HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Music filled the air on Friday in Tumon as a group of friends and church members gathered to pay tribute to a member of Guam’s homeless community who died recently.
Pastor Melvin Duenas, an ordained minister and elder for the Talo’fo’fo’ Seventh-day Adventist Church Church told The Guam Daily Post that Terra Tiptino did not have any biological family on island, but over time, she gained a group of close friends that were eventually able to give her a place to call home as well as a car.
Johanna Duenas, a teacher at SDA and Women’s Ministry Head, recalled the day that she and Tiptino first met.
“We came from the church, she was hitching a ride and this was in the beginning of the pandemic. This was at a time when you would line up in the schools and you’d get free meals so I would do that over the next three months to give to her.”
Duenas said over the course of three years she and Tiptino became friends through Bible study. When Tiptino became sick, she prayed for help and found George Bello.
Melvin Duenas said Bello, a good friend that he worked with for 20 years at the Guam Power Authority, built Tiptino a place to live along Bello Road and paid for her hospital bills. Tiptino suffered from a heart condition and chronic back pain.
“All of the expenses we gathered together on. George Bello was one of the donors who really helped out. … George and my family and others, we were able to provide Terra with a car in the end and a home and she was happy and very rejoiceful on the end of her life when she got sick. One thing we saw in Terra is she didn’t have too much things in earthly goods, but she had a big longing heart for heaven.”
After Tiptino’s death, the group tracked down her son, living stateside, and brought him to Guam to pay his final respects to his mother.
Johanna Duenas said Tiptino wanted to reconnect with her son before she died. Her son, now 22, serves in the military and was able to fly out for five days to connect with his mother’s community and attend her memorial service. “We cremated her a few days ago, so her ashes are here,” said Melvin Duenas.
“There are people in Guam that want to do good deeds, even for people who don’t have family and are homeless.… We hope that more people in Guam will open their hearts for the needy and be more receptive to unity here on our island,” stated Melvin Duenas.
Pastor Melvin Duenas and a group of about a dozen people remembered the late Terra Tiptino during a short memorial ceremony at Gov. Joseph Flores Memorial Park at Ypao beach on Friday afternoon.
