Until his 70s, lawyer Manuel Tiuseco was addicted to gambling and women.
“When I received a P300,000 payment from a client, I would keep the P200,000 in the car while I blew away the P100,00 in the casino. Then I’d get the rest of the cash in the car and go back to gamble again,” he recalls.
He felt burdened after heavy losses on the gambling table and contemplated suicide. This vice was coupled with fooling around while his wife, Raquel, suffered in silence.
A turning point came on Palm Sunday of 2014, which changed his life and restored his faith in the Supreme.
After he and his wife visited his son in Muntinlupa, Tiuseco took the skyway on their way to Quezon City. After the Alabang tollgate, he started to overspeed and overtake two cars. Making an abrupt lane change, he noticed that a third car was about to merge on his lane and could possibly smash into his Mercedes Benz.
Suddenly he saw an exit sign going to Bicutan and followed the exit lane. His wife wondered why her husband left the Skyway early when they were headed for the Magallanes exit. He asked a traffic enforcer how to get back to the Skyway. Without saying a word, the enforcer pointed to the right lane. Traversing that route, he started getting goosebumps. He was accustomed to seeing railroad tracks and vendors on the roadside, but the scene looked unfamiliar. He kept driving until he saw the Evangelista Street sign. As he went straight ahead, the empty road became shrouded by a veil of mist. The eerie silence reminded him of being inside a coffin.
After finding his way back to the Skyway, Tiuseco tried to make sense of the occurrence. Raquel said she neither saw the Bicutan exit sign nor the empty road and white fog. Yet during that time, she felt as if somebody was trying to lift their car. Tiuseco learned that while there was a Bicutan exit from Magallanes to Alabang from the skyway, there wasn’t any between the Alabang and Magallanes exits.
“It was a miracle. We would have gotten into an accident,” says Tiuseco. He has since developed a distaste for vices and started believing in God. “There must be a higher purpose for me.”
Word of mouth
Weeks after the incident, Tiuseco shared his experience with a friend and wondered why he and his wife were spared from an accident.
“Perhaps I could heal,” he told his companion. When the friend complained of her chronic back problem, Tiuseco intuitively put his hands over the affected area. He closed his eyes and prayed until he felt a sudden change in his voice. His companion claimed that she felt a warm, tingling sensation until the pain was alleviated.
By word of mouth, Tiuseco started healing friends who suffered chronic joint pains, rheumatism, headaches, stomach pains and fractures. Once, he rode with a friend from Bicutan to Quezon City. Another passenger, the friend’s wife, had a history of chronic body pains. After Tiuseco alighted from the car, the wife sat on Tiuseco’s seat and felt some heat. When she got home, all her pains disappeared—and have not returned to this day.
Before the pandemic, Tiuseco started healing the poor by visiting barangays and community centers. He refused to accept money, but instead donated food. In January 2020, he visited an evacuation center in Tagaytay to heal individuals who were displaced by the Taal Volcano eruption.
The group healing stopped when social distancing was imposed. As the world emerges from the pandemic, Tiuseco hopes to resume his program of serving poor communities.
“Since that miracle, my legal cases became successful and my personal obstacles were removed,” says Tiuseco in Filipino. Although he has retired from his law firm, he continues to work at age 87 as president of Orient Register Shipping Inc., a company that inspects and vets ships.
In his latter years, Tiuseco wants to spread the message about miracles, God’s mercy and personal transformation. “I want to remind people that miracles do happen and God exists.” —Contributed
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