Christmas Caroling: My Ultimate Experience with the Youth!

I never experienced Christmas caroling in my entire life ever, until last Sunday night (and lasted till last night, December 20-23). So when the youth coordinator of our church asked me if she could leave the charge of Christmas caroling of our youth ministry to me, I had second thoughts, but eventually I said yes.


So after Sunday service, we practiced for a couple of hours and with our guitar and tambourine, off we went. When we arrived at the first house that we are going to carol, I was so nervous but eventually, I got the hang of it. And I got on with the caroling just fine. I enjoyed the rest of our caroling time; it was great.

Now I understand why kids love caroling. It is fun, it’s so much fun! And it is not the money or the gifts that they are going to receive that makes it fun, it is the fact that friends are together, singing together, laughing together and simply having fun together.

On my part, I did appreciate the caroling, but what I enjoyed more (just like the kids) is being with the young men and women of our church. Being in charge of the youth for 4 days is an ultimate experience for me. Not only that I get to be on the job training (I’m telling you I learned a lot about teenagers’ complexity in 4 days!) in preparation when my own children would be teenagers, I was also reminded on a lot of things about life, and one is how to enjoy it, something that adults tend to forget.

When we are in charge of the youth, or in simple terms, we are given the responsibility to take care, teach and guide the young people, we think we are to teach, take care and guide ONLY. We think we are the only one in the position of giving something, while the youth’s position is receiving the teachings that we are to give; we are grown ups, guiding growing up people. That’s what I thought too, before.

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TSPI Evangelization photos

Photos on the recent TSPI evangelization last Dec. 11, 2009 at the Urdaneta Cultural Sports Complex, click here

Why we should not worry...

Just awhile back, I was watching a TV show wherein the wife of an actor who recently died of cancer was being interviewed. She was asked what did she learn from what happened to her husband. And she answered, "Mostly, the proverbial 'do it now'. When you're looking at a very limited time with somebody ... you end up living a lot more in the moment and you realize that we don't have anybody for long."

How many of us, upon waking in the morning, would thank the Lord for what we have? for the beautiful day that is ahead? for the renewed strength? for another opportunity to see and appreciate the beauty of life? How many of us after appreciating the new day would think what they could do for this day? Or what beauty will they discover about today? The joy and happiness they could find and share? Or is it that when we wake up in the morning, the first thing that pops in our mind is the future? is it secured? are we sure of it? Are we saving enough to ensure that we will have a comfortable future? Are we working enough to have a better future? Or maybe what are we going to do today that we could be sure our future will be better?

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Ondoy Destruction

Like most of the rest of Pangasinan, we felt the wrath of nature when Ondoy passed by Pangasinan. And our church was not spared of the flooding, in fact we were flooded up to the ceiling. It is because our church is in the basement of Lisland Resort, which is located near a creek. Aside from the mud, the paintings of the walls sloughed off because moisture seeped under the paint... Praise God we were able to take the instruments and books into higher ground before the flooding.. We have some pictures of what happened to the church, not the flooding itself but the destruction that was caused in our church. To see the pictures, click here.

Baptism Photos

Last October 24 we had our baptism rites... There were 5 candidates,
Angelita Barlongo, Ed Babac, George de Vega, Daisy Carriaga, and Ace Macaalay.

Check out the photos here

Anniversary and Thanksgiving Urdaneta Church

Click here for details.

Church of the Open Door International Directory

Where to find us.... Click here.

Church of the open Door International-Statement of Faith

Statement of Faith

1. We believe that the Old and New Testament are inerrant as originally given; they were verbally inspired by God, and are complete revelation of His will for the salvation of men.

To read more, click here, or click at the title of this post.

Amazing Love in Action- Photography

Pictures taken at the recently held G12 at the Cuneta astrodome last November 27-28, 2009. Visit the Photos- Love in Still Images page.

Love

Love, the four letter word which makes the world go round. It basically drives each and every human being, it is basically the very thing that each human being strives for and dream of… to love and be loved. But as we look at our world today, it seems that we’re falling short from achieving this. In fact our world right now is suffering from the shortage of love, or to better describe it, the lack of love.


Yes, the world today is suffering from the lack of love. Ironically though, love is abounding, there’s just too much love around us, in everything and everywhere in this world, love is abounding! But how come the irony? How come there is the suffrage from the lack of love when love is abounding? How come?

The answer is simple, because we do not know what love really is.

We think love is an emotion, a feeling, a state of euphoria and lightness, being in cloud nine, joyful, happy, serene… There are a lot of words we could come up with to describe the love that we thought it is. And since it is a feeling, an emotion, we look for it from other people, thinking the same; they as well look for it from us. We build relationships; we create groups, friendships, and families. We give in to our emotions, into our great desire for love, but when these emotions die down, and our desire wear out because we thought we’ve found love, we realize we didn’t. And so the relationships we built fall apart, marriages, friendships; resulting to broken families, desolated individuals, abandoned children. Hence all sorts of emotional problems and issues start here. And this does not stop to only emotions; emotional problems and issues result to societal problems and issues. This is now the situation or rather the syndrome called lacking of/in love. How are we to find love from people who, they, themselves don’t know love?

If we cannot find love from others, then surely love is not just an emotion, or a feeling, (although we could feel it), then what is it?

Follow this blog, and together let us discover what love truly is…