Obituary of Juanita Hernandez Chamberlain

Juanita Hernandez Chamberlain 1957 - 2016 Juanita Hernandez Chamberlain was born María Juanita del Pilar Hernández Pineda in Bogotá, Colombia, where she spent her earliest childhood. The third of five children born to Manuel José Hernández and Carmen Rosa Pineda de Hernández, she moved with the family to London, England, in 1963. There she grew up for the next ten years in the neighborhood of Marble Arch near Hyde Park. She acquired an English accent that lingered to the end of her life. Returning to Bogotá in 1972, when she was entering the equivalent of 10th grade, Juanita finished her schooling in Spanish. Two large discoveries followed in Bogotá. First, at age 18, she and her family came to hear the preaching of a Bolivian evangelist, and a little while later, she received the Lord Jesus into her heart and entered into a lifelong walk with Him. Instructed and encouraged by a company of Colombian and American Christians, notably including the veteran missionary, Mrs. Hannah Lowe, she grew and began a lifelong course of seeking to share the love of Jesus with others. Second, she found that she liked teaching. She began to teach English at the Colegio Colombo Hebreo in Bogotá, and began university studies to be formally trained as a teacher. She also developed a prayer burden for Cali, Colombia, and in 1985, moved there to teach, to finish her university education and function as a missionary there. Juanita taught school for four years in Cali, at the Colegio Jefferson and the Colegio Bolivar, both bilingual schools, teaching kindergarten through second grade. She finished her degree in Primary Education (Licensiada en Educación Primaria) at the Universidad de San Buenaventura in 1988, and then traveled to New York in 1989 to be engaged to Philip Chamberlain, of Yonkers, New York. After their wedding in Bogotá, they settled in Yonkers and raised three children, Ernest (born in 1990), Timothy (1992) and Katharine (1998.) As a member of an independent house church there, she continued to be active in both Gospel outreach and support for missionaries in Colombia and elsewhere. She was her children's main teacher, home schooling them for a total of ten years. She also became a U.S. citizen, while retaining her Colombian citizenship. Over the first 12 years in the United States, Juanita and her husband were very active in campus Bible studies at universities in the area, especially Yale. She encouraged the young people she met and developed lifelong friendships with many of them. She also took special interest in Colombians living in the New York area who were in need of help and encouragement. Starting about 2005, Juanita began to prepare and study for certification as a teacher under New York regulations. In 2011, she completed her M.S. Ed. with honors at Mercy College, and in 2013 was certified by New York State as a teacher in Elementary Education. While Juanita taught as a substitute teacher in several schools, her career as a teacher in New York State was foreclosed by the onset of severe pain in October 2013, which turned out to stem from the rare cancer (ACC) that eventually took her life in August 2016. Despite undergoing five operations earlier in her adult life, and with the onset of cancer, three more operations and extensive radiation treatments, Juanita continued to be active with family and church until her final month. Notably, she and her whole family visited London, England, in August, 2015, where she was able to introduce her family to the neighborhood where she grew up. Juanita loved to play tambourine, flute, accordion, and tiple (a twelve-stringed Colombian folk instrument.) She and her husband, also an amateur musician, encouraged their children to branch out in music. Ernest has become a certified music teacher in Connecticut public schools, Timothy is a young financial analyst at a major insurer in New Jersey, and Katharine is beginning her college years in the honors program at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. Through all this time, her husband Phil has pursued a career of financial risk analysis in banking and insurance for over 40 years now. Besides her immediate family, Juanita is survived by her brother Gonzalo, her three sisters, Patricia, Pilar and Marcela, and her mother Carmencita. Gonzalo lives in Bogotá, and all the others now reside in the United States. Flowers are welcome, as are donations in lieu of flowers to either the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute or Mount Sinai Hospital, where Juanita received exceptional help through the Department of Neurosurgery.