Aurora Puerto Rican Cultural Council

As many of you know, on New Year’s day 2020, our dear husband, father, brother, uncle, and friend Orlando “Papo” Rivera was diagnosed with liver cancer.

Today marks 2 weeks since he was admitted to the hospital with a severe internal infection. After 5 days in ICU at Edward Hospital, he was transferred to Northwestern in Chicago where he was admitted and is receiving the best care possible for his advanced liver disease. 

It is with a heavy heart that we were given the news that Orlando will return to his home and be placed in hospice care this week.  As we await his progress and place his care in God’s hands, we are aware that his eternal wish would be to return to his motherland to be laid to rest with his parents in Barranquitas, PR.  Orlando has been a pillar in the Aurora Puerto Rican Council Committee (APRCC), the Puerto Rican Fraternal Order Lodge and the Aurora Community at large volunteering his time, efforts and services.  We are hoping that the community he has served so selflessly over these many years can assist in funding his wish of returning home to Puerto Rico.   

Please continue to lift Orlando up in prayer, his wife Mirna Lopez-Rivera, his children, and the Rivera family during this difficult time. May God place his healing hands over him and grant him the strengths to fight this illness and return to his family, friends and community he so much loves.  
 

"The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members." – Coretta Scott King