11 years ago, Nanay Terry was living a lavish lifestyle in Florida. Originally from Iloilo in The Philippines, both her and her husband were successful engineers.

She needed some surgery which went wrong and Nanay ended up in a coma for 2 days. Nobody knew whether she would wake, or how she would be if she did wake.

She did wake and told anyone who would listen about the 'near death' experience she had whilst in the coma, including meeting various angels and saints, and she experienced a vision of The Blessed Virgin Mary, standing on a blue whale, holding a white resurrection banner!

Mary told her that she would get well, but that she was was then to move back to The Philippines to a small town called Binangonan and build a care home for abandoned older people.

Nanay Terry went to the place she had been told to go and found (as promised), a parcel of land (around 2 hectares), growing nothing, and for sale. She bought the land and built a 10 bed care home and called it The Blue Whale Mission of Our Lady. She also built a house for her and her husband to live in – unfortunately he died a few years into the project. She built a training centre to train care givers, a retreat centre for students, a chapel, and a cemetery for former residents (abandoned old folk don't have anyone to take care of them after death).

All this has been achieved using no public money, and obviously there is no income from residents. All building and running costs have been met by Nanay Terry or by donations. The home is staffed by care staff trained on site. A volunteer doctor visits three times a week.

Nanay Terry is now 84 years old and still actively running the mission.

The mission relies on donations just to keep going, and many of the buildings are now needing refurbishment - any cash donations will go towards this.