Her greatest passion blended completely with her gift. The Holy Spirit gave her the gift of preaching - proclaiming the full gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, translating complex biblical truths into simpler concepts we can easily apply to our daily walk with God. She made the most of it, never refusing opportunities to proclaim the gospel even from her sickbed.
But most importantly, she practiced what she preached. She was always patient, always a peacemaker, never retaliated when provoked or even persecuted or bullied, quick to defend the people she loved, loyal and loving to those who spent time with her, even to those who argued with her. In the last four years of her ministry, she continued to demonstrate her values and preoccupations much more than when she started. She did not care about luxuries. She rarely bought new apparel and settled with what she already had. She would not change her aging iPhone or iPad while it was still fulfilling its purpose. She was always content with what she already had. She had her focus on eternity and not things that would pass away.
She loved to read, was a wide reader and a speed reader. Her bedroom at home was overflowing with books. Aside from her Bible, she loved books on faith, history, biographies, cooking, food, politics and various other subjects. Many called her a walking encyclopedia. She loved coffee and loved serving coffee.She ministered to all not only with her
words but with her life. She demonstrated the Lord’s beatitudes with her
mindset and lifestyle always articulating Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in
heart for they shall see God”.
Our main source of comfort as family is that the sermons particularly of her last four years revealed that she was ready to face her Maker and Lord anytime, and she learned to anticipate it with joy and not with fear. In her last week on earth ,after knowing the little time she had left, the only regret she verbalized was that she had "more work to do for the kingdom". She did not mention that she would miss our fellowship, but perhaps it was knowing that it would drive us to tears to hear that, something her parents already experienced four months before when she expressed that “Perhaps, it is my time to go”.
God graciously granted our prayers for her to survive the 8-hour (initially estimated to be 18 hours) extensive brain surgery on December 6, 2019 without any of the expected paralysis nor seizures nor any brain or nerve damage. In fact, barely an hour after she awoke from the anesthesia, she recited the whole of Psalm 91 to the joyful surprise of everyone inside her Intensive Care Unit proving that the gracious Lord preserved her brain from any harm. She followed it up with the song, "Blessed be the Name of the Lord" which we all sang together as family. God extended her life for three more months, enabled her to preach from her hospital bed even while on chemo-therapy and during the whole month of rehab and the whole of February after her release from the hospital, despite her partially paralyzed vocal cords caused by new tumors starting to grow inside her brain.
For some strange reason, in the months before she was admitted in the hospital, Pastor Tiffany was fixated on studying the life of St. Patrick, watching movies about him from PUREFLIX, a Christian app on her iPhone.
It’s been a year now since Pastor Tiffany "changed address". She fought the good fight, she finished her course. She has left for the place where there will be no more tears, sickness nor pain. She is gone physically, but by the Lord’s grace, her messages through video and social media are still with us. Honestly, and humanly speaking, we would prefer to have the messenger with us too. But God is showing us that our earthly life is very temporary, a mere drop in the ocean of eternity. Pastor Tiffany repeatedly admonished us to "Set your minds on things that last forever, not on things that pass away." and "This world is not our home, we are just passing through". Death reminds us loud and clear of this principle.
She would always reiterate in her sermons, “God’s promises are 100% guaranteed”. We now realize that such guarantee is for eternal things and for the spiritual realm, and possibly, but not necessarily, for material things in the physical realm. We are confident that she is now experiencing that 100% guarantee actively fellowshipping with the Lord, no longer living by faith but by sight!
Her life has been a witness to her favorite expression, "Only one life, t'will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last!"
Today, as we remember and honor the memory of Pastor Tiffany, we echo some of her very last words, "To live is Christ, to die is gain", and “Blessed be the Name of the Lord!”
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