Livin' La Vida Loca at 10am

It's the time of the year when I've got TONS to do. And I literally mean it. Here I am in the kitchen, multi-tasking, as I compute the grades of my students, take little bites of my Red Ribbon chocolate mousse Junior cake, drink my Starbucks' Tazo Brambleberry herbal infused iced tea and sip my London Fruit and Herb Orange Spicer hot tea. After this, I gotta polish my lines since I am hosting tomorrow night's Thanksgiving Banquet.

Yeah, I am doing A LOT! And in the midst of my somewhat chaotic state, here I am... taking a BREATHER. *whew* It feels good to relax a bit. This is actually a long overdue post. Last Sunday, mom and dad were invited to an Evangelistic Dinner / Thanksgiving by our super loving and caring family doctors. In absence of dad, who's still far from us since he's on a Sabbatical leave, I took his place. Talk about proxy. :)


Mom and I were to act as table hosts that night. Our task was to make sure that Drs.  Jodd & Susan's non-C guests would feel comfy and we'd somehow entertain them by leading them to conversations which would glorify our Lord. Anyway, I knew it was going to be easy given that I was partnered with my mom. However, things changed since one of mom's friend, Tita Aileen, kidnapped her by switching partners. Tita Aileen assigned her partner, Ptr. D [let's keep his name a secret], to me. 


Ptr.D is single. He was decent. He looked good. He was prim and proper. Most of all, he was "MUTE". His words were few and he barely could strike a conversation! We were supposed to entertain the guests but there he was comfortably seated on his chair munching on the roasted legumes served on our table.


Dinner began. It was buffet so I had no option but to stand get myself some food. He helped me get up and was gentlemanly enough to usher me to the buffet table. I was trying to feel the waters so I desperately tried to strike a conversation with him:
J: Ptr. D, what are you ministries?
D: Worship? Growth groups?
J: I see. You know, I know some people from your church. Been there quite a lot of times.
D: I heard you're holding your school's banquet in our church this Wednesday.
J: Yes. [silence] You know, I often support Ryan, Mike, and your youth when they have seminars. There were days when I'd go with Elder Pol and his family to attend your church.
D: Ah. It's probable that I've met you before.
J: Yeah, maybe.
D: [almost a whisper] I find this thing challenging because since I became a pastor I've rid myself of non-C friends.


Then, there was silence. Fast forward to going home time...
Tita A: How's your "first date"? [wink, wink. nudge, nudge.]
J; *gah* Nooooooo. [laugh, laugh]


In retrospect, I can't help but stress out one thing. RIDDING of non-C friends. I honestly feel sad and frustrated about this lost opportunity to reach out to others. Christ had tons of non-C friends. In fact, he was friends with all sorts of sinners, from prostitutes to tax collectors! Who are we, mere Christians, to exclude others? We are called to reach out to them so we could share to them who the Lord Jesus Christ is! I do pray Ptr. D. would realize that he's missing on a lot of things. I do hope his eyes would be opened to the reality that these non-C's must hear of Christ and the only way to turn that into reality is when Christians like us reach out to them and make them our friends.


Oh well... that's it.
I feel better now.
I gotta go and work on my script tomorrow.


Moving on...