Answer to a Simple Prayer

It really amazes me that it still amazes me how God answers prayers!  I mean, for four years now, almost 5, I've been going on missions, relying mostly on the Divine Providence of God, hoping with all that is in me that He hears my prayers, and He always does...perhaps not in the way I was thinking, sometimes it takes a while which helps me to work on my patience, but always He hears me.  Which is why I'm wondering now when I will cease to be amazed at God's unending help to me... well, maybe it is better to always be filled with awe at the loving hand of God instead of taking for granted His generous care.  Perhaps I'm on the right path after all!!

Anyways, I know I've written before about ways in which the Lord hears my prayers, but I just can't help but want to share my experiences so that you too can realize the love God has for each of us and His desire to answer all our needs if only we give Him the opportunity to do it.  So, here's my story:

Every morning we go to mass at 6am and it is always in Waray Waray, the dialect spoken here in Borongan.  I have come to know and understand the mass in this dialect, to be able to participate in the mass and sing the songs, thanks be to God!  But I always try to read the readings before going to mass so that during the Liturgy of the Word, when the readings are read, I can more fully understand and hear God speaking to me at that time.  On Wednesday, February 20th, the Gospel was about Jesus curing a blind man. (Mark 8:22-26)  The people of the village brought the man to Jesus and Jesus took him out of the village to put mud on his eyes and cure him.  Jesus had to do this twice to the man to fully cure him, and then, after the man could see again, Jesus told him to go home, but "Do not even go into the village."

Now, upon reading the last line, I was so confused.  Why would Jesus tell him to go home, but not return to his village...isn't that the same thing?  Is Jesus giving a contradiction?  Did He make a mistake or did the author of the Gospel or the translator goof up??  I was wondering about that all during mass, really thinking about it during the reading of it during mass, trying to hear if the priest would give an explanation in his homily, but he did not.  After mass, we kneel down and say a prayer of thanks to God for the mass and during my prayer, I asked God to help me to understand this Gospel.  That was my prayer, my cry out to God.  Simple...not important at all in the face of what most people cry out to God for each day...but I just trusted God, that He would help me to understand, that He cared for me enough to help me, even in this simple request.

One of our priests here in Borongan, Fr. Berto, often gives the Sisters books that have the mass readings and meditations for each day.  The book is called The Anawim Way, anawim means poor.  We haven't been given these books in a while, much to my dismay, because they are really great.  Now it is the middle of Ordinary Time, Lent starts in less than a month, so I was not expecting to receive a book at this time.  But on this day, even though Fr. Berto was not the priest who said mass, he came out of the rectory after mass to say hello to us, and he handed Sister Minerva 5 Anawim books, one of which was given to me.  Upon returning to our home, I quickly went to my room to read the meditation of the day, and there was the very answer I was crying out to God for. This is what it said:

"What can we learn from this story of the gradual healing of the blind man?  He represents us.  In our fallen nature, we are blinded by sin, unable to see rightly.  We need the grace of Jesus.  But in order to receive His grace and experience His power, we need to allow Him to lead us out of our worldly way of life and into a new way of life with God.  This does not happen all at once.  We can see, but not perfectly.  We need to come back to Jesus again and again and allow Him to touch us with His healing grace.  Jesus' counsel to the man not to go back into the village is also an instruction for us.  Once we have experienced the grace of conversion and healing which Jesus gives us, we must not return to the darkness of our former way of life.  Like the blind man, we put our trust in Jesus, allowing Him to lead us out of our worldly 'village' and we rejoice as he gradually opens our eyes to see life truly."

So, the formerly blind man must find a new home, but with new eyes open to new life in Christ, he can clearly see where to go to live in unity with his new-found faith.  And so it is with each of us.  For me, what I found in this experience was a renewed faith in God that He hears my prayers, even the simplest ones, and He answers them always according to His will.

Since Wednesday when this happened, it has been on my mind to write about it, so perhaps there is someone who needs to read this, to know that God has heard your prayer and will answer it...rest in the peace of knowing God loves you and is faithful to His promise to hear our prayers.  Cry out to Him, trust in Him for He will always be there for you, as is always is for me!!

xoxo

A Missionary's Take on Love

Love.  Somewhere along the way, I think we human beings have lost the concept of what love truly means.  We have all of these amazing examples of what true love is from Jesus, Mary and all of the saints, but somehow in the busyness and noisiness of our world, we forget them and create our own definitions of love.  “I love holidays”… “I love going to the beach”… “I love eating halo halo”  (a favorite dessert among Filipinos containing ice cream, ice, jello, beans, corn, coconut, corn flakes, and coconut milk!!)  But do you see in all of these examples that love becomes a selfish feeling? …it’s all about me.  Or perhaps it’s not that we forget the meaning of love, but that we think true love is too difficult, so we make it easy and make love all about the words, saying “I love you,” but not showing it in actions.  So love becomes an empty concept, without any meaning behind it, without any actions to support it.  But the problem is, it leaves us feeling empty, it makes us search for other ways, perhaps sinful ways, of giving us the fulfillment and satisfaction of love. 

So then, what is true love?  St. Basil the Great says “What is the mark of love?  Not to seek what is for your own benefit, but what is for the benefit for another.”  It sounds hard, and it may seem like it’s no fun, but really, when you are truly putting others before yourself an amazing thing happens…the heaviness of your own load lightens and you become filled with brightness, happiness and joyful fulfillment.  And it just makes you want to love more all of the time.  It’s the grace of truly loving, and I’ve experienced it myself in the Oikos Ptochos Tou Theou Mission.

During the last week of January and the first week of February, Borongan was graced by the presence of missionaries from all over the world giving their time, talent and treasure to the poorest of the poor in Eastern Samar.  Along with the Diocese of Borongan and the Provincial Government, the Diocese of Joliet helped the poor here in a medical and dental mission, a construction mission and an outreach mission, reaching out to thousands of people in need.  As part of the Oikos Community, I was helping with the dental mission, who gave dental care to 625 people in 8 days, working at the Provincial Hospital in Borongan, in Taft, at the prison in Dolores, at a school in 

 Calico-on and in Bato.  When Friday, February 8^th came along, and the missioners left, I was ready for a rest day…more than ready.  However, that was not to be!!  Friday became a prep day for a barrio immersion in Camantang, Can-Avid.  We packed rice and sugar for food packs to give the families, treat bags for the kids, food for dinner and lunch for the people in the barrio and prepped all of the dental equipment for our dental mission.  And so, I worked with the Oikos Sisters and the volunteers of the Oikos Mission getting ready for the two-day immersion.  Was I tired?  Yes!  Did I want to sleep? Yes!!  But when I did go to sleep that night, it was with a feeling of joy and fulfillment knowing that I gave of myself in love. 

On Saturday, February 9^th, the Oikos Mission traveled to Camantang, Can-Avid for our immersion with the people there.  It was a jam-packed two days where, as we always do, we shared our

blessings with the poor.  We have graciously received donations of clothing for men, women and children, slippers, rosaries, blankets, homemade dresses for girls, water filters and menstruation kits for women, all of which we shared with those in need.  We had catechesis with the children, bible sharing with the adults, singing sessions, a movie at night, shared meals for dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday along with a successful dental mission where we served 78 patients and gave fluoride treatments to over 90 children!!  With the help of the Vice Mayor in Can-Avid, Vilma Germino, we all had such an amazing experience sharing God’s love with  the people of Camantang, and left there with that same feeling of fulfillment, brightness, joy and happiness.  Those are the gifts of love.   Here I thought I was the one giving the love, but when I left, I found I had received more than I gave.

St. Francis of Assisi, our patron saint in Oikos, says it is better to love than to be loved.  And actually, the only way to receive love from another, whether it be your spouse, friend, family member or someone in need, is to love them first.  When you are able to see beyond yourself to the needs of another and give what is needed to them, that is love.   It is a challenge for sure, but well worth the sacrifice because of God’s endless graces to those who love truly.

A Visit to Matarinao

Matarinao is a barrio located south of Borongan, about a 2 hour drive on paved roads and a 30 minute bumpy dive on one of the bumpiest roads I have ever been on!!  Seriously...I'm talking a head bopping, stomach flipping, body jarring experience!!  I've been there three times so far... once for a vigil mass and celebration of Pentecost, once on a dental mission and immersion, and for the third time just a few weeks ago for a Christmas Giving mission.  This last time effected me the most, and although they cannot compare with seeing it all in person, the pictures will help to tell why.

Matarinao is a fishing community surrounded by water on three sides, and, after your head settles from the jarring drive in, is quite beautiful.  The scenes of the ocean are breathtaking and all of the flora and fauna there is quite lovely.  It would seem that Matarinao would be the perfect place to live, but there are people there who would beg to differ with that sentence:  the poorest of the poor who are still suffering the effects of Typhoon Haiyan, 5 years ago last November.  These people have lost their homes and their livelihoods, have held their dead family members after the typhoon...or never found their bodies because they were washed away.  They live in homes along the coast of the ocean, but unlike the mansions and resorts with an ocean view in the US, these people live in places one could barely call a home.

Last June, the Oikos Mission went to Matarinao with a group of missionaries from Oswego, IL.  We lived there with the people for three days, and we prepared food for them, played with them, prayed with them, taught them, brought our mobile dental clinic and medical mission with us...we had a mission of about 30 people, and we loved being there!  Being on the dental team, I stayed in the plaza of the town helping to give medicine out after the patients saw the dentists.  But the group from Oswego went with the Oikos Sisters to visit some of the homes bringing food and household supplies with them.  I heard the stories of these homes, but didn't see them in person until the other day...

So, the people who live in these "houses" have lost everything in  the typhoon and they haven't recovered.  They built these makeshift homes on the seaside because they don't have any land of their own, and because the typhoon also took away their livelihoods, at the present time, they have no hope of going somewhere better.  The government of the Philippines has designated these areas as "no build zones" because of the obvious danger from coming storms and because of that, they will not help people fix their homes or rebuild for them if they stay there.  Even the Oikos Mission is not able to help them do that, so says the government.  But we can help give them food, clothing, tarps for their roofs, and flooring as you can see in some of the pictures.  Imagine living on, sleeping on rocky shells!!  Imagine not having privacy in your home, not having a bathroom in your home, not having a roof that keeps you dry and safe.  This is where these people live.

So, how can we help?  Well, the Oikos Mission is going to start teaching their livelihood programs there, FAITH and the Piglet Recycling Programs.... for more information on that, you can visit our website at http://www.poorhouseholdofgod.org.  We also will visit them often, as we did a few weeks ago, and can bring with us food, clothing, tarps, and other things that can be helpful to them.  The difficulty in going there and the distance from Borongan is great, too great for fare money to high school and college, so we will try to find sponsors to help send these kids to school and places for them to live while attending school.  This is what we do... we bring hope...we let them know they are not forgotten...we let them know that God loves them so much and we bring His blessings to them.  Seeing the happy and relieved tears of an over-burdened mother as we tell her that we have a sponsor for her oldest child and she will be able to attend high school and college, providing hope for the future for this family...makes everything worth it...even the body-jarring ride!!! xxoo

My Fiat

So, I guess the last blog was a spoiler alert to my decision regarding my future plans!!  Obviously I have returned to the Philippines!!  In September of 2018, I decided to go on an Ignatian retreat.  Now St. Ignatius was a very deep and intense kind of man.  He came from a prominent family with ties to the military.  All his life, Ignatius dreamed of being a knight, of saving the day, of dying with honor while protecting his queen.  His family was boisterous and prone to alcohol and being with prostitutes when not at war.  Ignatius was no different.  That is until his conversion.

The conversion of St. Ignatius was a painful one, physically as well as spiritually.  He was injured during a battle...a wall fell down on his leg and broke it.  How he begged to be able to die then, a hero's death during battle, but he did not die.  He was taken home for rehabilitation.  They set his leg so it would heal, but they set it incorrectly, so, not wanting to be seen limping around, the proud Ignatius had them break his leg again, without anesthesia, and reset it.  It took three rounds of doing this until he was happy his leg would heal correctly.  While recovering, which in itself was a painful and boring process, Ignatius begged for books, but only one could be found...a book of the saints.  Taking months to recover, Ignatius read that book over and over and over again, until it seemed the words became branded in his soul.  Eventually, they changed him.  After his recovery, much to his family's anger, he found himself in a cave for quite a long time, alone with his thoughts and all of his sins on his soul.  He delved into the teachings of the Catholic Church and the Gospels and he wrote all sorts of questions that he himself answered.  Later those very questions became the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.  Upon coming out of the cave, Ignatius was a changed man, a renewed man with a new mission...to fight for and protect his Queen, Mary, and the Church started by Jesus Christ.  To this day, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are used as a model for discernment and for converting souls deeper into their faith to have a deep and personal relationship with Our Lord, and to live lives worthy of His love and mercy.

The Ignatian Retreat is supposed to be for 4 weeks, each day the retreatant is guided through one of the spiritual exercises and left alone to meditate on thoughts generated through the guidance.  My retreat was squished into 4 days!!  And was exhausting!!  But I had one meditation that completely changed the way I was thinking about my life.  It is called The Three Types of Man.

So, St. Ignatius says there are three types of good Catholic people.  All are practicing Catholics who are trying to have a better relationship with God, and all of them know there is something they have or something inside of themselves that they have to let go of to let God in.
         The first type of person knows what is inside of him that he has to let go of to truly do God's will.  But he says...I'll let go of it tomorrow...I'll think about it next week...I'll pray about it first...and he ends up on his death bed never having detached from the impediment to God.
           The second type of person also knows what she has to get rid of.  But she is hesitant to let it go, she wants some of it to remain hers, so she tries to make a deal with God.  Let's say she truly feels that God wants her to detach from material things by giving her excess money to the poor.  But she says to God...I will do it, Lord, for You, but I want the world to know what I did, I want the glory of everyone knowing how good a person I am.
            The third type of person knows what he has to get rid of and detach from, although he may very much want it, he says to God:  I know this thing I have blocks me from truly loving you, so I will let it go and trust that if You want me to have it, You'll give it back.  But if this really is what is keeping me from knowing You completely, I don't even want it.

So it was up to us retreatants to discover what kind of person we are, which of the three, and figure out how to change ourselves if we need change.  Without delving too deep into my soul here, I felt strongly that I was the second type of person and began questioning my vocation as a missionary.  But in my meditation, truly, truly I saw the eyes of Jesus...they pierced into my soul.  He asked me when I was going to stop asking questions, when was I going to take a step forward in faith.  He told me He couldn't see any sign of faith in me because every time I began to move forward, something held me back.  And I found myself crying to Jesus saying I have faith.  He said, "Show me."  When I opened my eyes, I decided then and there to enter the novitiate of the Oikos Sisters.

Do you know which of the three types of persons you are?  xoxo

Christmas Giving

So, I've returned to the Philippines, just before the New Year's celebrations, on December 29th.  I came with my first missionary partner, Paula and her husband Tom along with their granddaughter Mady.  Upon arrival in the Philippines, we got right to work in the mission!!  On December 31st, we went to a barrio called Caligbangang.  It is about 45 minutes from the city of Borongan and is the barrio just after the Borongan garbage dump.  It is upwind of the dump, but the water and the land are effected by the dump, how could they not be?  The road going to the barrio is not paved, and due to a lot of rain and the extremely heavy trucks bringing garbage, there are huge pot holes in the road, so huge and deep, we had to get out of our vehicles and put rocks into the holes so our cars wouldn't get stuck in them!!

We brought gifts for the kids, clothes for the adults, water filters for the families along with lunch for the entire barrio.  Our kids sang songs and played games with the children of Caligbangang, and a fun time was had by all!!  I love seeing the wonder and love on a new missionary's face as I did on Mady's, who is 18 years old from Buffalo, NY and is on her first mission trip.  Our Oikos kids and the kids from all the barrios we visited just completely embraced her...it's so fun to see!!

Here are some pictures from our trip:

There is no way to describe seeing kids receiving Christmas gifts for the very first time, or eating spaghetti and fried chicken...food they LOVE but hardly ever have, if ever.  There is no way to describe being the one to be able to give them these gifts, this simple food, and seeing the smiles on their faces.  I am certainly blessed to be able to be here, to be able to witness and be a part of the continual giving and loving of a people who believed the world forgot about them.  

Here's the thing about that, though...a couple of years ago, I came across a quote by the amazing Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta:

"I can do things you can't do, you can do things I can't do.  Together we can do great things!"

Meaning, not everyone can be here at "ground zero" helping the poorest of the poor, but if the Sisters and I had to work for the money to help the poor as we do, we wouldn't be able to help the poor as we do.  The Oikos Ptochos Tou Theou mission has many benefactors and sponsors that help us financially so that we can do God's work here.  

Thank you to the many sponsors and donators who gave so generously to the Poor Household of God in 2018.  As we begin now in 2019, I can't even begin to imagine the ways in which people will give, the ways in which the Oikos Mission will reach out to the poor.  If fills me with anticipation and joy!!

Our celebration of New Year's was nothing short of wild!!  The kids here raised such a ruckus, I'd be surprised if they didn't hear us in Buffalo!!  All of us here at the Mission are excited about this new year.  I hope you are too!!

xoxo 

My Double Hiatus

So, I admit to having taken a hiatus from writing... I have sort of lost my fervor for writing.  But I heard Dr. Ray Guarendi, Catholic psychologist, radio host and author, once on his radio talk show give advice to someone in my position, with "writer's block".  Dr. Ray's advice was to just keep on writing, don't stop, even if what you write makes no sense or isn't very good, just keep at it and it'll all come back, and so... here I go...

This past July I left the Philippines and returned home to Buffalo, NY to raise money for the Oikos Mission, to visit my family and friends and to discern my future path. Check. Check. Check.  I accomplished all I set out to do!!  The Mission Appeals in Buffalo went very well and I humbly thank the parishes of Holy Family, St. Anthony and St. John Gualbert.  I was able to go on a vacation with my huge family...about 90 of us descended upon Hampton Beach, NH for the 59th year to sunbathe, play games, talk, reunite, laugh, eat and enjoy each other's company.  It is a tradition that my grandparents on my father's side began 59 years ago with their small family of 8 children and now has grown to include their children's children, their children's children's children,

and next year a new generation will be added! (That's right...their children's children's children's children!!!)  It was such a joy to be there with all of them.  

This trip home was extended due to the discernment part of my time home, and so I was able to celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family in Buffalo, all of which was so dear to my heart.   So I guess you could say I was on a double hiatus...from writing and from the mission.  I did greatly miss being with my Oikos Family, and was on my knees in fervent prayer each time I heard of a typhoon or earthquake heading there.  For some reason, it's more terrifying for me to be far away from them when such things happen then being there with them...like I have super powers and can stop the natural disasters or something!!!  But I can barely handle the wait between a natural disaster forecasted or happening and finally hearing from them that everything is ok.  

My time of discernment was difficult and took some time.  I felt very strongly that I had reached the pinnacle of my time here as a lay missionary...not that there was nothing more for me to do, but that I was in need of growing more in my work and in my relationship with God and being a lay missionary just wasn't getting it done.  I also felt a longing in my heart to grow deeper in my vocation.  And so, I dove deep into my heart, searched my soul, spent time alone with God and found my answer.  Want to know what that was?  Stay tuned...

Joy Revisited

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.

I awoke and saw that life was service.

I acted and behold, service was joy."

The above quote is written by Rabindranath Tagore, a philosopher and reformer who lived in Calcutta at the turn of the 20th century and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.  When I saw this quote, it struck me quite stunningly how accurate this is in my life. 

When I went on my first mission to Africa, I was told that now my life would be split into two parts…life before Ghana and life after Ghana.  I didn’t believe it at the time, I thought how could one experience change one’s life so irrevocably that it would never be the same again.  But it totally did!!  It was like I woke up for the first time and saw how I should really live my life, caring for and serving others.  My path may be different from yours, but whether we move to another country to serve and care for others or do it in the town we were born in, we are all called to service.  The amazing thing that I learned on my very first mission was that when I gave myself totally in service to others, I was filled with great joy…even through difficult times and painful experiences.  It is not a joy born of earthly things, for that kind of joy is temporary.  The joy I am speaking of comes from deep within yourself, it is a brightness, a lightening of your load, a feeling of peace and of grace. “I acted and behold, service was joy!”

   

This past February, missioners from around the whole world came to Borongan City for the 12^th Annual Bulig Kablas Medical Mission through the Diocese of Joliet Partnership in Mission.  48 men and women including doctors, nurses, dentists, builders, painters, and community outreach volunteers came to Borongan traveling thousands of miles, spending hundreds of dollars, leaving their families and their work.  They worked here for two weeks without pay healing the sick, helping to restore dental health, building homes in the rain and reaching out to the poorest of the poor, from the smallest children to the senior citizens.   Why do they do that?  What could be their motivation?  I know what it is… it is the joy they feel in serving others.  It may seem hard to believe, but even in the challenging situations, the painful encounters and headaches and tummy troubles, there is joy!   That is why so many of these volunteers have been coming back to Borongan for this mission for many years now.  They acted and behold, they found service was joy.

This year for the Medical Mission, I was on the dental team.  We served the poor in the barrios of San Jose and  San Miguel, we worked two days in the provincial hospital and we also gave dental care to the prisoners at the provincial jail and at PJMB.  Three dentists came from the US along with three dental hygenists, and, working alongside Sister Michelle Ureta, one of the Oikos Sisters who is also a dentist, they saw over 650 patients and did over 1,000 procedures!!!  I was working as the dental pharmacist together with other Oikos co-workers throughout the dental mission.  It was really amazing to see all of the dentists working so hard, bending over patients, one after the other, understanding and feeling the fears and pain of their patients, working from early in the morning until late in the afternoon and treating each person with kindness and patience.  Despite the back pain, headaches, heat and long hours, at the end of the day, I could still see the joy on their faces.  Truly, there is great joy in service!  For me, it was my first time working as a pharmacist, although all I gave out were pain killers and amoxicillin!  Still, being able to offer a comforting smile, some relief from pain and receiving lots of smiles as I gave the instructions for the medicine in Waray Waray, I felt blessed to be able to do even that.  The experience at the prisons was something I will never forget.  It was the first time I did prison ministry, but I hope it won’t be the last.  I had a personal encounter with each prisoner as I explained to them how to take their medicine, offered empathy for their dental pain and gave wishes for a speedy recovery.  Each of us received the grace to look beyond the exterior of each prisoner to see the person God created, and gave them all the care and love a child of God deserves.          

There is great joy in service, and I am so thankful to God for the blessing of being able to experience this joy day in and day out with the Oikos Sisters in their mission, Oikos Ptochos Tou Theo, the Poor Household of God.  From the big acts of service like making food for 600 people and serving it to the smaller tasks like encoding a songbook for the Oikos Family to use during prayer, when I am able to put others first and truly rely on God, I am filled with the joy of service.

I know that Rabindranath Tagore did not write this poem for me... but I thank him from the bottom of my joyful heart that he wrote it for it explains something I have been trying to put into words for 4 years now.  By the way, you don't have to become a missionary or travel hundreds of miles to feel this kind of joy.  The Good Lord knows there are many, many people in need right here in our city, our neighborhoods, possibly even in our own families.  Do the service...feel the joy...never stop!!! 

Dr. Terry and Dr. Mike in San Miguel

Ready to start the day!!

Dental Hygienist Laura...can you find her?

The dental team with our protectors...Thank you!!!