It is amazing how quickly time passes by! Today, as we went jogging with Oscar in the evening, it transpired that a week had passed by so quickly.
The earlier part of the week was spent trying to confirm my air tickets and Aili's air tickets back to Singapore. I finally managed to confirm mine at a reasonable price. As Aili's ticket is for travel during the festive season, the prices are generally steep, and so I decided to say a little prayer before I started to check on the internet. Surprisingly, I found a ticket with a relatively good airlines that was very reasonable priced for a festive season travel. What was even more amazing was that the next day, when I called the ticketing office, I was told that I had booked a route combination that is not allowed according to the rules, but the ticketing system had gone crazy for a short while, and had actually accepted my "illegal" reservation! I was simply lost for words when the lady told me over the phone that this was the first time that their system had gone bonkers for this year, but naturally, they agreed to honor the price in my "illegal" reservation!
On Friday, our professionals came over for our meeting as usual. Oscar came to our house very early in the morning, had breakfast with me, and then cooked a Peruvian dish called "picante de cuy" (it means hot and spicy guinea pig) together with me, although we substituted guinea pig with chicken. We then celebrated the birthday of one of the youths, Kiara, in the afternoon, together with Laura and a few other youths in our core committee, as well as Karen, a professional who dropped by during her lunch hours. In the evening, we served this dish to the professionals as well. They enjoyed this dish very much. Amazingly, the professionals came again on Saturday, and at least 2 new professionals volunteered to teach English and other subjects to our youths in our youth club, and to help out in other projects. One of them even came and joined us for our Sunday morning get-togethers!
I was amazed by the transformation that we have seen in some of our young professionals. On Saturday evening, Oscar travelled an hour to visit a youth, Danny, who had not been coming to join us for a while, and he spent time with the youth until almost 1am, past midnight. The youth was so touched that he came back to join us for our Sunday morning get-together this week!
We had quite a big turn-out for our Sunday morning get-together this week. But it was even more heartening to see not just the numbers, but also the involvement of our regulars. People like Oscar, Karen and Laura were automatically going to talk to the newcomers and making them feel at home! They even started to share about their personal life stories to the newcomers! The older folks have also started to gel together to a large extent. Being Christians, they are calling one another over the week and praying for one another. They are also working together to organize events, including the logistics and the cooking, to serve the younger people around. It is a truly touching sight to see people serving one another and helping one another.
Over the week, a friend German called me up. He called to thank us for our prayers for him, and he was also very grateful that some of the people in our older group have been calling him up from time to time to cheer him up, and some of the youths have been calling up his son regularly. His son Germancito has improved tremendously since suffering the bad accident last year, and he currently has cognitive control of his mind again, although he needs to go through therapy to recover control over his muscular and motor movements. Nevertheless German is looking forward to the day that his family can join us regularly for our Sunday gatherings once again!
A week may have passed by quite quickly, but the heartwarming memories that have come to pass over the week will stay with me for a long time to come.
