerpted version from the seventh chapter of the authors book, Finding Pathways through the Community.) Into the Light I was privy to a circumstance I didnt expect to come about sometime in the 1980s and which later on served as an inducement moving me to write a fictional work based on the same. The result is a novella I published (Menace on the Face of the Red Moon) and made available both in print (https://www.createspace.com/3571177) and as an ebook (Kdp.amazon, Smashwords, Xinxii). It likewise landed on the shelves of I-proclaim Bookstore. It became part of the collection in Fiction Assemblage (https://www.createspace.com/3598890) later. The fictional characters represented real-life individuals who became protagonists in the situation they were thrown into. There was, however, a reversal in gender of the two players. The hinterland
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healer was featured as female when in truth he was male while the patient was referred to as the father when in fact it was the mother. The story begins with the three siblings meeting in a hospital where their father is confined due to an ailment diagnosed as a disease of the liver. The youngest of the brood, an engineer working in a distant region of the country, had just arrived in their hometown after learning of the dilemma from his brother, the eldest, and their only sister. Seeing that their old man was dying, as confirmed by the doctor later on, they pondered on their next move. The siblings agreed to engage the services of their perceived healer. It was an unfortunate decision on their part, as if they had no other recourse left. They forgot to turn to God and solicit His mercy and help. They were preoccupied with what man could do, mindless of the counsel that the Holy Words provide, to wit: Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. (Isaiah 45:21) Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. (Ephesians 5:11) The siblings hired a vehicle which delivered them to a remote area in the hinterlands of Panay Island where the object of their search resided. On their return trip, which was heralded by a brightened sky, the siblings brought with them the old woman and they went straight to the hospital where the patient was confined. False claims and false hopes sometimes dominate
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us when we react to emergency situations. Our tendency to seek refuge in something that is mundane rather than adhere to our faith and find relief in our spiritual pleas could only take us to nowhere. We often have the propensity to start striving in finding light when it is already too late. We, in certain instances, have the tendency to become oblivious of the caveat we are fully aware of, such as in the passages hereunder Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be associated with them. For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of lightfor the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. (Ephesians 5:6-9) And so, our stance would have to be as in the following: There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. (Psalm 86:8) You hate those who pay regard to worthless idols, but I trust in the LORD. (Psalm 31:6) To Illumine the Darkness A sister in the Community told the participants to the first New Life Seminar held for the year 2012 on the seventh of January at the Sta. Teresita Parish gymnasium, De Leon St., Iloilo City, that her body was possessed by evil spirits sometime in the year 1998. Those who were present when she underwent such possession found it difficult to control her as even the sturdiest of men who came to render assistance was
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no match to an evil force that attacked her. The men handcuffed her but she couldnt be tamed. She then was brought to a quack doctor but there was nothing the latter could do to restore normalcy in her person. Luckily, however, someone in their neighborhood heard about the group of Brother Edwin rendering help through prayers as they visited the houses of those who solicited their assistance in facing the dilemma when someone in the family suffered illness or fell into the snare of the unknown. Brother Edwins help was sought for by the family of our sister and he immediately assembled his group. They proceeded to the victims house and prayed over her, casting out the demon that entered her body and restoring her into normalcy. No longer being the possessed, the healed sister was profuse in expressing her gratitude to Jesus for sending Brother Edwin and his prayer warriors to relay His message to her: But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one. (2 Thessalonians 3:3) He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24) But we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. (2 Thessalonians 2:13)

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(The foregoing are excerpts from the eighth chapter of the authors book, Finding Pathways through the Community.) 2011 Closing Notes I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and you know that no lie comes from the truth. (1 John 2:2 As coldness swept through the continents and islands, with snow drift exacerbating the chill and wind getting high, we gladly awaited the precise moments when the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ would be experienced once more, bringing to the world a time to enjoy love, faith, hope and charity. Prayers for peace and contentment continued to be offered while expectations for blessings and grace remain steadfast in the hearts of every Christian. We extended our greetings and shared our joy to everyone as we celebrate this most cherished event of the year which offers merriment to all who have prepared for the season. In the midst of the cold and damp surroundings, it is time all over the world that we reflected on the mission we are accorded with which accompanies our existence on earth. By extending a hand, we magnify the vision that guides us towards the realization of our objectives with a finding that sharing and caring bring us closer to our most profound endeavours.

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Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them. (Isaiah 42:9, KJV)

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BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Fiction * A Man and a Girl * The Last Traces of Hope * An Awakening and Losing * Menace on the Face of the Red Moon * Fiction Assemblage Non-fiction * Proof, Admissions and Presumptions * Things You Encounter on the Way to Court * International Law * Crime, Retribution and Exoneration Poetry * Collections (Vernacular) * Aftermath of the Age of Aquarius (Vernacular)

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FINDING PATHWAYS THROUGH THE COMMUNITY

This work is available in print and as an e-book and may be viewed on the following outlets: - www.smashwords.com - https://www.xinxii.com - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064A8S7M Information about this book may likewise be had through the following - www. scribd.com/nrcsbookshop - http://wecenpress.wordpress.com - http://nrcsbookshop.tumblr.com - chime.in/nrcsbookshop

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