BAYANING PILIPINO SA ASYA PASIPIKO: Remedios Alcantara Fronteras-Salamanes

BAYANING PILIPINO SA ASYA PASIPIKO 

                                            Remedios Alcantara Fronteras-Salamanes
                               A journey empowered with Faith, Determination and Courage;
                                         A Life story full of visions and inspirations.


                 Macau SAR is a city of opportunities and the second home for thousands of Filipinos. It has a robust economy that has afforded employment to a large number of Filipinos. To some 22,000 Filipinos living and working in the city, Remedios is a familiar face to and among OFWs, Chinese students and parents.

                  She is commonly-known as Mimi to those who actively participate in the programs, activities and seminars of the Philippine Consulate, POLO/OWWA and the Pastoral Center. She is someone you regularly see and meet at the Church, Philippine Consulate Office, Macau Public events and other Filipino gatherings. She enthusiastically shares her knowledge, talents and resources as well as supports activities that cater Filipino Cultures and Traditions.
                 With her friendly and welcoming face and gestures, you are sure to easily become acquainted and get assistance from her. Mimi has been living and working in Macau for more than 22 years now. In fact, her sense of comradeship and hard-working attitude paved the way for her to be granted, a full-citizenship from Macau Government, where she receives benefits; useful to both her personal and social missions.

                 She is a living evidence of how pliant a Filipino can be, no matter where and how difficult the circumstances are-Filipinos are indeed true Survivors. Mimi’s missions in life have never changed. From a big but financially incapacitated family; a daughter whose only wish was ease their hunger and send her siblings to school into a woman, a mother and an OFW whose missions break boundaries to extend help even outside her family circle and into the world. With her cheerful personality and abundance to everyone, evidences of her hardships and shortages in the pasts seemed to have no traces.

                Her beginnings were truly challenging yet impressive, Mimi supported herself throughout her college years. On this time of her life, Mimi understood her situation. Without working parents to support, Mimi opted to strive hard and set her goals. She became a working student and has proven through her full-scholarship that everything is possible to a person who clings onto the Creator and uses her full potential to fuel up a life. She graduated at South Western University of Cebu City, with a degree Bachelor of Science in Commerce, major in Accountancy.
                Her hard-work bore her sweet fruits when she graduated a Magna Cum Laude. Just as she has given priorities to Education, Mimi willed that her eleven siblings also finished a degree or a vocation course. All she ever wanted after graduation was to get a job and assist her mother, in order to financially support for her family.


                When her then employer invited her to join their family in Macau, Mimi did not hesitate-She knew well that she is in-lined to a better and bigger opportunity. Abroad, she was later hired as a Librarian at Sacred Heart Canossian College. Mimi’s experiences of being exposed to different cultures, traditions and people gave her advantages in her new working environment. For years of being an OFW, she had a fair share of a real working environment; away from her native land, her family and friends and was completely surrounded by different people she had never known.
                 Despite the challenges, she is always thankful for all the experiences she had. They helped strengthen her character, cope-up, stand still and focus on her goals. Her open-mindedness and matured personality became her assets. She was a model to her co-workers and a source of good manners and excellent work etiquettes to her younger colleagues.

                  She had proven that though she was literally the only Filipino in her work place and surrounded by people with different opinions, cultures and beliefs-she can survive and win their hearts and respect. She is proud that she lives the genuine Filipino characteristics, unique and only to Filipinos-God-fearing, talented, friendly, competitive and down to earth.
                  Mimi is truly an optimistic person. Instead of looking at the dark and seemingly all sadness and lonely life abroad; Mimi took the chance to advance her family’s financial situations. Her great love for her family enabled her to send her eleven siblings to school-giving them a new life by making them productive and financially independent citizens of the Philippines.

                  Mimi’s helping hand doesn’t come short to her family alone, she opted to serve the whole of humanity. She became an active member of several local and international organizations and committees. Since 1985, Mimi found her heart helping the poor and the deprived through FOCOLORE movement. It is an international organization of missionaries from all around the world. They provide counselling, encouragement and shelter to the needy.
                  A community of love, who shares, inspires and gives. With this opportunity, Mimi has helped many faceless individuals who were once lost, helpless and hopeless. She has travelled to different places, met and made-friends with different people, inspired them and live the burning desire to continue her missions and commitments to her family, to her congregations, community and to the whole world. Mimi made herself complete through her Focolore and other social committees she involved herself with.

                  While passionately serving and providing for her family, Mimi does not forget her Creator above everything she was blessed with. She is an active member of the Church, she regularly attends church activities and enjoys being in the company of her brethren-pursuing godly-work and doing activities to reach out and proclaim Christ’s gospel. With her unlimited sense of responsibility, Mimi is a mediator in the family-bringing peace and order among her siblings.
                   Throughout the years, Mimi still supports and provides for her sick mother, as she is her source of strength. As Mimi lives to please the Lord, she is blessed immeasurably. She has an awesome family; a supportive and loving husband, children who are respectful, achievers in their own rights and community active. A faithfully-bonded family, in good shape, her friends and associates are reliable. She has very good relationships with her colleagues and her financial investments are substantial; they include a home of her own in Macau, Real Estate properties as sources of extra-incomes and several more where her family-members’ knowledge, talents and expertise are very useful.

                   Mimi with all that she has proven and achieved is humble and happy. Living in Macau, Chinese cultures have got the best of Mimi, she is a learner who observes the world, taking notes of the best and looking for ways to make them applicable to her own and to her community. Being a Filipino, she knows that her success comes from above, brought up by her native society and inspired and enriched by other cultures she was exposed with. Her life is a source of inspirations to both the young and the old and to all the people whom she has touched. To all the people who know her in and out of Macau, the warmth of her personality is easily remembered.