Raquel Teresa Chibuisi

Raquel was born on 16 October 1955 in Lima, Peru, the fourth of six children in the hardworking, devoutly Catholic Valencia family. After finishing school, she worked to help support her parents and siblings, carrying forward the example of sacrifice they had set for her. In 1990 she encountered the Unification Church in Lima, and the Divine Principle moved her to dedicate her life to God, True Parents, and the providence of restoration.

She became a full-time member and a celebrated fundraiser in Peru, traveling from city to city during a period of severe terrorist violence. Sisters who fundraised with her recalled long predawn prayers in which she would name every member in Peru, then members in Italy, Germany, and Korea, by first and last name and city, sometimes for forty-eight minutes at a stretch. On at least one bus journey toward Cusco, armed men stopped the bus; while others trembled, Raquel prayed aloud and the team was let go untouched. The next bus, they later learned, was burned.

After nearly two years of fundraising in Peru, she was sent as a missionary to the United States. Blessed in 1992 to Theophilus Chibuisi, a Nigerian brother whose appearance reminded her family of the Peruvian saint San Martin de Porres, she settled first at the New Yorker, attending Manhattan Family Church, and later in Newark, New Jersey. Their son Toby arrived nine years into the marriage. She and Theophilus opened their home freely, helping new missionaries find a place to stay and caring for other members' babies.

For roughly two decades, she was a small-group anchor in the New York and New Jersey communities, traveling with her husband to visit pastors and ministers and witnessing to True Parents wherever she went. Speakers at her Seonghwa repeatedly described her as humble, childlike in trust, fearless in witnessing, and almost incapable of complaint. Even through two years of chemotherapy, she pressed Cheon Seong Gyeong volumes on her nurses and asked visitors about their families before her own pain.

Raquel passed at 9:23 a.m. on Wednesday, 17 February 2016 at Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, her husband Theophilus at her side. She leaves Theophilus, son Toby, and an extended spiritual family across Peru, the United States, and beyond.

'Give true love,' her husband said, recalling her answer to every hardship.