Truly Rich and Blessed

50 Days of Amazing Grace: Days 14, 15 and 16 — On Delighting in the Lord

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I wasn’t able to write posts for the 50 Days of Amazing Grace series on Saturday and Sunday, so I’ll just combine everything I wanted to say in today’s post. It was a very blessed and busy weekend for our family, and I am just OVERWHELMED again at how faithful and true God is.

On Saturday afternoon, I got a call from my Tita (aunt) that the car they were willing to lend us was ready to be picked up. My Tito (uncle) and Tita run an agri-ventures business and they have one car (one of their agents’, I think) that they are selling off. It was that car that they so generously said we could borrow in the meantime, so that when it’s time for Anne to come out, it’s easier to go to the hospital. (And well, easier for preggy me to move around if needed, like going for check-ups and to Mass, etc.)

Believe me, after having two late-night/early-morning trips to the hospital and needing to wait for a taxi both times, knowing that there’s a car readily available for our use, especially in emergency cases, is such a big blessing! 😉

So hubby and the little boy immediately went to Malolos to get the car. They came back in the evening and we ended up sleeping at my mother-in-law’s place (free aircon, ha, ha!), which is why I didn’t get to write a post for Saturday — I was too tired and we didn’t bring my laptop either! 😉

We used “our” car (ha, ha! Feeling!) the next day to go to Sunday Mass. 🙂 Needless to say, Tim was ecstatic that we didn’t have to ride a jeep! Ha, ha! Thank You, Lord, for Your generosity, and thank you, Tito Boyet and Tita Fe, for being a channel of God’s grace for our family! 🙂

withcar

We arrived at church early, so we were able to spend a few minutes in the Adoration Chapel — it was Tim’s idea! Now, I don’t know if he wanted to go in because it was air-conditioned inside and scorching hot outside (he admitted to this being his reason for wanting to go in one time before, LOL) but I’m grateful nonetheless that he knows what and why there is an Adoration Chapel in the first place. 🙂

timadoration

After Mass, we ate lunch out because I’d forgotten that we didn’t have any food to eat at home. And then hubby goes, “Hey, instead of our friends from Timor Leste (two of them are here to attend the Youth for Christ or YFC conference and other activities), coming over to visit us at our {messy, cluttered} apartment, why don’t we go to your parents’ place instead (my parents were hosting them for that day)?”

So off we went — oh the simple joy of having a car to take you to places you wouldn’t normally go to because you’d have to commute! 🙂

And we ended up having a great afternoon with my parents and our young Timorese friends:

withaleixoThe kids took a while to warm up to Aleixo and Jina, because it had been a long time since they last saw them. But they eventually lost their shyness, and ended up playing with them long after Anthony and I had left, according to my mom. Yes, the kids are at my parents’ place again! This seems to happen every time we go there — they end up wanting to stay over! 😉 Oh, the “magic” of grandparents!

kids with lyus

Aleixo (shown above with the kids) is especially close to us, because the first time I met him, way back in 2002, he was still in secondary school. I was in Timor Leste for a short-term mission trip with another YFC missionary (he’s a Jesuit novice now!) and we conducted a Youth Camp in Aleixo’s school.

Little did I know then that the seeds of faith God allowed us to grow back then would bloom  so beautifully — now, Aleixo is one of our fulltime missionaries in Timor, and Anthony had the privilege of mentoring and training him while we were still in Timor. We will always cherish our times with him and our other Timorese brothers and sisters, and I am SO happy that the kids remember their Maun or big brother and got to spend time with him yesterday! 🙂

Anthony and I felt a bit sad for leaving the kids behind, but I know that spending time with their grandparents is also good for them. I can also catch up on last-minute tasks while they’re gone. I haven’t “popped” yet but feel that Anne will come out soon! Thank you all for your prayers — my OB is back in Manila, so even if I “pop” anytime soon, I can rest a bit easier, knowing that she’s available! 🙂

God also surprised me with extra “bonuses” last weekend — a few more mompreneurs and former blog partners whom I now consider friends contacted me, saying they want to send gifts for Anne and me! 🙂 We’re already so blessed by all the pre-loved and brand-new items that people have been sending us (either on loan or given), so getting these additional gifts is wonderful! Oh how God’s love overflows!

Also, a professional photographer offered to do a FREE maternity shoot for me and Anne! I’ve NEVER had maternity shoots before (not even a pre-nup shoot with Anthony before we got married) or other kinds of professional photo shoots, simply because they’re not part of our budget. So it is REALLY a HUGE blessing! 🙂 I had to turn him down though, since I may give birth anytime soon — I asked if we could have a family photo shoot instead, when Anne’s already out, and he so generously agreed! (I’ll reveal who he is later on, OK, when we’ve already done the shoot! 😉 Heehee!)

Right now, I am just OVERWHELMED at God’s overflowing generosity and love, as shown through all the people around us! 🙂 {This deserves a different blog post altogether actually!} Thank You, Lord, and thank you, everyone! 🙂

Everything that happened this past weekend is just an affirmation of this verse (image source ):

delight

Admittedly, I don’t ALWAYS “take delight in the Lord” — in fact, many times I forget Him and turn away from Him and don’t show Him that I love Him, especially when I’m being a “mean mom.” So it’s really comforting to know that despite my failure to delight in God at all times, He still knows my heart’s desires, and gives them to me, according to His plan and purpose. 🙂

You know what, friends? God looks at YOU the same way He looks at li’l ol’ me. 🙂 Try delighting in Him more, and He will surely give you your heart’s desires, though sometimes it may not be in the way that we wish. Just trust that He knows best, OK? 😉

Truly Rich Reflections: Water Into Wine

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My family and I came home on Sunday night from Baguio, where we attended an inspiring (though at times, tiring) weekend retreat organized by , our Catholic community. Since then, my mind and heart have been overflowing!

I tried to “capture” some of our Baguio moments through this photo collage, but I don’t think it does justice!
Which means I really MUST write a post, yes? 🙂

There is SO much I want to blog about — so many lessons learned especially during the first month of the year! So many blessings to share, so many wonderful homeschool experiences and “a-ha!” moments! So many people I want to give a “shout out” to, so many answered prayers!

So.many.things.to.write.about. 

The problem is I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how to begin.

So… while I try to organize my thoughts into a post (or series of posts, maybe?)… And before I write an article for one of my “sideline” writing projects… I just want to share with you one of, if not THE biggest, blessings we’ve received since 2013 started, via a screenshot of my post on Facebook:

For those of you who may not be aware of our initial fears, doubts, worries concerns about the little one in my womb, you might want to read this post on the truth about my pregnancy.

After making that “confession,” I felt as if a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders. Because I knew that we were no longer “alone” in our journey. I knew that people from all over the world were lifting us up, especially our baby, in their prayers. And for that, I am/we are forever grateful.

You have shown us how powerful the gift of prayer can be. You have helped us see how Jesus turns water into wine, and creates miracles, every single day.

So, dear friends, please forgive the lack of any other updates / detailed posts for now. I just want to leave you with this song by Chris Tomlin, which I have personally dubbed as our “theme song” for our baby (Tim’s is “On Eagle’s Wings,” while Rysse’s is “Still.” Why? 🙂 Oooh… more topics for future blog posts!):

Whatever you may be facing right now, believe that Jesus, our Miracle-maker, is near. Through the powerful intercession of His Blessed Mother, who is our own mother, too, He will fill your “empty jars.” He will turn your “water” into “wine.” He will make all things work together, for the good of those who love Him. (Romans 8:28)

My mom, my dad, me, Tim, Rysse and Anthony
We were surprised to be asked to be “models” during one of the sessions at the retreat, and my dad was asked to proclaim how we would witness to Christ’s love and mission as a family. I had tears in my eyes listening to him speak. (I think my mom did, too!) We are not a perfect family, and have our own struggles and sins and failures, but we are truly blessed to have God and one another.
(Photo credit: Tito Arthur del Rio)

Of Christmas Decorations, Surprise Gifts and Frabelle Foods Honey Glazed Ham! :)

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I can’t believe it’s almost February! Like I said in one of my earlier posts, we plan to take down our Christmas/Happy Birthday Jesus decorations on February 2, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord (or Candlemas)— well, that’s just around the corner — next Sunday! We’re going to miss our simple but meaningful decorations! Hopefully though, we won’t ever forget what they symbolize — the joy and hope and wonder of Jesus’ birth! 🙂

Anyway, you all probably know that during the holy-day season, I was on a sort-of-blogcation. I limited my posts to being focused on Christmas and New Year, and the days after, including our wedding anniversary.  (I somehow feel like I still have a hangover from that blogcation, hence the lack of posts here! Added to that, it’s been a really busy month for me — busy BUT blessed! 🙂 Read more about it here, if you like!)

That’s why I wasn’t able to write about SO many other things I wanted to write about after Christmas Day, like the wonderful surprise gifts I got from some blog partners, namely and Mayumi & Me (though I did post photos on !) — they sent me these goodies just because. (Thank you, ladies, you really made my Christmas oh-so-much merrier!)

Medela goodies! 🙂 Perfect for when I give birth and start breastfeeding Baby no. 3! 🙂
Thank you again, dear ! 🙂
This came at JUST the perfect time, when I was wishing that I had a planner!
I was planning to buy the Mommy Mundo’s Mom 24/7 Planner then I got home to find this sweet gift
from ! (God’s timing!) Thank you again, Armi! 🙂

I also wasn’t able to share that a few days before Christmas — just in time — we received a package on our doorstep: a 1kg bag of Frabelle Foods Honey-Glazed Ham!

This came JUST in time, too! 🙂
Because we hadn’t bought ANY ham to complement our Christmas dinner! 🙂

This was a pleasant surprise because I had no prior knowledge nor notice that we’d be receiving anything from Frabelle! 🙂 (God is awesome that way, you know? He even provides for the seemingly “little” things in our lives!)

So how did the ham taste?

Well, Anthony and I thought it was very good! 🙂 (It actually became one of our ulam or viands for breakfast and lunch {and snacks} for a few days! Don’t worry though, I did my best to balance our meals with vegetables and fruits! Umm… “try” being the keyword! Yikes!)

Apparently, Frabelle’s honey-glazed ham tastes the way it does because it’s prepared the classic way — it’s naturally smoked using imported wood chips, and is infused with pure honey that is blow-torched! The ham is made from fresh premium whole-muscle meat (from the pork leg), which makes it really tender.

Of course, the ham didn’t last that long in our household, since we used it to make sandwiches for breakfast and snacks! 🙂

For more information about Frabelle Foods and their other products, visit their website at www.frabelle.com (Look! They have fish products, too! Craving for some salmon now, yum!).

Screenshot from Frabelle’s website

You can also “Like” Frabelle’s facebook page at  for regular updates.

Note: I was not compensated financially for this post — all I got was the complimentary piece of homey-glazed ham from Frabelle.

A Grateful Christmas + Christmas Prayers for You!

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It has been a hectic, stressful past few days for our family.

Instead of slowing down before Christmas, implementing my plans to de-clutter and clean up our little apartment in time for our little family get-together on Christmas Eve (with my parents and my youngest brother), and preparing for our “birthday party” for Jesus on Christmas Day, we found ourselves rushing our little girl to the emergency room due to continuous vomiting, and taking turns caring for her (thank God for my husband and my mom and dad, who helped out in so many ways).

Because my mom and husband were there to care for little Therese, Tim and I were still able to go to the Lighthouse (the office building where all of Bro. Bo Sanchez’s ministries are housed) Christmas party (all four of us were supposed to go), and I was still able to join our department’s presentation. 🙂 My dad also came by and ended up staying overnight, much to the kids’ delight.

Yes, that’s me in the middle with Tim, in between my fellow presenters/singers. (Yes, that’s Martine of Dainty Mom in the long dress, singing with us! 🙂 She’s the managing editor of one of our mags, for tweens.)

The day after though, I found myself with a severe lower backache in the evening — after bringing Therese for her follow-up check up, buying her medicines and cleaning up at home. By that time, she was feeling much better (thank You, Lord!) so her dad had left to attend a reunion with his “guy pals,” and my parents had already gone home.

After putting the kids to bed, I found myself crying in pain. Thank God I fell asleep soon after saying my prayers and asking for healing.

As you can guess, I’m feeling much better now — save for the cold and sore throat that have been bothering me since yesterday, and a slight backache — hence this blog post. Which brings me to the ultimate reason behind it.

As Christmas is only less than 10 hours away, at least in my part of the world, I just want to tell you how grateful I am.

Yes, we live in a world that seems crazy and twisted at times… Where children get gunned down or stabbed by madmen… where natural disasters can wreak havoc on homes and lives…  Even so close to Christmas…

Yet, there is still A LOT to be grateful for… A lot to thank God for…

Of course, it’s a given that I’m thankful for the gift of Christ this Christmas. After all, He is the Reason for the season.

Photo from the 

And I am grateful for my family and friends, my new “big boss” and officemates, and brethren in our Catholic community. For , pro-lifers, , and fellow Catholic bloggers from all over the world! And even the strangers who have become my friends in a way, because they are praying for our baby, especially after I posted the truth about my pregnancy.

I’m thankful that God healed Therese quickly, and that He is healing me, too. I was dreading spending Christmas in the hospital, as Therese almost had to be confined to prevent dehydration. I thank God, too, for all the people who prayed with us for her and followed my updates about her progress on and !

A little thinner now, but much better! Thank you to everyone who prayed for her! 🙂

I thank God for the job that He blessed me with this year, one that allows me to homeschool and spread His love to other people, especially to kids! I thank Him for the additional income streams, both passive and active, that He’s blessed our family with. I thank Him for the chance to touch others’ lives through my writing.

I thank Him for our new home, something which we almost gave up on. I thank Him for the surprise of Anthony’s new job, one that allows him to spend more time with our family and bless others through ministry work and special events.

I thank Him for SO MANY BLESSINGS actually.

I thank Him for YOU, dear readers, whom I would like to call my friends as well. Thank you for reading this little ol’ blog of mine, and for keeping in touch with me through , and email. Thank you for reading my articles on Smart Parenting, Philstar.com, World Moms Blog and elsewhere.

Thank you, too, to all , past and present! For believing in me and trusting me as a blogger, even if I am relatively new! For blessing our family, especially our homeschooling, through our partnerships!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for making my blog what it is today, dear readers and partners! You’re part of my “I am grateful to God for…” list! 🙂

From my family to yours, I want to wish you a BLESSED CHRISTMAS and a BOUNTIFUL NEW YEAR! 🙂 May your Christmas — all 12 days of it — be truly merry and bright, with the light of the Christ child and His peace and hope filling your hearts and homes for all the days to come!

To end, here are my Christmas prayers for you:

Photo source here.
Photo source here.

P.S. I plan to take a blogcation so I can focus on spending time with my loved ones. But you’ll probably see me active on Facebook and Twitter! 🙂 Leaving you now with a few photos of how we’ve prepared for our Christmas celebration this evening (the Happy Birthday Jesus decorations will only come up later, when the kids are asleep, so they’ll be surprised tomorrow morning on Christmas Day! 😉

Merry CHRISTmas from Tim and Rysse! 🙂

Waiting for Jesus to be born. 🙂
Our CHRISTmas “corner.”
This is the first year we actually bought Christmas trees. And have lots of gifts! 🙂
Thank You, Lord! 🙂
The “centerpiece” of our CHRISTmas decorations is our simple Nativity set.
Baby Jesus will only be brought out later at midnight. 🙂
Meanwhile, the Three Kings / Wise Men are still on their way to visit Jesus. 🙂
And the shepherds have yet to receive the angel’s message about the Baby born in the manger.
Our Jesse Tree is almost “full.” 🙂 O Come, O Come Emmanuel!

Hello, November! :) Thoughts on Blessings, Blogging and Smart Parenting: Are You Raising a Spoiled Child?

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October has come and gone so quickly and it’s already the FIFTH day of November! 🙂 Oh my gosh! So much has happened and I haven’t even had the time to catch my breath, nor catch up on pending blog posts and articles (both for work AND for my sideline writing projects! LOL!). Oh, the life of a multi-tasking, homeschooling (or at least trying hard to), semi-work-at-home preggy mom! 🙂 *sighs* You know, if I really, really could, I would be over-the-moon-happy with being a fulltime stay-at-home, homeschooling preggy mom who writes on the side (and gets paid for it!) just for fun! 🙂

With kids like these, who wouldn’t want to stay home fulltime ? 🙂 Tim is a little over three years old and Rysse around seven months in this photo — how fast time flies! 

But anyway… I shouldn’t complain, right? Our family has been very blessed, despite the “lean” moments at times… And even if hubby and I “sacrificed” 10+ years of “the best years of our lives” for fulltime ministry work for our Catholic community, God still blessed us all those years! He allowed us to grow as people and learn new skills, brought us to different places locally and internationally for the missions, taught us to trust in Him more, led us to meet people from all walks of life and allowed us to be a blessing (at least, I hope so!) to others through giving talks, leading teams, organizing events, writing manuals and so on…

Me waaaay back in 2005 with some of the youth of Timor Leste 🙂

Later on, He helped us have a beautiful wedding despite a tight budget, blessed us with two-now-three wonderful children, allowed us to reach out to so many other people, inspired us to learn different languages and enabled us to connect with people of different cultures! 🙂

Being “sent off” for mission as newlyweds 🙂
With one of the Timorese sisters. 🙂 We are blessed to have worked together with so many inspiring priests, nuns and other lay missionaries. 🙂
On one of the mountains of Baucau, during a mission trip. 🙂 Baucau is a district of Timor Leste.  (This was taken on a different day — but notice my usual “mission trip attire”? LOL!) 
With one of our Timorese host families. 🙂
At our farewell party organized by CFC Timor Leste in 2010 🙂
I cried buckets of tears!

Now, God has brought us to where we are at this particular stage of our lives where we can spend most of our time with our children, even homeschool them… and we can only look back and be amazed at His goodness! 🙂

Which leads me to realize again why I continue to write and blog. I was reading Frances Sales’s blog, Topaz Horizon, earlier and what she said in this post reminded me of something I had earlier realized during Martine’s WAHMderful Life Workshop: That whatever you do with your life, you need to be INTENTIONAL. 

Frances wrote about being true to one’s self when it comes to blogging, and I hope she doesn’t mind if I quote her verbatim here: “Blog for yourself, not for the money… Blog about what makes you happy… This will give your blog its own voice, its own personality—yours—and make it unique. After all, there is no one quite like you in the entire world.”

As a relatively “newbie” blogger, reading Frances’s words above just affirmed me that I must be doing something right with my blog somehow. I used to compare myself with other mom bloggers and I wrote a bit about how to deal with “comparisonitis” in this post. But then, I thought, “I should just be ‘me’! I should just write with my ‘higher purpose’ in mind and not be afraid to share my thoughts and feelings!” Reading my very first post (imported from WordPress, where I first started blogging on www.missionarymom.wordpress.com) also helped me go back to the “roots” of my blog.

So, starting this November, you all might be a bit surprised with some of my posts — where I will be sharing about my “past,” in the hope that you will be inspired and encouraged. I will be more open with how my pregnancy is really going, in the hope that I will be able to touch at least one other mom’s life. I will be real. Well, more real than I have ever been on this blog, I guess. 🙂 And I hope that you AND I will be more blessed because of it! 🙂

Here’s to a wonderful month ahead for all of us! 🙂

P.S.
As you may already know, I contribute regularly to Smart Parenting’s website and, occasionally, to Smart Parenting in print. 🙂 For the November issue, I wrote an article on raising spoiled kids (it’s on page 50). 🙂 Please do grab a copy and let me know what you think about it! 🙂 Thanks to all the people who helped me with the article! 🙂

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