Vesta Amungwa - Online Memorial Website

This is the first time since your death at the same time, candles burned in AlaKuma, and Douala, South Africa, Mauritius, Dubai for you. I am so happy. You are such a good person now with God and that we should begin to make our petitions through you. Take them to the Lord when we do, protect us from illness and infection and from the gun of the Amazonia Revolution. Give us husbands and wives so that our family will grow rich.  

One year has just come and gone and we have learned to live life without Vesta and to fully understand that the will of God is really the will of God.

We made a thanksgiving cum memorial mass at the Church she used to attend, where she had planned to get married, and the family members and friends who came added the sum of 370,000 FCFA to the Grotto Project that was launched during her funeral mass in the same Church.

One year has swept pass hopefully sweeping along the very devastating emotions that gripped us when she lay in the Athanesther House parlour looking as though she would get up and say a word; at which time many swooned for long as they could not bear to imagine she was not really alive; when she was lowered into her new abode no-one hade ever imagined, except God, that she would go there so soon.

Yes it is one year gone, and we have learned to miss her physically but with the stark reality that she's in our minds, never to leave it. So we have to  think, laugh, talk, work, walk, sleep and wake up every day with her in our minds.

Yes one year gone! Truly gone and we are left with the challenge to be used to her spiritual person because it is the strong wish of seeing her physically that wears us out all the time. As the family, we are challenged by friends and Our God to let her soul rest in his soft, sacred bosom from where with the intercession of Our Mother Mary, she would constantly send us gifts and blessings.

Yes this one year is reminding us not  to ask many questions without answers such as Would  Vesta have been married by now? Got a job? Pregnant with our first grandchild? And many more. Like me you should know that the answers to these questions are in the wind, in God's keeping; Our God who knows how to take less and give back more. We must be very fond of Vesta but with the reality that we will never see her physically again, with the understanding that God will fill the gap he has created.

We should therefore join our minds together and pray that she should be happy in the bosom of her father.

Golden Vesta

Oh Vesta!
Amongst many was thy golden seed
Entrusted to the earth
And like a bride
Faithful to her beloved
You remained without complaining
The sun of life shone
And the rain also poured
Through these times
When the light kept you warm
You didn't hesitate to lend a hand
To those who shivered from the cold
Open- handedly you welcomed them
And like St.Martin shared your cloak
Hoping not for a reward
Tenderly you washed their feet
And offered them food
The sun's rays reflected on your teeth
And they felt at home
Abiding by the rule of thy creator
Nine and twenty growing seasons passed
And the sower returned
Your golden petals shone
With irresistible brightness
You were so clean
The sower needed just your golden nature
For his golden table at his golden home
For he cherished you more
Though the groom mourned for his beloved
The earth did bleed terribly
For your roots were too deep
And the space you left behind
Can never be filled
Because
Never comes another Golden Creature

Raissa
7th May 2009

The entire family will never find the words to thank the actors in the US and South Africa who put wit, wisdom, money and all efforts together to bring Vesta's corpse to Cameroon to be laid there. How horrorsome it would have been if the contrary happened. We are deeply indebted to Matilda Nanga and Solange Azah and their husbands who put the freighting cost together, to Carol Chi Ngang, John Tuma and Nde Eric, the Mankon and Cameroon community in South Africa who took up the undertaking charges; Ndoh Charles of Douala Cameroon who single handedly transported the corpse from Douala to Bamenda and all the family members and friends who gave her a befitting burial.Many hands do light work they say and we will continue to pray to the Lord for more to be given to all of you to repay your generosity for is it not said in the Holy Book that he who gives recieves more!

 

We ask for your prayers in which you should ask God to strenthen our faith and make us strong for the other children and for each other.

 

Vesta has thought us that we should live our life one day at a time and to hold that day as if it is the last one God has given us

Slightly above 29 years ago, God gave me and my beatiful young wife, Nju Esther Swiri , a bulky precious gift in a hospital in Mankon, at 10 25 pm on 3 January,1980, Bamenda in the then Northwest region of Cameroon and we were bounteously happy for we were now counted in he club of parents. That gift was Vesta Neh-Awah, named after her maternal grandmother and was later crowned the successor of her paternal grandmother, Mary Wuffi Manyonga. She was a good opener of our parenthood for after her we had Justin, Ninian and Ninashka(twins), Phelim and Laisren. She grew up quite sicky through Primary School but later became healthily strong and very beautiful with her ravaging gap tooth. She was quite our baby whom I crowned the crying baby since she loved crying to attract our attention.In mankon culture, the first borns as adults play parental roles so she understood and played this role very well and mixed this so beautifully with a practicing religious culture.This is why she became the darling of all, including me who fondly called her Cherie and MY MOTHER and her mother who called her MA NEHAWAH.

But some 8,786,000 seconds ago, the last of her moments on earth took place in a little town in South Africa, thousands of kilometres from her birth place, Mankon, and she bowed unexpectedly out of the life scenes of this world.

 

On 7 April, in my room alone in Abidjan, crying, I remember what Phelim her fourth follower said: 

 

 

Daddy, this is the saddest thing that has happened to the family.Iagine that we have strugled and she entered for the second time in South africa only to end up like this: coming back to us as a lifeless parcell. God has bidded it to be so but we are in shock

 

 

Shock it was indeed for me when I received the news at 3:42, in the afternon of  7 April 2009 from South Africa. Later I was to write this in my diary:

Vesta's death is bonebreaking, heartbreaking, unbeleivable, shockingly real and emotionally shattering. Oh how can an angel, my angel, the family's hope, fade away like this!? Fade away at the climax hour, the answer,Lord is in your hands

During the very moving funeral ceremony in her Church in Alakuma, the quarter of her residence in Mankon, the parents dedicated the collections from the church service for the construction of a Marian Grotto in honour of her Grandmother, Mary, whom she succeeded. The family is still raising the $4000 for this project. We hope to realize this dream for happy memories of her be engraved into our hearts and minds

She lies in the blessed family graveyard behind the compound in Alakuma which reminds us that though bodily away she  is always spiritual present.

Before going to South Africa her one wish expressed to the parents was to get married this 2009 unfailingly.

She never got round to get married but the family understands that she made many friends including children and that she must be smiling wherever she is now.The family rationalizes that the Lord gave them and has tested them by subtracting one, in this case the much loved Vesta, not that the others are loved less, just that one short coming we all have is never knowing how much we love someone until that some one is gone.

The lesson learned from her passing is that we should show all the love and caring to all the people we meet, at all the places we can, in all the ways we can,with whatever means we have, whenver we can and to whoever and that we should do this unconditionally and  let these

people know we love them when they are still with us. It's not that we did not love her, it's just that the many testimonies of love shown and care given even when she was not yet working, clearly showed us that this is what she did.

Our deepest condolences.  May these few words from the Holy Scriptures bring you comfort in your time of grief...

John 11:32-45

 32 And so Mary, when she arrived where Jesus was and caught sight of him, fell at his feet, saying to him: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 Jesus, therefore, when he saw her weeping and the Jews that came with her weeping, groaned in the spirit and became troubled; 34 and he said: “Where have YOU laid him?” They said to him: “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus gave way to tears. 36 Therefore the Jews began to say: “See, what affection he used to have for him!” 37 But some of them said: “Was not this [man] that opened the eyes of the blind man able to prevent this one from dying?”

38 Hence Jesus, after groaning again within himself, came to the memorial tomb. It was, in fact, a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said: “TAKE the stone away.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to him: “Lord, by now he must smell, for it is four days.” 40 Jesus said to her: “Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” 41 Therefore they took the stone away. Now Jesus raised his eyes heavenward and said: “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 True, I knew that you always hear me; but on account of the crowd standing around I spoke, in order that they might believe that you sent me forth.” 43 And when he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice: “Laz´a·rus, come on out!” 44 The [man] that had been dead came out with his feet and hands bound with wrappings, and his countenance was bound about with a cloth. Jesus said to them: “Loose him and let him go.”

45 Therefore many of the Jews that had come to Mary and that beheld what he did put faith in him;

If you would like more information about the hope expressed in these verses feel free to click at the link below...

http://www.watchtower.org/e/we/article_05.htm