Adventum Domini

Until this year, I was a full-time OFW the past thirteen years.

Blessed with a generous employer and a short-distance flight travel from my work-site, my family has the privileged to visit Philippines at least once a year. It was always an occasion we looked forward to – a long break from my everyday work, my wife catching up with friends and relatives, my children being able to enjoy their play-time with cousins and friends who finally spoke the same mother tongue. And did I forget to say about Pinoy foods, and more mouth-watering Pinoy foods, and more mouth-watering tempting Pinoy foods, all  to our tummy’s delight? Admittedly, diet and weight gain are non-existing vocabularies during those 3-week stay-cations.

In all those years, a simple welcome tradition was started by my parents. Whether it be a simple pentel-marked A4 paper, or a hurriedly pen-scribbled message on a brown Manila paper or in a large cartolina with our nephews and nieces writing their greetings, they would always write their “Welcome Home” greetings for us. They would hang it, make it stand, paste it or tie around any post just to make sure it would be the first thing we would see when we arrive the house. Anybody could easily dismiss the haphazard outlook of those welcome greetings but the truth is, the heart-warming message always leave a love-mark in us.

We are entering the Advent season wherein the Lord is coming again on Christmas day. So how are you and I so far in the preparation stages for His arrival? Hopefully, the top-most in our to-do-list will not be about early discount shopping for gifts, or extravagant decoration-motifs of the humongous and glittering Christmas trees we have, or the sumptuous Noche Buena feast we are planning to serve to our loved ones. Neither the beautiful clothes nor the latest shiny pair of shoes during the Simbang gabi series or Sunday mass count as well. Don’t get me wrong. These stuffs are OK in making good outwardly preparations. However, we must focus on and prioritize what is really essential.

When our Lord celebrant arrives, what He would certainly like to see, is the simple yet humble, happy and hopeful welcome message we will put in front of us, in the open doorsteps of our hearts.

“Welcome Home and Stay In Us, Lord.”

Mas warm yan kesa sa mga kumukutikutitap.

Kaya tara na po para ihanda ang ating mga puso.

Padating na siya.

God bless po.

Behind The Tragedies

In the Lego DVD movie “The Adventures of Clutch Powers”, the main hero Clutch Powers was given a new team composed of Brick, a weapons and demolition expert, Peg, a biologist, and Bernie, an engineer. Their initial mission led them to a lot of challenges culminating in their face-off with the evil wizard Mallock.

So how did they solve all the obstacles they encountered to win over their enemies? They “build on each other” (an fitting Lego liner that sums up its world-wide known product).

It took another subsequent and devastating natural calamities – the Bohol earthquake and the Yolanda supertyphoon, to bring to focus the capacity for vast outpouring of kindness and love of one fellowman to another. Filipinos from all walks of life and in all regions of the world, regardless of religious, political or social affiliations, have banded together to pray for, to donate or to volunteer in their heartwarming intention to ease the hopelessness and helplessness that the victims after losing their loved ones and their lifetime belongings. And the international community was equally pro-active and quick-responding in providing technical and medical expertise to alleviate the dire situations especially in those hard-hit yet hard-to-reach areas. Stories how young children donate their piggy-bank savings, how the “poorest among the poor” even donates his very meager daily earnings to buy relief goods or how a looted grocery owner even ask one lady looter who thanked her because it was her child’s birthday that day and they have nothing to eat if she will not join the mad scramble to steal from other people can simply bring one’s misty eyes to tears. 

If there is anything good that can come out from these recent tragedies, then it is only that we learn to give and love again in the most unconditional way.

It will only be a matter of time, but the Visayan people will be back on its feet and rise again to restore their lives back to normalcy.

Until then, they know that their kababayans and the rest of the world are behind them all they way. 

God bless the Filipino spirit.

God bless the loving world we can be.

1 Thessalonians 5:11

Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, as indeed you do.   

Giving with Joy

We have a small Shenzhen-based community in China which we aptly called Brgy. China. This open yet closely-knit family-oriented community has been our family away from home since we were invited by them in the year 2003. Families join and leave China but the friendships keeps growing nevertheless.

Through the years, we have cultivated deeper relationships with one another through regular get-togethers and rich inter-personal relationships. In the past few years, the core members have actively participated as choir members, lay ministers, catechists and event organizers during Sunday mass services at the Saint Anthony Catholic Church in Shenzhen. And they just completed the Couples for Christ seminar-modules.

Simultaneous with our religious endeavors, we also started to cooperate closely with the Philippine consulate and other Filipino communities in bringing fraternal and legal assistance to Filipinos in need and in distress. We are hosting and organizing outreach programs to provide basic consulate services like passport renewals, absentee voting, OEC issuance and other relevant concerns. Surely, our small group has gone beyond our “comfort zones” in making a small difference in the lives of the fellow OFWs.

But what makes me deeply proud to be a member of Brgy. China is that we finally expanded our giving to finally benefit the poor and needy kababayans back in the Philippines. Annually, we support two philanthropic outreach programs and we have emergency donation pooling in times of urgent relief for calamities. The trust and generosity of our community friends is humbling.

Each member of Brgy.China has his/her own family concerns and financial struggles, but when one member spearheads a lend-a-hand call for our time, talent and treasures, rest assure that cheerful reaching-out-hands are closely nearby.

So what happens when we give “things that hurts” and keep on giving “despite the hurts”?

We start to give with joy. 

God bless po.

2 Corinthians 9:6-7

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.