Service and God's Will

The day before I left for Singapore I received again the glitch text about faith. I did not give it another thought because I was somewhat already convinced that this was a technology glitch. When we got to Singapore, it completely skipped my mind. It was almost midnight when I got back to the hotel that Saturday night. I had asked my friend who lives there to check out on the internet the nearest Catholic Church to Fagrance Hotel Imperial where we were staying. Before we arrived in Singapore, my bestfriend's friend told her that there was a very nice church in Bugis, which was just a station away from Lavender, the MRT station near our hotel. Unfortunately, we forgot to ask her for directions to the church. So when I arrived at the hotel, I asked the 2 front desk guys where the nearest church was, the younger one answered in a terse way that the nearest was in Novena. I was not so convinced because I noticed earlier in the day that the Novena MRT station was quite far and you had to change stations at the City Hall to take the Red Line in order to get to Novena. However, I did not want to argue with him that there was 1 in Bugis since I did not know where it was. What I did was search the internet at the lobby. However, I did see anything about a church in Bugis per se. Also, I was not familiar with the streets so I wouldn't know if these were near Bugis or not. But I located the church he mentioned in Novena. So I decided to ask them for directions to Novena. However, since I still had some minutes remaining from my internet rent (S$1/15 minutes), I decided to check my email. The first thing I saw was a regrets letter (yes, another regrets letter) from the World Youth Day 2008 regarding my application to the position of Media Operations Assistant. I was somewhat disappointed (again). But I was thinking that I could still apply as a volunteer. When I got to my room I saw that I had a text message from my friend. He was able to locate a church in Bugis, St. Joseph along Victoria Road. Before I went to sleep, I asked God to help me know His will and to guide me in finding the church.

The next day I left my friends eating breakfast while I hurried to the MRT to go to Bugis. When I got to Bugis I looked for Victoria Road in the direction signs and followed it. As I was looking, I saw written, Church of Our Lady of Lourdes. I followed this instead of looking for St. Joseph since there were concrete directions. Maybe this was God's way of guiding me. I was taking a chance since I did not know the mass schedule of this church, so if it did not have a mass scheduled for 10am then I would be late already if I had to go and look for St. Joseph Church. I was lucky that there was a mass, and an English mass at that. The church was dominated by people from the Indian subcontinent but there were Filipinos, Chinese, Africans and even one or two Caucasians. While I was praying and waiting for the mass to start, the singer for the Psalm came forward to practice. Guess what the Responsorial Psalm was? "Here I am Lord, I have come to do your will." I was getting goosebumps at that time. I was thinking, if during the homily the priest will talk about anything connected to World Youth Day then maybe it's a sign that I should apply for their volunteer program. Then the mass started. The readings were about doing God's will and about service. During the homily, the priest talk about service. His first example was the man he called, "Servant of Servants," Pope John Paul II. Whaaaat!!! Pope John Paul II was the proponent of the WYD. Is this a sign? Hehehe. He went on to mention Gandhi and I think Mother Theresa. Then the priest went on and expounded about being in God's service and following His will. At this time it seemed that the sky opened up and sunlight was streaming through the stained glass windows lighting me like a spotlight. Boy was that a tearful moment.

When I got back to Manila, I was resolved to apply as a volunteer to the WYD 2008 but I was still deciding on whether to apply as a communications volunteer or a registration volunteer. My friend told me to pray for it. Unfortunately, when I got around to applying, the WYD 2008 committee has upgraded their website and there was no mention anymore of long term volunteer program and choices were more limited. I emailed the WYD for clarification but so far they have not responded yet. Was this another closed door? Following God's will is really hard because it's hard enough to discern His will, but when you think you know what it is, you find out that your interpretation was wrong. It's really an adventure and full of tests.