A TRIBUTE FROM KRISTINE FERNANDEZ
EL Church-Forest Hills Vesper service
January 2, 2011 -- the 1st death anniversary of Dr. Marge Alcala Isidro
Good evening, everyone, and thank you for giving me this privilege to pay tribute to a grand lady, Dr. Marge Alcala Isidro.
I had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Marge for 10 years. For most of that time, she was my CE teacher. CE here at EL Church-Forest Hills is serious study of the Bible. Dr. Marge made sure of that. Some years back, she made a long-range plan for our CE classes that would go through the books of the Old and New Testaments, covering about 17 years. We asked each other, “Do you think she’ll live long enough to see all these implemented?” We were just kind of apprehensive, but we never doubted her wisdom in doing so because we were awed by her dedication and faithfulness in teaching God’s Word. She made it clear to us that our faith should be taught and passed on to the grass roots level; that individual lay persons be grounded in God’s Word in order for them to stand against the “wiles of the devil” and against false teaching.
Dr. Marge’s CE class was called the Berean class. I think it was because when the apostle Paul went to Berea (Acts 17:11), he found the Bereans to be “fair-minded – they received the Word with readiness and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.”
And search we did, when Dr. Marge assigned us to report on whole chapters of the book of Amos. We were in the Minor Prophets when Dr. Marge left. She would give us quizzes and exams and she’d make us participate in class discussions and encouraged us to ask questions.
My fondest memory of Dr. Marge was her use of maps—maps of Biblical times and of Israel’s history, the time of the judges, the kings of Israel and Judah, the time of the prophets—in whatever time and event we were studying. She showed us where it happened on her maps. I was just amazed at how well she would pinpoint those places. These maps made our study realistic. It strengthened our belief that these stories in the Bible are not mere literature, but they happened in history. [It was] when I came to EL and had Dr. Marge as a teacher that I realized that maps are precious tools for study.
Dr. Marge came to class ready, having done her research and hand-out notes—every single time. She carried along her maps and pinned them to the board while we were still taking our snack (after the morning worship service). Other times, she would write on the board the Hebrew words which we would be studying, not to make us Hebrew scholars, but just to widen the scope of our knowledge. She’d even incorporate English and speech in our studies, introducing new words to add to our vocabulary. And, she would correct our pronunciation. Like, I used to say Heh-broo and Heh-broos. She had to correct me about six times before I was able to pronounce it correctly—Hee-broo and Hee-broos.
Our CE class always ended in prayer. We would stand around in the circle holding hands and Dr. Marge would pray for each one of us.
She stirred us to want to learn more so that a good number of us were encouraged to enroll at EL Theological Seminary (EL-TS), taking up a subject or two. Some even went on to full-time study.
My best subject under Dr. Marge at EL-TS was Theological Foundations of Christian Education. I was really blessed with that study. I hope that one day, Dr. Marge’s lecture notes on this subject will be published in book form so that many could benefit from it.
The verse that, for me, would best describe Dr. Marge’s commitment is 2 Timothy 2:2—“And the things you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."
Yes, I miss my CE teacher. But, more than missing her, I thank the Lord for giving me the opportunity to be Dr. Marge’s student. I would very much like to tell her, “Thank you, Dr. Marge, for gracing my life.”
No comments:
Post a Comment