So Many Blessings

It’s such a blessing to be back in the Philippines! We arrived here in October and stayed a couple of weeks in Malaybalay. Then, we were able to visit Camiguin Island and many of our friends there. It was awesome to be able to serve at the Mass again, to visit our favorite places, to see the friends we love so much, and to just be there. We had been away for almost a year. We are going back there after Christmas to visit for a few days and to celebrate the parish’s Christmas party with the community.

Ferry Ride to Camiguin

 From the Romeros

           

Together Again

Reunited With Fr. Joe

                   











When we got back to Malaybalay, we only had a week to get the new house ready for our family and the Eckstine family to live in together. We were so happy when they arrived!

Morning Prayer

                                           
Mrs. Lora was going to help my mom with the birth of the baby. They arrived here in perfect timing! After two weeks, they moved into the house that the Romero’s had been staying in before they went back to the States. The day of their move, Mom went into labor. All of the Eckstine and Alvarez kids besides Abi (their oldest) and I stayed at their new house while Mom was in labor. Only Dad, Abi, Mrs. Lora, Mom, and I were left at our house.
My mom had been in labor for awhile. I was downstairs in the kitchen when Abi came down and said, “It should be soon!” and she started getting some things ready. Literally a minute later I heard Mom’s voice from upstairs, “It’s a girl!” I dropped everything and ran.
Mom had had the baby on the floor. She was sitting up, holding the baby in her arms and laughing.

Mom and Josephine

I thought I’d never have another sister again!!! It has been over 12 years since our family has had a baby girl! At the beginning of Mom’s pregnancy, we all guessed that the baby was a girl. But towards the end, when she wasn’t born on the Feast of the Presentation of Mary like Mom wanted her to be, I thought it must be a boy and that he would be born on December 3 because we were going to name her Xavier if she was a boy and the 3rd is the feast of St. Francis Xavier. God had a surprise for us! Her name is Josephine Eva-Marie Alvarez. We prayed a long time for a baby girl and God answered our prayers! She is a big blessing and I was also blessed to be present for her birth.

The Community at Big Woods

I have been looking around at all the missionaries here at Big Woods lately, especially when we're in big groups and all gathered together, and I think how awesome it is that I get to live with these people.


The Gathering After the First Communions and Confirmations Last Sunday

That God has chosen us to live our everyday lives in community together, and He has called each of us to the same place, but in a different way. Some of them actually heard His voice, others felt called to full time missions after they went on a mission trip with FMC, and others have been called through the Come and See, but we've all been called to live here. And when we're sent out into missions, we still take someone from the community with us as our mission partner, most of the time.


The Missionaries From Our Intake
2010

  So, lately I've just been incredibly blessed by each person here at Big Woods, and I'm glad my family was called here, too.


Blessings! ~Maddie



Prayers--None Too Small

Lately, I've been noticing how much more our family prays now compared to life before missions. Or maybe it's not that we pray any more or less, it's that now we have even more faith that God will answer our prayers. I've always known that God answers prayers, but I don't know how much I actually took enough time to think about how much I believed it. We prayed the rosary and went to Mass and if something came up, we would pray for the intention in family prayers. We still do those things. But since missions, we've also been praying for things when they come up instead of waiting for later.
Before missions, too, if I told my mom I was upset or missing something, she would tell me to pray about it. I would, but I didn't really have a very strong trust that God would answer my prayer. Lately, God has been answering our prayers. And sometimes they're things that you wouldn't expect God to be particularly concerned about. I mean, of course He cares about all our needs but when you pray for something small, you don't realize how little it is compared to other problems until He answers it and you think "Wait. Why did He care so much as to let the TV work?" The answer is because He loves us.

When our brothers are about to watch a movie and the DVD player doesn't work, we pray over it.

When I have one of my knitting needles but the other one has been lost for a week, I pray about it and find it right when I need it.

One time, I lost some of my writings that I didn't really need and could have lived without. But they were special to me because I had worked a long time writing them and didn't want to lose all my work. I looked all over in the house and checked places more than once. I finally went back to my room and couldn't understand where they could have gone. I had been praying while trying to find them but when I sat down in my room, I decided to really pray and trust that God would let me find what I was looking for. Two seconds after I had ended the Memorare, I sat on the floor and just for the sake of it, glanced under my bed. I sat staring at my papers that had fallen behind my bed and started laughing. I had already looked under my bed at least two times before then and hadn't seen a trace of them. But there they were. I don't know if the papers weren't there before, and God actually put them there, or if they were there the whole time and God didn't want me to see them until He saw how much I trusted Him first. Either way, it was a good way for me to experience that God cared enough for a little thing like that just cause I'm His child and He loves me.

Another time, we (Meredith; myself; a fellow missionary, Teresa; and two of our friends) were at a retreat and (I know, I was a little distracted) I was craving ice cream during Mass. Teresa had brought us to the retreat. So I prayed, "Lord, please let Teresa want to get us ice cream when we're driving back home." After I prayed it, I thought, "Well, what if God doesn't let us get ice cream?" But I put that thought away and said, "No. I KNOW God is going to let us have it."
By the end of the retreat, I had forgotten all about my earlier prayer. We were talking in the car on the way back to Big Woods, when Teresa suddenly says, "Hey, girls, do ya'll want ice cream?" And I started laughing and told her, "Oh my gosh, Teresa, I just prayed in Mass that you would get us some because I was really craving it!" And we all started laughing and she said, "Well, I'm glad God used me to answer your prayer!"


There's a saying that fits this subject:

Our God is a REAL God
Who does REAL things
For REAL people
In the REAL world.

In the Bible, it never says, "God answers your prayers, but only the ones that are really important. He doesn't waste His time doing things for absent minded people who forget where they put their car keys."
It says just the opposite:
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." (Mt.7:7-8)
And:
"Your Father knows what you need before you ask him." (Mt. 6:8)
And:
"Look at the birds of the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?...If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?...seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides."  (Mt. 6:26, 30, 33)
And:
"Is anyone among you sick? He should summon the presbyters of the church, and they should pray over him and annoint [him] with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the sick person and the Lord will raise him up...The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful. Elijah was a human being like us; yet he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain upon the land. Then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain and the earth produced fruit." (James 5:14-15, 16-18)

And so many more verses (but I think I've made the point.(: )



I just want to challenge you, when you pray, to really trust and know that God WILL answer your prayer. Not like, "Please, Lord, Oh I HOPE that you will answer me!"
But like, "Please, Lord, I KNOW you will answer me because you love me and you said that whatever we ask, you will give it to us just because we do ask!"
I just finished reading the book Holy Daring about St. Therese. She had so much faith that God would answer her just because she was His child. I was challenged a lot by her faith and that's what made me start to try to pray with a great confidence that God would answer my prayers.  I'm not perfect at it yet, though. I'm still working on it and I still have a long way to go before I catch up to the  great faith of saints like St. Therese. But you have to start somewhere. :)

~Maddie

Catching Up

I'm SOOOO sorry that neither Meredith or I have written a blog in - how long has it been? - 9 MONTHS!!! I guess that we both didn't really feel like we had very much to write about, but we shouldn't have let it go this far! Maybe the pictures will make up for the lost time. :) Anyway, here's what's been happening:
I think most of you know all that happened with our tickets for the Philippines that didn't work out, so I'm gonna skip ahead to what's been happening while we've been here in General Cepeda. Otherwise, if I tell all that has happened since September, it will be way too long!
 Today marks the day...we've have been here in Mexico for 3 months! Here, we have celebrated: Holy Week, Easter, Mom's and Dad's birthdays, Mother's Day and Father's Day,

& the AWESOME Pentecost trip. We have been very blessed, and I hope we have blessed others in the past months and in this final week we have here. I say this final week because we will be leaving Mexico for Louisiana this week. We feel like God is calling us home and that we are finished with our mission here. Meredith and I are also going to be able to go to FMC's summer youth camp called Faith Camp while we are in the States, and we will be living at Big Woods for at least a few months after that. I'm so excited to go back and see all my friends in Abbeville, especially the Eckstine girls! Two of our friends from Kansas might even come and visit, so we are praying for that to happen, too!

After Mass on Easter Sunday

Our Family Having A Desert Day

About a week before the Pentecost group came, our family, our mission partner Luis, and three other Mexican missionary families all had a Desert Day together. For those of you who don't know what that is: Desert Day is a few hours, or however long you want, just being by yourself with no distractions while spending some time alone with God and your Bible outside in nature. At the end, when time is up, everyone gets back together and shares what he or she felt God was speaking to him.
Well, I went off in search of a place where I could sit and read my Bible. I thought I found a good enough spot where I could be by myself and in the shade. I looked up into the trees and on the ground because, well, I have to admit, I was a little cautious about snakes and other stuff like that. After I gave the area what I thought was a good look-over, I sat down under one of the trees. As soon as I sat down, something stuck into my thigh. I looked and it was a stick covered with thorns that I had sat on. Ugh, how could I not have seen that? In the process of trying to get the thorns out of my leg, I got my finger caught on one of them. At first I thought that I would have to walk all the way back to the van with my hand stuck to my thigh! :) But I broke the thorn off of the twig and went back to my mom who was near the van. She got it out and it hurt a lot less than I thought it would. On the other hand, the thorn in my finger was really stuck and hard to get out. It hurt more than the other half dozen ones that had been in my leg.
All this got me thinking. When I had found that place to sit earlier, I thought I was being really careful when I looked around for snakes. Instead, I wasn't careful enough. Because I was looking for something that I thought might hurt me really bad but that had less of a chance of hurting me (they're probably weren't any snakes around), I wasn't keeping a look out for the little things that had more of a chance of harming me. It made me think of sin, how we can think we're being careful by watching out for the big stuff, and then something smaller takes us by surprise. And then you try to get rid of the sin yourself, like how I tried to take out the thorns, but you only hurt yourself worse, comparing to the other thorn getting stuck in my finger. You can't do it by yourself. You need someone to help you like how my mom helped me by taking out the thorns. That someone you need to help you is Jesus. After Confession you realize that it wasn't as bad as you thought it was going to be saying your sins to the priest. I thought it would take a lot of work pulling out the thorns from my leg, but it really didn't hurt at all and was really easy and quick. It takes more courage I think to do the smaller things like telling the person you wronged, "Sorry" than it takes to confess it to the priest (who is standing in for Jesus). Likewise, taking out just one thorn from my finger hurt worse than the others in my leg. Sometimes I feel like I should say sorry to my parents or siblings or whoever I need to say it to after we've been upset with each other, but I'm ashamed to admit that I wronged them. So I just let the day go by and I'm sorry in my heart, and I try to show that person that I'm sorry, but it would be even better if I said it and showed them that I really mean it. It's the same for when a person tells me they're sorry, but I don't feel like saying "I forgive you" even though I do. That's something I should work on, I guess.

The Pentecost Trip that came down for about 5 days was AMAZING.  That was the most memorable part of our time here; for me, it was at least. It was so good to talk to people my age who speak English! And everyone was so hardworking and willing to help on whatever project they were assigned to. We got a lot done! We helped one of our regular homevisits to get a wheelchair, helped build Tonio's roof, painted several houses, and more!. It was a really blessed time.

Yes, the Mexican people have strange preferences for their house colors :)

On the last night that the group was here, we all had to share about three things:

#1). What blessed me the most
#2). What I'm taking home from this experience
#3). What I'm leaving behind.

1). What blessed me the most from those 5 days was the community. I missed having prayer and praise and worship with others. I also missed my friends a lot when we were here because we couldn't make friends very well with the Mexicans since they only spoke Spanish and we kids have very limited Spanish. So seeing my friends blessed me a lot, too.


Having Fun at the Huge Slides 


2.) What I took from the experience was the realization of the need for a better missionary heart. I'll explain. When we were living in the Philippines, we didn't have a lot of the things that we do have here in Mexico. Things like internet in our house and hot water for showers are among the things that we have here but didn't have there. I think it's harder to give up what you have when you have it than it is to give it up when you don't have it. Like this. If I wanted to take a hot or even warm shower in our house in the Philippines, I knew I couldn't have one. It just wasn't possible. So it was no use wishing I had warm water when I didn't. But because we have hot water here, I can use it, so I do. If I gave up the things that I do have, it would be a much better sacrifice than giving up something I don't have anyway. So I realized I needed a better missionary heart.

3). What I left behind...well, when I shared, I just said my old mission heart.


Okay, I think I've caught up as much as I can. Please pray for us as we pack and get ready to go back to the States this week; and pray for a safe trip, too! Thanks!
~Maddie