Christmas 2021 in Surigao

Dear Benefactors and Friends,  

We are nobody and we are strangers to you but you share your goods to help us in our need.  How can we thank you?  We can never repay you but the good God Who sees everything knows what you have done for us.  So we beg Him to bless you a million-fold for your kindness to nobodies like us.  May you have a very blessed Christmas as you have allowed us also to feel blessed this Christmas.

  

Our homes were wrecked by the typhoon but we find comfort in thinking of our God Who couldn't find a room for His birth, Who teaches us through His priest that there is more to life than buildings.

We are really amazed that Father came to visit us. We had no room to offer to him!  He shared our abjection just as God did not disdain the poverty of the manger.  We can't find the best words to express our gratitude.  

       

Thank you for the medicines that we continue to receive through the mission.  

Thank you so much for the food!  Rice is so important to us and Christmas would have been very sad without rice.

Thank you for enabling this good priest to come and teach us the way to heaven.  We are the least developed tribe in the country.  Before this priest arrived, no one had patiently labored to teach us how to say the basic prayers, because it was laborious to teach us since most of our adults could neither read nor write and our children do not have catechism books to read.  Because you support this priest and his mission to us, we love you!  Thank you very much! God will not forget you and He will hear your prayers.   

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your loved ones!!!

Message from the 

Mamanwa people of Cantugas, Surigao del Norte 

 

Meanwhile, in the Mission Field

     Who could fail to see the sadness of the missionary Priest as he came to the death bed of his lost sheep?  

     It would not have been easy for the Father to simply watch his spiritual daughter die a bad death.

The Light that he had given to her soul at Baptism eight years ago had been extinguished by her

wanton pursuit of pleasures.  Reminders and reproaches had failed to bring her back to the fold.  

     As she lay waiting for death at the Intensive Care Unit, mission staff took turns to invite her to prepare for Confession but she would not give up her attachment to sin.  Yet, despite her stubbornness, the priest persisted in exhorting her to make peace with God.

   When sowing a seed, you never know if and when a sprout will break through the ground; so, when it does, there is indescribable joy.  But when it grows then you see its leaves suddenly turn brown and fall, and then it dies before your very eyes, your sense of loss would be inexpressible.  It takes courage and faith to keep watering, hoping for the dead plant to spring back to life.

    Silently, Grace worked.  Aided by the kindness of the priest, her resistance melted and she resolved to leave sin behind.  She received Extreme Unction and the Holy Viaticum.  

   Against her family's expectations, she survived.  It took her two months to gain enough energy to get up and move about and another month to come back to Holy Mass.  In this perilous journey through a world of temptations, many fall and never rise again.  Her return to a life of grace is a miracle - but as her life story is not yet ended, additional chapters are yet to be written.  Anything can happen and how the story finally ends remains to be seen.

   Thanks to the donors who, despite not knowing how the story will end, support the mission and enable a story like this to be written.  Most importantly, thanks to all who keep praying for the mission because, after all, everything is Grace.  If the Lord does not build the house, they labor in vain who build it.

__________________

The patient came from a non-Catholic family that knocked at the medical mission office to ask for medical assistance.  When she befriended the mission volunteers who came to her village to conduct home visits, she got interested in the Catholic religion.  She started attending catechism lessons and after some three years, she asked for Adult Baptism. One by one, over the years, her family also began to embrace the Catholic Faith.  Fast forward, when she started working away from home, she fell into temptations and left religion.  How she returned to the practice of the Faith is the subject of this story.

Sarangani Province Mission

Baptism

enrollment to the Militia Immaculatae

Enrolment to the Militia Immaculatae

group singing contest....