CHRISTMAS

CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT JESUS - THE LOVE OF GOD, THE SALVATION OF YOU AND ME AND OF ALL CREATION

I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament an hour ago and I experienced something. I felt deep sadness in my heart and I started to cry. I wondered what is all about........then I came to understand that I have shared a bit the sadness in God's heart because so many of us mess up Christmas.

During Advent, we are supposed to be preparing our hearts to seek and long for the Messiah like the three wise men. But what do we do? We are busy preparing our list and shopping for gifts and decorations. It’s not bad at all but the sad thing is that we neglect to prepare our hearts which is the most important.

Then we attend Christmas parties here and there, but most of the time the birthday celebrant is not invited. Most of the time we are inviting Santa Clause instead of Jesus. For us Filipinos we attend Simbang Gabi but do we really know what we are attending and the significant of it? Or it’s just like the other routine that we do every year?

I am calling our attention (including myself)…lets make this Christmas different from the past Christmas….lets look back at the Nativity and ask the Holy Spirit to give our mind and heart the understanding of the real beauty and significance of Christmas so that when the day comes we can truly REJOICE because we are thankful and hopeful!!!

Advent

ADVENT....a time of waiting, a time to hope especially with our economic situation this time. To hope in the only One who is forever loving and powerful. Maybe its important for all of us to reflect on what life is really about. Many of us is so busy using our time and energy to grow in achieving things here on earth but we are not mindful of the things that really matters, things that last. As this season is soon to end and we will celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, may our hearts be ready to welcome Him, the birthday celebrant...and to bear Him wherever we go, whatever we do so that when the day comes,...the day when we see Him, we will hear him say, "WELCOME! my good and faithful servant. Come and join me in my Father's House"

Grace & Monique's Bday

Days passes by very quickly...our daughters has already celebrated thier 3rd bdayon the 15th of December.

We were just cuddling them not long ago, now they can run very fast, climb and so on...sometimes we can not match with the energy they have. We thank God for thier good health and joy.

Birthdays 2008

Last September, we celebrated our 33rd bdays....

Raymond on the 4th and myself on the 13th.We thank God for the gift of life and for his faithfulness in our lives.

We are blessed to celebrate these events wt community.

community Outings

Covenant Celebration

In January, we received four new covenanted members, Karol and Karolina fr Poland, Celine fr Singapore and Joan from Malaysia.Therese also renewed her covenant.

COMMUNITY LIFE

iT HAS BEEN A JOURNEY.......a blessed journey of hope, perseverance, had work, courage, joy and unity.Different seasons came and passed but the blessing and grace of community remains.
There were different moments of welcoming new members and guests as well us letting go of friends, brothers and sisters hoping to see them again someday.We also had this moment of waiting upon the Lord (and still we are waiting) for the promised land for the community as we felt that God is leading us to a new land (place)

Aa we look back, we can only praise God for His faithful love and His contiunous provision to all the different needs of the community.As well as our individual needs.

YOUTH MINISTRY

Raymond and the team have been meeting a number of youth from our parish every Friday for formation and worship night. Also for Life in the Spirit Seminar for these young people. Thank God for His work in the lives of these youth and we can see them growing in thier relationship with the Lord. Some of them support our Children Ministry in Montalban and its a good sign that they too has a heart to share the love of Christ to others especially to these children from poor family.

Balikatan Ministry Updates

It has been a full and blissful year for our Balikatan Ministry. This year, aside from our regular Saturday meetings,we managed last June to have one Life in the Spirit Seminar attended by new members. In July, we had Balikatan outreach where the members of Balikatan Ministry reached out to thier own people and in October we had Knowing God Better (KGB) which was a follow up seminar for those who had the LSS last year.

One thing that begun was the Balikatan Livelihood Project with candle making. Though it was quite challenging, it was a very fruitful experience not only for the members of the Balikatan Ministry but to us as well. We have learned to persevere, hope and worked hard leading the livelihood. One thing that touched us is their testimony saying that being able to make nice candles lifted up thier dignity and confidence in themselves because some of them have not imagined they can do such beautiful work.

Salome's Graduation

On the last week of April, my sis Salome graduated from BS Education. We thank God for His grace upon this sister throught her years of studying. Our prayer is that God will continue to guide her in her journey as a new chapter of her life is about to come.

Surprise visit to Indonesia

Its our Papi's birthday on the 25th of March. We arrived in Indonesia on the 24th, slept in our relative's house and surprised the family as we appeared in the restaurant where they were gathered for the celebration.Papi was nicely surprised as well as the rest of the family as they did not expect us to be there. We also celebrated Mami's bday on the 8th of April. we had good time with our family and relatives over there for three weeks.

my Gosh! its one year!

oH MY! i realized that I have not been updating our blog for a year!!
I think I really got busy this year.....most of my time was taken by my two little girls,
then community life and ministry.

probably its time to update....Lets put a summary of the year...

LENTEN SEASON

John 3:16 " For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son and whoever believes in Him shall not perish but will have everlasting life"

LENT: what a blessed time that is given to us to come back to God if we went astray, to renew and go deeper in our love for Him if we are already walking with Him.A time to once again claim and proclaim the victory that Jesus won for you and me on the Cross! It just tells us that indeed God's love pursue us.

CHRISTMAS

Thank God for Christmas! Thank God that He loves us thats why He embraced our humanity so that we can share in His divinity, so that we can become children of God, the most high.

We celebrated this Christmas with our community and family. It was a blessing that Dad, Xylan and Salome can celebrate Christmas with us.

One thing that was memorable was our Breaking and Sharing of Bread (Polish Tradition) As we shared the bread we did reconciliation and said words of blessing and encouragement to one another.

Reverse Caroling

One thing that made this Christmas more meaningful to us is our experience during our Reverse Caroling on December 22, 2007. It has blessed not only those families whom we have visited but each one of us who participated in this event.

Together with the members of our Balikatan Ministry and a number of our children ministry, we started the day visiting families, bringing the light of Christ symbolized by the candle. We sang Christmas Carols, prayed for the family and gave a hamper of food. Some of the families were nicely surprised, some cried with joy, some were so touched by our prayer and unexpected visitation. One family was so grateful that though their house is in the mountain (very far from the rest), a group of people has shown love by the visitation. One mother said she was nicely surprised and blessed that for the first time the carolers were the one who gave instead of the family . One old Lady was filled with joy to see us dancing while singing.

Most of our balikatan members expressed their great joy that though they are poor themselves, they were able to bless others. They also realized that there are worst situation than themselves and that they can make others happy. We were able to visit 69 families that day. Each community members has experienced deep joy of seeing Jesus in the lives of the poor. One thing that we also enjoyed is our fellowship with our Balikatan and Children Ministry members as we walked through the streets, crossing the river and climbing the mountain together. It was indeed a Blessed Day!

with the family

with Dad, Xylan,Salome, kuya Andro's family and in-laws

Grace & Monique turned 2

On December 15, 2007, our dear Grace and Monique celebrated thier second birthday.

With the presence of our community and family members, we thanked the Lord for His gift of good health and joy to our twins.