Most PBMA members can heal–official
Energy will come out of my body, which is called power, when I’m in the process of healing someone.”
This is how Leon “Boy” Famulagan, vice president of the Philippine Benevolent Missionary Association (PBMA) Nonoc, Talisay City Chapter, described what he feels when he uses the healing power he claims he and most of the members of his group possess.
Famulagan said that when he would start concentrating he would sense that unexplainable feeling in his body.
“Dili ko kasabot sa akong gibati — nga mualimuot unya nay energy gyud gikan sa akong lawas (I couldn’t explain how I felt – I feel warm, then there’s energy flowing inside my body), “ Famulagan said.
Famulagan claims to have healed at least 100 people, whom he called as believers, in his 38 years of missionary work in the PBMA.
He cited as an example a girl from the province, whom he refused to name, who suffered from stomach pains and was advised by the doctor to undergo a P40,000 operation, as one of those he healed.
The girl, whose neighbor was a PBMA member, heeded her neighbor’s advice to have Famulagan help her with her ailment.
He said it took him a week to heal the girl.
He said there were two kinds of healing processes that he and other PBMA members would use – the “blue healing” and the “tap healing.”
Blue healing is a prayer (in Aramaic language) for God asking for the complete satisfaction of the human body while the “tap healing” is the process in which the missionary touches or massage and blows (tayhup) on the ailing parts of the body.
The healing process will involve a pray over the patient using the blue healing method followed by the tap healing process.
When asked how he knew or got his healing power, Famulagan said he prayed the PBMA prayers in Aramaic (the language spoken at the time of Jesus Christ) and believed.
Famulagan, however, said that there were also instances where he failed to heal the patient.
But, he said, that there were more people he healed.
He said that there were illnesses, which do need material healing like operations, but there were also illnesses which only need their prayers and power.
When asked if this was just a way to increase the membership of their organization, Famulagan said he and other PBMA members didn’t force the patient whom they healed from joining the organization.
“They volunteered to join,” said Famulagan.
When asked if their Supreme Master, Ruben Ecleo Jr., who is hiding after being convicted of the murder of his wife, Alona, has also healing powers, Famulagan said Ecleo had healed many people.
Famulagan, however, didn’t cite any proof of patients healed by Ecleo.
But Famulagan said that most of the more than 400 members of the PBMA Nonoc, Talisay City chapter, could heal persons.
He said there were two kinds of healers – the stationary and the missionary healers.
He said that the stationary healers perform their healing sessions at home while the missionary healers would travel and preach the good values and traits espoused by the organization.
He said that his chapter had 200 missionary healers and at least 200 stationary healers.
On Ecleo, Famulagan said that he and his chapter were worried about their supreme master. He said the group didn’t know Ecleo’s whereabouts.
He said the last time he was with Ecleo was when he attended a hearing at the sala of Judge Soliver Peras.
For now, he said the group was leaving Ecleo’s case to the authorities and to Congress.
He said the group would instead be focusing on the organization’s main goal of continuing the good values and good traits which their Supreme Master taught them.
“It is the personal problem of our master and the organization has nothing to do with that,” Famulagan said in Cebuano about Ecleo’s murder conviction. /Gabriel C. Bonjoc, Correspondent
