Annabelle Ancheta’s Testimony
2010 Balikatan Conference
July 2-4, 2010
Gordon College, Wenham, MA
Hi, I’m Annabelle Ancheta and I’m Landy’s wife.
The reason I’m here today is to tell you a story about God’s sovereignty, faithfulness and love. You see, about five weeks ago, Landy and I came out of a nine-month ordeal. The story started at the end of August last year. Landy and I were just getting settled in the Greater Toronto Area, after he came back for good from a two-year job assignment in Indonesia. We were adjusting to the demands of our new jobs — well, new position for him, new job for me as I had to change employers in order to join Landy in Toronto. I was stressed as I adjusted to the rigorous demands of a job in an industry that I knew very little about, set up our new home and faced the burdens of preparing for the weddings of our two daughters which were to happen in a January and May 2010 and braced myself for the sadness that I was sure to feel because I will miss my girls and not like being an empty nester. I felt like fish out of water. Then an unwelcome thing happened.
Last November, Landy was diagnosed with having a tumour in his colon. The discovery of this tumour explained the intermittent ”stomach” pains that he had endured for three months previous to this diagnosis. The news was a complete shock to me and the rest of my family as Landy was in very good health until the shocker came. His doctor quickly scheduled surgery to remove the tumour and two feet of his colon. The next thing on our plate was Landy recovering at home from his surgery and us waiting for the biopsy results that would tell us whether or not the tumour was malignant. About a week after the surgery though, I came home one day and found that Landy had developed, in a matter of hours, a huge lump on the side of his neck. Our hearts sank. We had no explanation for this lump. We could not develop a theory for why it was there, especially what its connection was with the colon tumour. Things did not look good at all. Tests on the lump followed and after a few days, Landy endured another surgery. The doctor did not remove the lump but instead removed Landy’s left tonsil to enable the doctor to take a good look at that lump on his neck and to ease his airway.
Two weeks later, the pathology report on the colon tumour was released and we were informed that Landy had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That’s cancer of the lymphatic system. That diagnosis was the explanation for both the lump on his neck and the colon tumour. Apparently, the colon tumour developed not from the colon but from an infected lymph node that was close to the outside colon wall. This news ironically gave us relief on the immediate because finally, all of Landy’s symptoms can now be explained. It had a name and the name was cancer. A few days after the release of this diagnosis, Landy started the first of six scheduled chemotherapy sessions, to be done in 3 week intervals. So our life for the next few months went like this — we continued to adjust to our new lives in the big city, I worked well enough to make it through my probationary period at work, Landy worked from home, we went through Landy’s chemotherapy sessions and in between those sessions, celebrated both our 50th birthdays and married off our daughters. It was tough, but God was good. I chronicled Landy’s health journey and requested for prayers for Landy via emails to family and friends, many of whom are among you right now. The outpouring of love from brothers and sisters in Christ and other friends and family was overwhelming. I know that for most of the months from November to May, Landy was regularly prayed for in different churches and prayer groups across a number of countries as our friends passed on my emails to their other friends in other parts of the world.
Throughout our ordeal, especially when I was gripped with fear and anxiety, God moved me to be thankful to Him. He gave me the faith that I needed to trust him and obey his command to give Him thanks in everything (Thessalonians 5:18). And those things that I was thankful for were plenty. I was thankful for:
1. Medical science
2. Health care in Canada
3. Well-trained and compassionate health care professionals
4. The way that God orchestrated events such that through the cancellations of many people’s appointments, Landy kept on jumping the different queues for different kinds of tests required prior to his colon surgery
5. Our employers who assured us of their support during Landy’s treatment period
6. Landy’s being allowed by his employer to work from home
7. The constant flow of email messages, cards, phone calls, visits, and letters from family and friends to express their love and support
8. The prayers of so many people
9. The fiancés of our daughters and their families who helped us hold up our children from the time we heard the unwelcome news until it the treatment was over
10. The wonderful weddings of our daughters and our new sons-in-law
11. Landy himself, who was a cheerful patient and who inspired me, our children, and so many.others with his faith in God and peacefulness with his situation
12. Landy’s response to chemotherapy treatment.
Last May 25th, after a battery of tests to check the effectiveness of the chemotherapy treatments, we were told that Landy had excellent response to chemotherapy and did not need radiation. His cancer was declared to be in remission. While he was getting chemotherapy infusions, except for the loss of his hair and the tiredness that he felt each time around Day 4 to Day 10 after each chemo treatment, he experienced few bad side effects. He never lost his appetite and many times, on good days before his next chemo treatment, he would even go out and jog with our dog. He was amazing.
All praise items were wrapped into the two biggest things that I was thankful for — Landy’s healing and my experiencing the realness of God’s words. In the last 9 months, I really learned that:
1. God is sovereign. Nothing happens outside of His direction and permission as said in Psalms 135:6 which says, “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.”
2. God provides exactly what we need at the right time. I needed peace, endurance and comfort and He gave those to me. He supplied and is supplying all my needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus as He promised in Philippians 4:19.
3. The love of Christian brothers and sisters is priceless. I am very grateful for the obedience of so many who practiced for our sake Romans 12: 10 which says, “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honour giving preference to one another.
4. Our greatest source of comfort is God’s word. Many times, as I read the Bible during my devotion times, prayed and read verses that friends shared with me, I would be in awe because it seemed like the words I was reading were written specifically for me and our family’s situation.
5. Finally, I learned that the best way to honour God is to obey His word as he said in John14:15, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.”

God has told us, His children, that in our lives, the rains will come. I don’t know what our experience in the last nine months was in terms of the intensity of the rain but this I know: I experienced the outpouring of God’s love for me and Landy in those months and am experiencing that even today. Because of that, I am sure now, more than ever, that when rain comes again, be it a minor spitting or a full out deluge, the right thing to do is to fix my eyes on the Lord because He loves me, He has a plan and His plan is perfect. I think God had me and my family in mind when He wrote 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 which say, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” The truth though is that He had all of His children in mind when He wrote these words.
As I said earlier, Landy’s cancer is currently in remission. He will be monitored closely in the next two years and lightly in the three years after that. I humbly request that you pray for him as the next few years are going to be critical for him. I also ask you, my brothers and sisters, to always remember that we serve a great God who loves us with such depth that He gave His Son as a perfect ransom so that we can be saved from the consequences of our sin, has a perfect will for us, cares for our every hurt and hears our every cry. He is our home and the perfect refuge for our souls. Thanks for listening.