Misyon Online - July-August 2010
Mission in a Smile
By Mary Joy Rile
Let me start with a quote from Mother Teresa, ‘Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.’ You can only guess how we started… Yes, we started with a smile, as I eyed her for an article, believing that there is one beautiful story from this simple, beautiful woman.
L to R: Mary Joy Rile, Ana Flores, Richelle Verdeprado, Marisol Rojas and Bessie Palma
at the Misyon editorial office in Bacolod City.
Her Home in the Philippines
By Richelle Verdeprado
After many years of not attending Mass, 26-year-old Peruvian Marisol Rojas Tomasto’s concept of priests and going to church changed when she first met the Columbans ten years ago. Since then, she has admired their sense of closeness with the people and how they break down the walls that separate them from the community. Wanting to do the same, she has now found her second home in the Philippines as a Columban Lay Missionary.
L to R: Marisol Rojas and Richelle Verdeprado.
I Was Once A Street Kid
By Michael Boctot
Every Saturday I experienced the jostling of traffic going to Marikina City from the Columban House of Studies, Cubao, QC, for my apostolate. This was with the street children living under the LRT station at Santolan Bridge. To reach to my area, I would take the Light Rail Transit (LRT) heading to Santolan and then walk to the bridge. There the street children would be waiting for me. Charlie Ponferrada, another Columban seminarian, and I were working together as volunteers at Kuya Center. This is a foundation that aims to bring street children off the street and provide for their basic needs such as shelter, food, and perhaps education.
MASIPAG and the International Year of Biodiversity
By Fr Oliver McCrossan
The United Nations has proclaimed 2010 The International Year of Biodiversity. Many people all over the world are working to safeguard our irreplaceable natural wealth and reduce biodiversity loss. This is vital for our current and future human well-being. We all rely on the great diversity of life to provide food, fuel, medicine and other essentials we simply cannot live without. Yet this rich diversity is being lost at a greatly accelerated rate because of human activities. This impoverishes us all and weakens the ability of the living systems on which we depend to resist growing threats such as climate change.
Father Oliver McCrossan is on the far right.
Miracles Still Happen!
By Macelinda Diaz Verano
‘Am I dreaming?’ Of course, I wasn’t; it was more of a dream coming to reality. Months before it seemed to be a vision which I thought could only happen in dreams or through a miracle, notwithstanding the hurdles that we had passed before we finally made it here – the pressures of everyday living, the negative feelings of anxiety, fear, doubt and exhaustion, the responsibilities our family members had to attend to. The list could be endless. Yet through it all, God has given our family this precious gift – a miracle to remind us to trust in Him no matter what.