Home Sweet Sagay

Welcome to our balay! We live in a "missionary cottage" just a few blocks from Holy Rosary Church and the adjoining high school.

In typical Filipino style, our house is very open, and our front porch makes up much of our living space. To provide a little more privacy, Fr. Joe asked his maintenance team to build us a fence. They did a beautiful job -- the men are hard workers and built the fence from all raw materials, using bamboo and wood. Since we have no front door, we especially love having a locking gate!

Romel (far right) has a son and a daughter enrolled at Holy Rosary High School. We enjoyed getting to know him and are excited to be his kids' new religion teachers!

Our open front porch is very welcoming to our new friends and neighbors. Some of the neighborhood children saw us cleaning and bandaging our feet yesterday and immediately showed us their own scraped knees and wounded feet. We were only too happy to lend a hand! This is Wendel.

Last Sunday afternoon we invited the church youth group to our house for snacks and some outdoor games. This is the street in front of our house (see our new fence to the left?). The kids taught us how to play "bon bon" and "open the basket."

 Please pray for our team as we continue to settle into our new environment and mission field! Be assured of our prayers for you!

First days of ministry

It's a beautiful (and rainy) Monday afternoon in Camiguin! We've been here for 2 weeks now.  Everything is strange and foreign to us, so we are learning quickly how to be both humble and patient with ourselves as we grow accustomed to this new world.

Children are anything but shy about coming over to our house to play! They are so friendly and eager to teach us Visayan words.  

  
This is Mary Grace, one of our favorites.  She visits us nearly every day and enjoys reading Gospel stories from our English/Visayan Bible. The first story I read with her was about Jesus welcoming the little children.  I told her, “Jesus loves mga bata (children). Jesus loves Mary Grace.”

One of our ministries is visiting barangays or mountain villages with Fr. Joe.  The past two Sundays we have attended special Masses celebrating children’s first communions. What a precious opportunity, to share in this special moment, to remember my own first communion, and to appreciate even more the amazing gift of Jesus in the Eucharist!

Last week, walking along the beach, we met two older women, Nini and Virginia.  They asked us for money to buy bread. We gave them some pesos and offered to pray with them - both are sick with a cough. Nini said, “You heal me.” I told her no, it is God who heals us. Both women were grateful for the money but much more visibly moved by our prayers and the love we showed them. Our encounter with them reminded me once again that my primary job is not to give money to the poor but to bring them Christ.

I have many more stories to share but the internet connection is very slow here. Thank you for being patient, and I hope to write again soon!

Sowing the Word

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't posted in quite some time -- traveling and overcoming jet lag was more difficult than expected. I have many pictures to share, but the internet connection here doesn't seem to be strong enough to upload them, so that will have to wait.

I'll be sure to post details later on what we've been doing since we arrived (meeting the youth group, visiting the barrios or villages with Fr. Joe, getting to know our new neighbors...), but for now I wanted to share two Bible passages that have been on my heart.

As you probably know, the Philippines is a Catholic country. Sometimes we're asked why missionaries would be serving in a place that's already Catholic. Wouldn't it be more worth our time to serve in a non-Christian land? Well, Jesus recently answered that question for me through Scripture.

Isaiah 5 begins with a love song about a man with a vineyard. He carefully tends to his land, hoping it will yield good grapes, but in the end it produces only wild grapes and must be trampled down. As I prayed with this passage, I felt that the Lord was telling me that the Philippines is His vineyard; it has the potential to be a ripe mission field, to produce an abundant harvest, but it desperately needs the witness of zealous Christian evangelists.

I then read from Mark 4, the parable of the sower. It says that the sower sows the word on all different types of soil. Some seeds fall on rocky ground where they cannot take root, and the plants quickly wither in the sun. Jesus explains that this signifies people "who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away." It seemed that the Lord was trying to tell me that people all around the world, Filipinos included, need more than just an initial proclamation of the Gospel. Just having an outline of the basic beliefs of the faith is not enough to sustain you through a lifetime of daily trials and struggles. We must have a living relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We must allow the faith to take root in our hearts.

So who will bring new life into the vineyard? And who will till the rocky soil and prepare it to receive the living Word of God? Isaiah 6:8 holds the answer:

"And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' Then I said, 'Here am I! Send me.'"

O Lord Jesus, let us not be afraid to answer Your call. Help us to first cultivate Your Word in our own hearts, and then give us the courage to proclaim it to the world!

The month in between

It has been one month since I was in Mexico, and one month from now I will arriving in the Philippines and beginning my first year as a missionary on the island of Camiguin.  These weeks of Christmas vacation and visiting with my family and friends “back home” have been a great blessing, allowing me to share stories of my recent experiences and to say goodbye to all those I will not be seeing again until December 2015.

It has also been, in some ways, a difficult time.  As I’m sure the other newly commissioned FMC missionaries can attest, Jesus has given us a tremendous gift -- a burning desire to preach Christ to all nations and to serve the poor.  Although I’m very grateful for this time spent with loved ones, I cannot wait to return to the mission field and begin the work to which He has called me.  I hear myself repeating the words of Psalm 57: “My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready.”

And so, as I pack my suitcase and prepare for a blessed new year in a new home on the other side of the world, I’d like to share with you a few memories from Intake and our mission trip to Mexico.

Joseph translates for me as I give my testimony during a prayer service in one of the desert villages.

Sarah and I learn praise and worship songs on the ukulele with our new friend Martina.

Repainting the front of a man’s adobe house in General Cepeda.

Standing in front of a newly constructed capilla (chapel) after we painted it.

Team Camiguin! Breana, Alex, Genevieve, and me on the day we received our team assignments.

These 38 new missionaries are headed to India, China, Ecuador, Mexico, and the Philippines. Please pray for our missionary family!

Real friends with the poor

This morning as I sat in my pew at Mass, I looked around and noticed all the empty pews in front of me.  There were a few rows of schoolchildren in uniforms, a handful of elderly ladies, the usual crowd. And the thought crossed my mind...is our church a church for the rich? O my sweet Jesus, where are Your poor?

I began to envision the pews filled with the poor of General Cepeda.  The women bundled in oversized winter coats, struggling to keep warm.  The children, smiling shyly and huddled beside their mothers.  The men, a little standoffish at first, standing silent but attentive. Why are our churches in America empty of the poor?

Let me first ask myself: when was the last time I invited a poor family or a woman on the street to accompany me to church?

It's so easy to look at them as different, as "other."  It's so easy for me to donate to charitable organizations and consider my obligation fulfilled.  But Jesus didn't ask me to write a check in support of the poor and the unwanted.  Jesus asked me to love them.  And love is personal.

Am I open to the idea of becoming real friends with the poor?

As Christmas approaches and we prepare for gatherings with family and friends, let's consider Jesus' words as he dined at the home of a Pharisee:

"When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you."

Maybe you can be Jesus to someone this Christmas.  Maybe you can be a real friend to the poor.

Update: Missions in Mexico

Buenas tardes!

We've been in General Cepeda, Mexico, for almost 2 weeks now.  Every day is somewhat similar to our training back in Louisiana -- community prayer, classes, Scripture study, chores -- but here we have the added joy of being able to serve the Mexican people.

In the mornings, we go on home visits to people living here in General and just outside of town.  Some are very poor -- imagine curtains hanging in place of doors, bare walls, and nearly empty two-room or three-room houses -- yet their faith is so rich.  When we visit, we typically read a Bible passage with them, sing praise songs, and ask if we can help with any of their immediate needs (bringing them warm blankets or filling a medical prescription for them).  They are all so grateful for the time we spend with them, especially those who are elderly or sick and rarely have visitors.

In the evenings, we drive out to the ranchos -- little towns isolated far out in the desert, some with as few as 15 or 20 families.  There are no churches in the ranchos, just little chapels where the people can gather to pray. Some ranchos will receive visits from priests rather frequently, but in others it may be many months in between such visits, meaning the people are not able to receive the sacraments.  Of course, as lay missionaries we cannot celebrate the sacraments for them, but we can bring the light of Christ to their community.  We share testimonies of what Jesus has done in our lives, and we teach them about the Catholic faith.  Most importantly, we pray with them!  Many of the people we meet are sick, out of work, struggling within their families, or wrestling with addictions like alcoholism.  Jesus promised His apostles that if they laid hands on the sick, they would recover.  We trust that Jesus will do the same through us today!

Our mission work here has given me a greater understanding of what it means to have childlike faith.  In the U.S., we tend to be skeptics; we're always looking for sound reasoning and scientific evidence.  We act as though faith in God is something we should be able to prove.  But it's just the opposite!  The poor people of General Cepeda have no need for empirical "proof" that God exists.  They believe it simply because they wake up every morning.

The faith of the poor puts my shallow faith to shame.  Never in my life have I been unable to afford what I need.  And yet what we might consider necessities are often their luxuries.  One elderly woman we visited had only a scrub brush to comb her hair.  But you never hear the poor complain about their needs.  Instead, they are constantly expressing their gratitude for everything God has given them.  How it warms your heart and makes you blush with embarrassment over your earthly riches whenever one of these little ones, God's precious poor, exclaims, "Gloria a Dios!"

Yes, glory to God!  He is so good to us.

Happy All Saints' Day!

I certainly felt as though I was surrounded by the communion of saints tonight as we joined together in singing and praising Jesus!  I can't believe this is my life -- I am so blessed!  In just one week we will be arriving in General Cepeda, Mexico. What adventures await me there I do not know, but I am sure Jesus has much in store for us.

Tonight we heard stories from three of our missionaries who have served at this particular mission post before, and their consensus was that, although General is one of the poorest places in Mexico, it's where they learned true generosity. Because who understands generosity better than the poor, who give out of their need?

I can't wait to be there.  I pray for an open heart so that I will be blown away by the experience of finding Christ in the people I serve.  I pray that Jesus will protect the joy that is now overflowing in my heart, that I may shine His love to everyone I meet.