Life during BC

I received a text message from ate yen telling me that we will be having our CLP (Christian life program) this week. This will be my first CLP as full pledged SFC member. Also I was asked to be a sharer on our first session. Wow I couldn't really imagine speaking in front of people I barely even know and much more share about my experiences before I accepted Christ in my life and how I was changed eversince. Not that i don't want to inspire others but being put on a spotlight is not really my thing but because this is all for my loving Father I accepted the challenge. since it's tomorrow I'm kinda having a whole lot of thoughts rushing im my head. I'm a bit nervous now as i think of that day. What can i possibly tell everyone?

I look back at my life before I set foot on the gates of DOH (assembly area for CLP of SFC C2B) and I could definitely say that I was miserable and lost. Yup I may be described as a cheerful person by all of my closests friends but deep inside I was completely in bad shape. the story of how I even got to know SFC was never an accident. I believe that God really wanted me to find Him. It all started when I was trying to figure out what I would do with my weekends if I don't have any climbs to go to. I was a rotaract member for 2 years last year but then for some reasons i wanted to serve more and so to my desperate attempt to find a new group i searched through the net and found out about Gawad Kalinga or GK for short. I got a hold of a contact number from someone who is a volunteer and I texted him on how i could join. I got invited to one Sunday activity they had on one of their site located in Everstly. Amazingly enough SFC was also having their CLP's orientation Friday the same week I discovered GK and this volunteer is also an SFC member so he invited me too. I was like "Man! I can't join that now! what will my friends say about me? they will definitely laugh at me!". I didn't want to go and I didn't want to be ridiculed. But if I don't join I could possibly blow my chance on GK. And so I went but just for the sake of showing up.

Friday came and as expected friends were like all over me telling me not to join. I remember one friend told me "are you that desperate to find someone that you would resort to joining this group?". I got laughed at as I have anticipated but was not enough to stop me from going. I got there and looked around to find some familiar faces and I saw Fiel, an officemate here in NCR! I was so relieved as I sit myself down. I kept looking at my phone for the time. i impatiently waited for the orientation to start just so it could finish. Fiel was busy being with the food committee and so i was alone in the crowd. I don't know anybody. I told myself i am never coming back here.

After like an excruciating hours of waiting we finally started. I don't know what happened but all those negative feelings i was having a while back suddenly all went away as we pray and sing songs of praise. I can't really explain it but my heart was at peace. The speaker finally shared about his experience with Christ. then something happened, i suddenly wanted to know the God responsible for his wonderful life or atleast the God I used to know. i found that I completely knew Him differently. I know Him to be the one you go to when you have problems. I know Him to be the giver of everything and that you should praise and thank Him. He is the one who I go to when I don't have anything else to hold on to from which after then i go on with my life never really reflecting as to why certain things happen to me. So for me the God I knew don't have a relationship with me. I have to praise and pray to him because that is what everyone is doing. That I have to do good things because I will never be granted access to his Kingdom and quite frankly that didn't even scare me. I guess i never really believed that He even existed. In a way I am just putting on a show all these time that I pray and go to church only so i could feel i belong. i go to church because that's what my parents tell me to do and i really never understood or did I put it in to heart that there meaning for celebrating the mass every sunday. How could this person talking in front us possibly feel the way he does and describe feelings i am so unfamiliar with. It all got me fascinated. I never really thought of God that way. And it triggered something in me. It made me hunger for more. I wanna know about God and I wanna know how to find Him. then i found out that the first session on the CLP will be about God's love and I swore I wanted it start right away. everything on the orientation got me really curious.

eversince the orientation i knew i was changed. i have completed the 12 CLP sessions and still want more of Him. i have learned a lot from my CLP experience and still i find that it was not enough.

Before I was very hard on myself. I didn't feel I deserve to be loved by anyone much more by God. I really didn't feel i was even worth to exist in this world. Then slowly with God's help I find that all that's been happening to me was part of His plan, to make me a better person and to make me feel His love. i couldn't even begin to fit everything in a one page to share my experience of Him to all of you. but to those who knew me then, can really testify that I am a different person now than i was before Christ/before CLP (or i as i would like to call BC). I am cheerful because I really am cheerful and not because I am masking something. these smiles that you are seeing are genuine and it is because i really am happy.

I wish there is enough more time for me to share about the transformation I have with my life but this is about what i can do for now. whatever i am feeling right now wouldn't be justified with just words for you to understand. But do allow me to say this that with God in the center of your life everything is just wonderful. ^__^