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!!!

A Humbling Experience: Arnell

I know that I have been sorely negligent in my commitment to posting about my missionary work.  I apologize for the interruption.  It is true that I am quite busy here and that at the end of the day I seem to fall into bed with a loud sigh and drift right into sleep.  But I do miss writing, I miss the connection I have had with those of you who have been faithful readers.  I will do my best to begin again.  I had some technical issues...the computer I was using crashed, and I lost many of my pictures and posts I was writing.  So...here we go...beginning once again...I hope and pray that the fervor in which I desire to write is enough to keep my eyes open at night!!

So this is my fourth trip here to the Poor Household of God mission in the Philippines with the Oikos Sisters.  I sort of was surprised at the feeling of coming home that I experienced upon my arrival here.  But truly, it felt so natural and right.  It was a great feeling to experience!!  I have made a commitment to the Oikos Mission, this past January I renewed my status as a co-worker of the Oikos Sisters.  It is a one-year commitment, my second year as a co-worker.  I have also made a personal commitment to remain here in this mission, to look no further to where God wants me to be.  I believe He wants me here...and I am happy to be here!

I am continuing to work with the Baking Mamas.  There are now 4 mothers working, baking each day.  We have a daily order of snacks each morning delivered by 9:30 in the morning.  The mothers make pizza, empanadas, toron (bananas wrapped in a thin shell and fried), banana Q (bananas cooked with brown sugar until caramelized and put on a stick), and cassava cake (a local delicacy made from a root crop called cassava, sugar and milk).  This summer we will hopefully get a stand near the beach and sell our products each day as well.  We've also tried baking baked pretzels...quite a marvelous new treat for them!!  So much fun!!  I'll also be teaching them some new treats to make.  The mothers get paid an hourly wage along with a meal while working.  we hope this can become a livelihood program we can begin again and again with poor mothers.  Please pray for us!!  There's more information about the Baking Mamas on our website, http://www.PoorHouseholdofGod.org.  Feel free to check it out!!

People continue to come to our door for help.  Whether looking for medicine, rice or money for their needs, we see everyone who comes and try to help as best as we can.  The other day, a man came to our door with his auntie.  His name was Arnell and he was 37 years old.  His mother left the family when he was just a baby and his sister, who up until a few weeks ago had been providing for him, has now left him to work in a bigger city.  So now he really needs help, and this is why:

Arnell was born with a skin disease.  It looks like he has sustained 3rd degree burns all over his body.  Every inch of his skin looks like it has been severely burned.  He has rounded feet, so he cannot wear shoes of any kind and walks around barefoot everywhere he goes, he has no eyelids, so he cannot ever rest his eyes...they are always open and he has no protection for them.  Arnell is always hot and thirsty, probably severely dehydrated, and the heat he feels is constant, he says he never feels cool.  All of this he told us upon our asking about him and his life.  He was not complaining, about anything!!  He came because with his sister deserting the family, he and his auntie have no one to provide for their food, so they were asking for rice.

I looked at this man, who has no way to rest his eyes, who cannot wear shoes of any kind to protect his feet, whose skin looks extremely painful and is painfully dry, who cannot find any relief from the constant overwhelming heat he feels and who was in no way complaining about any of this, and I thought to myself... I have no reason to complain about ANYTHING EVER AGAIN!!!  Oh my goodness!!  Since meeting Arnell, I have been searching on the internet ways we can help him, and I have been in contact with a dermatologist who came on the last medical mission that we had here last month to see what disease he could possibly have and if there is any help for him.  And even though the days have gone by and many other people have come to Oikos for help, still I cannot get Arnell out of my mind.  We asked his auntie to be the one to come to Oikos when they need help so Arnell wont hurt his feet anymore, and she has returned for food.  We have also promised to visit their home as well, which we will soon do.  But how humbling was this experience???   I have come here to help people and continuously find myself being the one who has been helped/changed for the better.  Please keep Arnell and his auntie in your prayers...and us too as we search for ways to help him.  Thank You!!  xxoo

A Moment of Looking Back

Happy New Year!!!  It's 2018...hard to believe that 2017 is already over and that just a few days ago I celebrated my 4th year as a missionary!  How  my life has changed over the past 4 years!!  Incredibly is an understatement!!  This past January 4, 2018, I returned to the Philippines for my 4th mission with the Poor Household of God mission and the Oikos Sisters.  It's great how "easy" traveling half way around the world has become...how commonplace.  Me, who hardly ever ventured outside of my own community is becoming a confident world traveler!!  Pretty funny!

So, 4 years isn't exactly a milestone, but to me it is pretty significant.  My whole way of living, thinking, even just being has changed.  The way I see the world has altered irrevocably...sometimes for the worse as I can be judgmental, although I really try not to be.  I have learned over the past 4 years to live in both the first world and the third world, a balancing act that has taken some time to level out.  Sometimes I still struggle with the vast differences between the two worlds, but it is getting easier.  I have broken out of my shell more and become more outgoing.  Overall, I would say the that the changes that have taken place in me have been pretty positive.

I remember my reasons for not wanting to go on a mission trip... the heat, the bugs, the loss of conveniences, being away from my family and friends...everything familiar.  Looking back, I see most of those were excuses not really reasons.  But I've learned I can take the heat...in fact I can't tell you how many times people in the US tell me how nice my skin is, which is due to the humid climate in the Philippines and the loss of skin toxins due to sweating!  Bugs...well, what can you really say about that... whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger?  Shaking out the ants in my clothes before I put them on and becoming friends with the lizards in my room has become commonplace for me.  I'm not saying you won't hear me screaming when I see a spider that is bigger than my hand, but I've even come to not panic when there's a huge cockroach in my bedroom at night.  As for conveniences, at times I admit to a certain amount of frustration in that department, but I have become a much more patient person as a result of not having everything the moment I want it, having to do without or come up with creative substitutions.  Thanks to the electronic age, talking with  my family is really easy.  Computers, the internet and wifi make communication a snap.  Of course, here in the Philippines the signals are not always strong and the routine brown-outs and not-so routine surprise brown-outs can disrupt the regularity of  our communication, but all in all, messenger, Whats App, facebook and email make communicating a breeze.

So, Happy Anniversary to me!!  My anniversary pales in comparison, however to the anniversary we will be celebrating in May... May 3rd is the 20th anniversary of the Oikos Community!  Already we are gearing up for it...it is sure to be quite a party!

It's good to look back every once in a while, to see where you've been, where the road has taken you and how you've changed since the beginning of your journey.  Just don't get caught there, stuck looking back lest you suffer the fate of Lot's wife...she turned into a pillar of salt!!  I am happy to have this time of reflection...now, back to looking forward (no pun intended!)  Upwards and onwards to continue my journey as a missionary and as a daughter of God.  xxoo