The Glorious Sembreak—and a prayer request

I was waiting for my mother at a posh hotel lobby the day Megi brought rain and wind. I waited there for five hours like a space-occupying lesion, reading Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner while finishing the best ensaymada and honey milk shake I had tasted thus far.

The sheer lack of nothing else to do sharpened my senses. As I shifted positions on the couch, I overheard business deals of a Japanese investor with a Filipino businessman who came in late—we do live up to our reputation as a nation—and heard two men, possibly PAL officers, talk about the company's next move after their pilots' resignation. I was trying to shut their voices out, but they were too distracting.

Freakonomics doesn't have a unifying theme—the authors admit to that—but it was so interesting I finished it even before my mother went out, at 6 pm, to tell me the dinner was cancelled.  I eventually went to my unit ahead of time to do some chores. Earlier that day, I finished Martin Amis' The House of Meetings, a short yet powerful literary work which looks into the impact of the Russian prison camp on the lives of two half-brothers. As I write this I still wonder how Lev may have looked like if he were real.

The day after, Megi seemed to have left off, leaving behind a trail of cloudy skies. But it was more manageable; one could leave his umbrella at home and walk on the streets without worry of getting soaked. In the morning, I watched The Godfather, the first in the trilogy at least, and found myself in rapturous delight—the Godfather is practically a killer but you find yourself empathizing with him.

I left Manila after my lunchtime nap to go to Quezon City for a meeting in the evening. I had a blessed time with other Christians from different medical schools, many of them I met in a recent gathering. Noel Jumalon from St. Luke's talked to us about John 6:1-14. We were reminded to have a childlike faith in Jesus Christ: the kid who offered his loaves and fish didn't have much, but he gave his all anyway.

I haven't written about this yet, but I'm among the organizers of Heartbeat, an NCR-wide conference of med school Christian fellowships. I later learned that we will have delegates coming from as far as Baguio and Iloilo, which makes the gathering almost national in scope.

Would you please pray for us in the organizing team, that we would be consumed with passion and love for Jesus, that He would use us to accomplish His purposes, that we would be able to share the gospel to those who don't know Christ personally yet? Please pray for the speakers and the program, that things would run smoothly and all the needs would be provided for.

Ah, thank you, Lord, for this glorious sembreak.