It would be best if you viewed the videos prepared by its members, because they own this story, and they are sharing it with everyone. Once upon a time, we were part of this congregation too, since we attended Church there while we lived in Fairview. My parents still sometimes go out there.

I share this with you today too because they’re story is so inspiring. It is a story of how a Church is a community of people. And how no Church can stand without the support of its people. That seems to be the story of our Church, The Episcopal Church in the Philippines.

Many of the faces you see in the videos are our friends and relatives. A lot of them I grew up playing with, or calling auntie or uncle.

Where am I in all these?

I still don’t know.

It has often been wondered why the living seem to always feast during this festival for the dead. Some people don’t understand the need for a celebration. 

In truth, I didn’t fully appreciate it either, until recently. 

Since as far back as I could remember, my family and I would go to Caloocan to my paternal grandmother’s house in on November 1st so my Dad could visit his dad’s grave. The next day, we would all go with the rest of the family on my mom’s side, along with other families in our community, to South Cemetery to pray at my older brother’s grave.

My dad never really brought me to the cemetery where my grandfather was buried – it was always packed full of people and it would have been easy to lose kids amidst the chaos that the cemetery was on November 1st. When his remains were moved to my grandmother’s gravesite, I was already in highschool then, that was the only time that I was really able to say I visited his grave. 

The visits to the South Cemetery were always solemn. Since the plot where my older brother (who died when he was just eleven days old) is buried in is leased by the Church, his neighbors there are also other Church members (some of whom are probably distant relatives of ours). We would always have a priest along with us for those visits. The priest would lead the prayers, and we would sing a hymn or two. Some of the families (and probably my Lola too) would bring cold water/juice and light snacks that we all could partake of before we leave and head back home. 

It was an outing definitely, a commemoration of life.

We never were like the others who would stay for an overnight vigil at the cemetery. Nor would we bring loud music, or alcoholic drinks, or gamble, at the gravesite. To each his own, I guess. 

As I grew older, I began to skip these trips. I don’t know exactly for what reasons I missed them during the years that I did. But this year, I had work on Saturday and my parents didn’t go to visit my paternal grandma’s grave until evening. My parents went to my brother’s on Sunday morning (I suspect earlier than the rest of the community members) just as I arrived from work. I skipped that one because I needed to sleep so I could be awake for the luncheon we were having that day too.

You see, for five years now, another All Souls’ Day tradition has sprung. We would have potluck lunch at the columbarium, and gather round for my Lola (maternal grandmother) and Auntie Leesah. Close family friends were also welcome to this gathering. The kids enjoyed playing in the gardens at the back of the Cathedral, and several times also found ways to get themselves wet at the fountain. This Sunday, we were all there.  I pray that in years to come, I wouldn’t find myself having excuses to miss even this one.

Another Beginning

At work, I started at yet a new chapter. I have mixed feelings about this and all I really want to say is I can’t wait for the time when I will feel up to this new challenge.

I will be doing pretty much the same things but with a bunch of new people. There will be familiar faces, but I know that they are not going to be there with me everytime, and definitely not all the way. I have been doing pretty well with my current LOB, and I have really enjoyed the past eight months. I had never really though I would say goodbye and start over somewhere else. Not so soon.

In a way, I feel like having me move is as easy as moving around office furniture. I spent eleven months as an agent for a tech account. Eleven months for the same tech account (seven dedicated to a specific line of business) as a trainer. Then five or six months as team manager for a much-beloved-and-still-sorely-missed tech/cs account. Until I had to move and spend seven months back to my original tech account. And now, eight months with the LOB with so many supported products. The upside? It’s all in the same family. This new one is still in the family, I guess. 

On the other hand, this account may actually be my destiny. Haha. Back when I was a trainer, I had a chance to work with this account that, at the time, was just starting out. I had to be dedicated to another account that launched at around the same time, so I dropped whatever it was I was doing for them. The opportunity to join them came again when we all had to be reallocated, but it still wasn’t my time to join them. And now, just when I least expected it, I am already there. 

Not a lot of people know of the move yet, and many were surprised. I was able to bid my agents goodbye, with exception of three who have been on their rest days. 

I’m sure this is a good thing. And I don’t want to start anything with a heavy heart. 

I will go there and bring all that I know with me. And pray that things will go smoothly.

200th post

My next post is going to be my 200th on this blog, and to celebrate it, I am hoping to be able to give something away as a gift. *finger crossed*

Here are two layouts I made earlier this week:

[Photos are clickable for the credits but please leave comments about the layouts in this post ]

These are still going into the mini-album of my girlfriends’ day out back in August. Hopefully I’ll be done before Christmas! Haha.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the Scrapbook Saturday gang, starting at Mammadawg’s place. Also checkout my previous SS posts here if you haven’t seem them yet

Oh, it is Digital Scrapbooking Day (DSD) in digital scrapbooking land! Visit digiscrapping sites to get a huge fixing of DSD goodness, there are many links in this page, but not all may have goodies up okay. A good place to start though would be the Sunshine Blog for their Halloween Blog Train.

Halloween Night Ramblings

Last night, I logged on thinking of posting about the Halloween Party we had for the kids in this compound (plus some of their friends).  But no matter how much fun we had at the party – both kids and adults alike – the fun isn’t what’s foremost in my mind to blog about. 

This is the fifth year we’ve done this – a private Halloween party for just the kids in the family. We’ve extended the invitation to only three other kids whose family rented the last door in my grandpa’s three-door apartment; plus to the young boy next door. Since the family of the three kids already moved out, it was just the family kids and the other boy last year. This year, there were unexpected-but-nonetheless-welcome teenage friends of my older nieces.

I grew up having fond experiences of Halloween. There would be community parties or there would just be us friends going out, in parties of four or five, trick-or-treating (unaccompanied by adults) around our quiet neighborhood.

When the next generation (that is to say my nieces and nephews) came into the picture,  Halloween meant me just basically being there to see them in their costumes and maybe accompanying them to trick or treat. These kids have a different Halloween experience. The Sunday School program at Church would organize the trick-or-treat rounds and there would be older kids leading batches of kids to different sections of the community. There would be a program and snacks at the Church Hall after the rounds. Sometimes, if it was raining that year, the older kids would just collect candies and treats from each household and bring them to the Cathedral Hall where all the rest would be playing games. Then the kids would just fall in line and receive the candies in their loot bags – going from one station to another.

It was still fun though. And everyone was sure to get something.

Then in recent years, they scheduled Halloween activities before the actual day. Apparently there were requests from some Church members to reschedule the activities because some go home to the provinces for the All Souls’ Day holidays. They didn’t want their kids to miss Halloween. But that meant that our kids were activity free on October 31, and I just didn’t like that idea. So I drew up plans for our very own private Halloween Party at #99 19th Street!

We started this tradition in 2004, and we’ve had a party every year since. I coordinate most of it, buy most of the prices and get committments for the food and other treats. I take a leave from work and I host the party. They are not my kids, not even my brother’s kids. Why do I put this together, year after year? 

Because though they are my cousins’ children, I love them like my own. And I know that they are growing up in such different circumstances from how we did, and I want to help make sure that there are many happy childhood experiences for them that involves the whole family. 

And we will do it again next year. And every succeeding year as long as we have kids in the family. In fact, I’m already thinking of how we can expand it to having more kids of close family friends included.

A Loss

A friend of my parents’ died yesterday. His kidneys have given up a long time ago and he finally succumbed to it, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, yesterday. He was just supposed to go for routine dialysis.

He had four kids and I am friends with the two girls. The other two are boys younger than me. 

With my parents and many others from our Church community, we were at the funeral last night to pay our respects and just be with the family.

As is the tradition in our Church when there is a funeral, we sang hymns. Odd, but I found singing them comforting. But they always bring back memories of funerals of my beloved aunt and grandmother. Not painful, but comforting.

It is sad that I haven’t been to Church a lot and I haven’t seen many of the faces that I saw there last night for a long time. Sad because it took a funeral for it to happen.

Seventh Stop: The Loboc River Cruise

I have been on this cruise twice before but there were some new things on this visit.

1 – The Tourism Complex is new and was constructed, if I remember hearing from Janny correctly, two years ago. The rafts dock on the opposite side of the river and it looks better now too. There are also souvenir shops in the complex, and a children’s center. I didn’t get to see what was in the children’s center/hall though.

2 – We noticed flood lights and lampposts lining the length of the river. Those were definitely not there four years ago. Apparently, there are cruises at night too. Next time I’d love to check that out. It must be beautiful.

3 – There are at least two rafts along the river where locals sing and dance for tourists. They don’t ask for a fee but they do welcome donations. There are a lot of women there, ranging from highschool girls to mothers and even gradmothers. There are some men too. One of the rafts I think showcase the women playing banduria. Those seem to be fundraising projects by their barangays (local government unit).

The river cruise and all-you-can-eat lunch costs 300 pesos per person. I particularly liked the steamed fish that they served. A musician goes on board too, his repertoire includes folk songs, oldies and pop. Towards the end of the cruise, on the way back, a hat would be passed around for the singer.

The water, the color of chocolate during our visit, is normally of a lovely blue green color. It rained hard the night before and it stirred the mud at the bottom of the river, turning it to this color. It was still lovely nonetheless.

The wind blew ever so lightly that day and it was soothing, and calming too.

The photo above is a view of the Loboc Church, the second oldest in the island, from across the dock. The photo next to it is of the same church. Notice the bridge this time? This unfinished bridge has been a fixture in Loboc for some time already. It was a government project foolishly executed because the bridge was constructed where it would hit the church itself. The people refused to have this part of the church taken down to make way for this bridge. It is said that it was constructed as a ruse to have the front of the church excavated to look for the hidden treasure said to be there.

Today there is a much smaller bridge a few meters away that serves the purpose that this big one was supposedly intended for.

There’s a museum in the church but we didn’t visit anymore. We did go inside the church to pray a bit though. Since this is the hometown of the famed Loboc Children’s Choir, I wanted to check if I could get their CD here, but I didn’t get to do that. The Choir performed for us during the conference we had in Tagbilaran four years ago. They were very good.

Here are other shots of the cruise:

The last two photos were of the rafts I mentioned earlier. There’s two of them but we only stopped for this one. There was a boy from our cruise who went down and happily danced with the performers. My camera phone wasn’t powerful enough to capture his happy dance though. Here’s another boy who was generous with his donation, he actually came back to give more:

Oops, I am going to be late for work. Sorry to cut this short. I hope you enjoyed the cruise with us!

At first I only thought of linking to his page for his David Cook Always be my baby stream because although I followed AI this season, I missed the Mariah episode. I am rooting for Cook. Archuleta is adorable but really, Cook has got it.

Then I read about the best decision he’s ever made.

Here’s item 5 on my TT: My thoughts on being a non-active Church member who does not attend Sunday mass (or any mass for that matter). I specifically want to dig through my thoughts and feelings about what I can do to be part of either the Youth movement or Sunday School. I know I have something to contribute, I’m just not making time.

See the connection? Okay, maybe you don’t because it’s all still in my head, and in my heart. This piece is probably just going to expose one part of it. I know there’s more.

It started with the music. He’s TT was about Christian songs that you should hear. One of which was his own composition. I listened to it and liked what I heard. Understand too that’s it’s early afternoon here and the toob is tuned to ASAP and they just had their GaryV 25th anniversary tribute/celebration. I have been singing along and my parents have had no choice but endure the sound of my voice. Hehe.

I went to an all-girl Catholic high school. Whether or not you were Catholic, you had to be around to attend the mass that would be celebrated every month or for every special occasion. I seriously didn’t mind because the services were much like our own Church services, they provided an opportunity NOT to be studying, and I liked singing along and learning their Church songs. That was really what I enjoyed most about having to attend mass with a multitude of girls – praise and worship through song. Mass without singing is just plain boring for me.

At Church, we sing hymns and people read the music from the Hymnal. I like those too. There’s also local, relatively recently composed songs that go into the Sunday Liturgy. I like listening to everyone’s voice mingling with each other. As a kid I wondered whether the older people actually attended classes to learn those hymns, everyone just blended perfectly.

In Sunday School, we would listen to and learn Kids Praise (another memory of my Aunt I wanted to write about last month but didn’t get to) – yes, Psalty was my friend and I am so going hunting for his CDs – the complete collection.

Really, isn’t singing praises like 5 times more wonderful? I mean compared to just sitting and listening and reciting stuff at Church?

Anyway, so that’s what got me to thinking (again) about what my beliefs are and how my faith manifests. I belong to a Church denomination that’s fairly small – The Episcopal Church in the Philippines, part of the Anglican Communion. My family history is intertwined with this Church’s history. Really, it’s more like an extended family. That’s what I like about our small Church, we are found scattered throughout the country from up north to down south, but it’s all just like one big family. Growing up in what I consider the heart of the Church just gave me an awareness of its life.

I distinctly remember the last summer I spent active at Church. It was the summer we moved house. I was with the SKEP, the Church youth group, and we sat with the Cathedral choir. Really, I went to rehearsals and sang at the Sunday Mass. We even had an Easter Cantata, I think the first and last that it was done. We had an awesome conductor. I truly enjoyed that time. It made me think that perhaps that was my place, my ministry – in music.