God’s love is greater…Nothing can stop us from loving!
When our city was placed under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) due to the COVID-19 situation, shops closed, fewer vehicles plied the streets, and less people could be seen going around. While we knew that it was intended for a greater good, we also understood that this was going to hit the daily income earners very hard.
We tried to think of what we could do to help a family of six whose only source of income was selling meals in front of their house. Since there were almost no more people buying, they no longer had enough for their daily needs. We were able to get in touch with a friend who had a farm, and when we told him of the situation of this family, he agreed to sell us rice at a cost lower than that of the market price. In spite of our own limited resources, we immediately ordered one sack of rice for this family, and another sack for our own family.
Since he had all the documents for him to pass through the checkpoints, this friend who was selling the rice volunteered to deliver it to the family who needed it. On the way, he passed by our house to drop the other sack we had ordered for ourselves. As he was unloading our rice, he said, “Do not pay this, OK? Pay only for the other sack. Your rice is free. If you insist on paying it, I’m going to give the money back to you.” Unexpectedly, we received a free sack of rice for ourselves, while still being able to give one sack to another family.
This small experience was like a reassurance that in spite of all the uncertainties, fears, and everything that is happening in this period, God’s love is greater and He is in control. We just have to keep loving and doing our part so that other people can also feel God’s love for them and believe, too, that everything is part of His beautiful plan for humanity.
(Nathalie “Ann” Pasa, Iloilo City)
Faith over Fear
The world has been taken by fear with the outbreak of COVID-19 globally. As a local community of the Focolare, we braced ourselves for the inevitable. When the first death of a COVID-19 patient was reported in our city, we were shaken. It did not take long before we were put on lockdown and advised to go into home quarantine. We decided to intensify our online conversations and communication to help and support one another. This gave rise to a unified stand to do something concrete for those who don’t have an option but to stay home because some of them (the COVID-19 frontliners) are battling to contain the disease while others have to feed their families on a day-to-day basis.
The initial step was to provide meals for the healthworkers in the COVID-19 section of our government hospital. This was well appreciated. In the following days, a few private citizens offered food for them so we thought of identifying other “gray areas” in our city. We connected with the Sectoral Desk of our city and an NGO (People’s Development Council) to help us with the logistics. We obtained the list of thousands of possible recipients for the rice packs, and identified 500 sectors badly hit by the lockdown.
Among them are the kargadors (baggage carriers), masseurs, ambulant street vendors selling balut (boiled, fertilized duck eggs), peanuts, tempura (Japanese dish made of battered, deep fried seafood, meat, and vegetables), and souvenirs. We pooled our resources together as a community and some of our close adherents came up with an amount to pack all the 500 two-kilo rice packs. The community could not gather together to do the packing because of the Department of Health guidelines on physical distancing so we designated two homes for the packing job. The household members of these homes did the packing, complying with ‘physical distancing’ rules.
To our joy, the packs were picked up by the NGO personnel and the Sectoral Desk of our city and distributed to the beneficiaries with proper documentation. After the first round of distribution, more donations came because people around us got to know about our project. We got to know that the person-in-charge of the Sectoral Desk presented our project to the Mayor and asked him what concrete actions the city government was doing for the poor families affected by the lockdown.
Many donations kept pouring in from other people who also wanted to offer their help. There was fear in going out and doing the legwork to purchase the rice and other food items needed for the packs. The person-in-charge of the purchasing did so with the utmost care and safety to avoid infection. Then, the second round of distribution materialized for 100 beneficiaries from another sector, this time the “parking boys” (informal parking attendants) and night market vendors. We did not have to look far to find those who also needed these packs, for we identified 20 among the children/youth who attend our monthly community gatherings. This experience made us overcome our fear of this invisible enemy lurking around us.
What gave us courage to go out and put together the food packs was our faith in God and our desire to love our indigent neighbors around us. This initiative was carried out faithfully complying with preventive health measures to avoid infection.
(Eleanor Villegas of Dumaguete, Negros Oriental)
Cooking for Love
My mom asked me if I would like to volunteer as one of the head cooks for a special action under her department. I replied “OK, alright” although I had a mix of anxiety, doubt and fear that I might get exposed to the new coronavirus. In spite of this negative thought, I said my Yes.
The next day, we had a meeting with the various sectors in my city (as the whole city was now under ECQ) and there, we started making a menu plan (from breakfast to dinner plus snacks) headed by a chairman who is the assistant city budget officer. It was challenging because we needed to create a 15-day menu plan that is balanced, nutritional and can feed hundreds of frontliners with a specific and fixed budget, so as to cut down our city government’s expenses. The next day, we set up a mobile kitchen in a small garden in the compound of the City Hall. Excitement stirred inside me!
In the evening, it rained heavily! I woke up, fell asleep and soon after I woke up again from a bad dream. I dreamed that a friend of mine whom I had been with before the ECQ had tested positive for COVID-19, and that I was also showing symptoms, had just fallen sick and wanted to have my test immediately. This dream disturbed me so much that I could no longer fall asleep. I was frustrated and fear made me uneasy, I started to have palpitations so I decided to get up for a glass of water to calm myself down. The thought of not going to the operation was also becoming strong, and perhaps I would just stay home. But I just swept this idea aside and prayed that what I had dreamed would not happen to me. Not getting enough sleep the night before, I left home with mom and arrived at the City Hall at dawn, earlier than the group of employees in her department. I saw all of them so lively and energetic, and they seemed to have rested well. Inspired by the witness of this well-spirited group of people, I threw myself into the task at hand, forgetting the fact that I had very little rest, and before I knew it, my worries subsided. Our work was no joke; it was difficult. However, with each one’s cooperation, we were able to get through the hurdle and meet the demands of the day’s operation.
As we ended in the afternoon, I was dead tired! But I came home happy and with a great inner peace. I told myself: “At least, I was able to live a full day helping people who are providing services in this time of crisis. And if by chance something would happen to me, but hopefully not, I am also ready to accept it. I continue to go to our mobile kitchen every day and help other departments assigned to prepare meals. My responsibilities are also increasing but I accept all the work given to me with much love and dedication, having at heart that I do it for those who are in great need!
(Wim Tabin, Baguio City)
A modern multiplication of “loaves” (or rather of sardines and rice)
At the beginning of the lockdown announced by the local government, together with some friends, we asked ourselves what could be the best thing to do, aside from following the social distancing and wearing face masks every time we would go out to buy basic necessities for our families. Since many of us come from middle-class families, we knew that, sooner or later, we would also be affected and many of us will not be able to go to work. But this did not hinder us from loving!
The first thing we did was to put in common our surplus, the small amount of money that each of us had. We decided to live the communion of goods, first among ourselves, and we were indeed able to raise some money. This small gesture reminded us of the Gospel episode of the multiplication of loaves and fish.
Seeing what we had done, our friends asked to also join in and put in common the money they had gathered so that we could reach more families. We started packing the goods we had bought from the amount collected. However, we saw that it was too little. So one of us started posting in her social media account, asking her close friends for a can of sardines each. To her surprise, her friends gave more than what she asked for. In the end, she was able to collect a big number of canned sardines! Later on, people who learned about our initiative also started sending us money. Hence we have witnessed continuous waves of love coming from many generous people around us. It is the never-ending outpouring of God’s love!
After packing the goods, one of us posted our food packs on her Facebook wall to inspire others, and today, we are on our 5th wave! Everything started from a small act of love, a request for a can of sardines. Now our friends and colleagues have started to donate sacks of rice and boxes of sardines. Every day, cash donations come in and it is unbelievable how this outpouring of love is happening before our very eyes. Now we have reached almost 250 packs.
