Auntie Chailang knew this from the very start. Her mother had sown in her the virtues that she ought to cultivate.
She learned piety, “respetu,” and obedience.
And when she entered the convent of the Mercedarian Sisters, she learned more things about herself and about her faith.
As a little girl, Auntie Chailang found joy in the company of the Mercederian nuns. She admired how they profess the teachings of God and how the sisters subscribe to the lessons conveyed by the Vatican II Council: Jesus Christ is the “iglesia” and everybody shares the gospel. From the Mercedarian sisters, she learned compassion.
Just when she thought she was enjoying her time at the convent and teaching, Auntie Chailang had to go through her own dark night of the soul.
She tells Variety how in 1978 she had wanted to leave the convent.
“I started to think of leaving the convent. I told my superior I had this doubt,” she says.
For Auntie Chailang, the sisters recognized her need for a sabbatical and so she was sent to the United States.
At about the same time, it was more than just a dark night of the soul for Auntie Chailang; she was suffering physically from menstrual cramps that would last for seven days.
When she consulted a doctor in the United States at the St. Luke’s Hospital in Missouri, she found out she needed to be operated on. The doctor, she says, couldn’t believe how she endured the pain for the longest time. But she did because all the time she thought “be a saint and suffer your pain. When you are young, you endure the pain for the sinners.”
She says, since she was 13, “Oh I am going to offer it [suffering] for all the sinners including me, that was what I was taught.”
After her hysterectomy in Kansas City, and having recuperated, her spiritual journey began.
Her first stop was at the St. Thomas Aquinas University where she pored over readings on spirituality and she had a lot of reflection and appreciation for God’s creations.
In a park in Washington D.C., she reveled at the sight of tall pine trees which she says she had not seen on the islands and how she felt awe in the middle of beautiful pine trees.
After a month, she was sent to a retreat house for returning missionaries in Maryland.
It was around July and the excruciating heat was too punishing. Being an islander, she had longed to take a dive in the waters, she says.
And she dove in the cold Potomac River.
“The river was very cold and murky,” she remembers how she went for a swim to douse the heat.
She says she found herself looking for answers, how she had been thinking of leaving the convent.
“This is the darkness of the soul. This is the part of my life searching for answers,” she says.
While in Faulkner, she says she found God “in a beautiful park.”
She surveyed the canopies and the soaked up the ambiance. She found berries and mushrooms littering the place. And the mushrooms were no ordinary mushrooms for her — they were the big kind that she never saw on the islands.
“I was so enchanted. I found God’s presence,” she recalls.
She tells Variety that it was an experience similar to what she went through in the Rock Islands in Palau while snorkeling. There, she says, in the congregation of sea creatures under water, she found the beauty of God’s creations.
There was one other occasion where she believed God made his presence felt — through a former priest who did a missionary work in Africa and how he was told by Vatican to build a chuch where the Maasai tribes live.
Auntie Chailang, tearing up, says she can’t help crying as she remembers the story of the former priest.
The priest, she says, waited every day for people to come to a cathedral to hear mass. Soon he realized he needed to live with the Maasai people to understand their culture and how come they never went to the church. He found out it wasn’t feasible to build a church as the Maasai tribesfolk wander from place to place following their animal herds.
She learns from the priest that the Maasai people realized that Jesus Christ is a leader, who creates miracles, who cures the sick, who teaches goodwill; however, she says one thing they didn’t understand is why a leader must die. For them, she says, a leader never dies.
But, there is one thing they appreciate hearing from the priest, how God can be forgiving. They like the virtue of forgiveness.
“It begins with us,” she says.
In New York, she further learned more about herself and about community at the Maryknoll retreat house in Bethany.
While in New York, she says, she had never been in subways before and she had a panic attack. While down there, seeking for succor, she tried to clasp her scapular but she didn’t have it.
For Auntie Chailang, that is one thing she realized.
Wearing a scapular is something good.
But through the power of education she found out it won’t save her. “Even if you wear that, if you don’t nurture the virtues of kindness and forgiveness, it will not save you. What will save you are the virtues you have since you were born.”
She says, “It is not what you have in your body, it is what you have in your heart — your forgiving heart.”
At the Bethany retreat house, she found a place to renew her spirit in the company of returning missionaries. Like a cup of water, in order to give, they needed to refill so they could give more.
In that same retreat house, she met Maryknoll brother Robert Power who would later become her husband.
Both — Aunti Chailang and Uncle Bob — were in the same situation. He too was thinking ceasing to be a Maryknoll brother.
The two began to develop a friendship on a Thanksgiving weekend when all the rest had gone home to their relatives.
Uncle Bob invited Auntie Chailang for a ride to Massachusetts where she was introduced to relatives and his father. The friendship blossomed.
Back at the Bethany house, Auntie Chailang had been feeling sick and attended the sessions with the other missionaries despite this.
One night, she received a visit from Uncle Bob with a cup of hot chocolate and a revelation — how he had an epiphany the moment she arrived that she would be the woman he sees himself spending his life with.
But Auntie Chailang needed more time to process her thoughts and her feelings.
It was in December when she found out she felt the same way.
She tells Variety another significant experience, this time in Hingham, Massachusetts where she didn’t encounter God’s presence, but she felt human love in the company of Uncle Bob whom she calls her match.
When her retreat was over and she had to go back to Saipan, she had the chance to make a decision. She asked permission from the Mercedarian sisters and she wrote to the Vatican explaining her situation. She was approved.
After her classes, she bade goodbye to the sisters who gave her $800 that she used to pursue cultural studies in the University of Guam where she learned Chamorro orthography.
Uncle Bob followed her there. Then a decision was made: they would relocate to Hawaii where Uncle Bob found a job and where they were married at the Sacred Heart Church on Jan. 10, 1981.
In all those years she spent on her spiritual journey, Auntie Chailang says, she realized what is essential is what’s inside the heart.
She encourages the young to find it in their heart to cultivate, among other values, love, respect, obedience, forgiveness, and compassion.
With all these values cultivated, success won’t be far behind.
