Sea Bass

It's funny, at the school we the guys have a spiritual big brother, and for the girls a spiritual big sister, but they call them companions. In the U.S. a companion is referred to as something else. So anyways, my spiritual big brother is Sebastien, but what cool is that he gave permission to call him Sea-Bass. Sea-Bass is actually from Belgium, he's a Deacon studying to be a priest. He actually studied engineering in college and then after college he was looking to do some volunteer work and ended up joining FIDESCO. http://emmanuelcommunity.com/newsite/mission.html FIDESCO, is actually a program run by the same religious community that run my school. It is a two year program where they send missionaries to third world counrtries around the world to do missionary work. He was sent to Africa, I think to the Ivory Coast. There he worked with poor children, I'm not sure if it was in a hospital, or in a school, or both. But he was telling me how amazing it was out there, and what a life changing experience it was. The people were so poor yet they were still happy. But also, what was sad is that he experienced a baby dying in his arms. Before doing FIDESCO he said he wasn't at all religious, but it was in those two years that he had a profound encounter with God. I would like to do something like FIDESCO in the future, but if I was going to do it I would like to do it already married with my future wife (God willing).

Sebastien is seriously one the coolest guys I know. He was pretty funny too, a really goofy/cool/wild&crazy guy. Goofier than me, can you imagine!

We would have our companion meeting once a month, it was kind of like a counseling session where I would be able to talk about whatever, what was on my mind, my concerns, or troubles, or if I was having a hard time. If I didn't talk it would be silent, so you end up just talkin and blabbing away to past the time. It's a good time to be heard. I think everyone wants, or needs to be listened too once in awhile. At first it was kind of weird because I felt like, "dude, I don't need any counseling," but after a few sessions I realized how good talking out my concern, or feeling felt. Looking back I don't remember having too many problems that I shared, but I think what I did share a lot was the things I've learned this year, and how I was growing in my relationship with God, and !How God was working in my life!.
Man I going to miss Sea Bass. I really looked to him as a big brother. And dang he can play a mean guitar. Our last meeting was the first Friday of June, and he busted out the guitar, I didn't know he played, and I kid you not he was rippin' some soul like Santana. His hand turned into a tarantula, crawling up and down the neck of the guitar. I forget what he was playing but it was some Brazilian Soul Funk, I'm talkin FFFUUUUNNNKK!!!

It was also cool because he would give me some good advise. For example, he was telling me how to discern what desires come from God. It's true how we have many desires, some of them last only for a couple of days, some only a couple of weeks, and some a couple of months, maybe even years. You can tell if a desire is given to you from God when you pray about it and that desire still stays with you after a long time, like months or years. An example of that for me was the desire of this year of mission in Rome. It was a friend of mine that told me about this school of mission and for a year I always had it on the back of my mind. I always wanted to do some sort of missionary work, and I just kept praying about it until I made the decision that I had to go. And man,......................(head shake, reflection).................(another 19 sec pause)........ it has been amazing!!!(tear drop, curtain close, exit stage left,--I'm playin').

-Yeah, I'm a cheeseball.

Pace fratelli e sorelle!!! (Peace brothers and sisters)

The Corona Standard

(Okay, so I wrote this around the same time I wrote the cheeseburger post.)

Alright, so I'm sitting in class on the morning of Ash Wednesday last week and for the past couple of weeks I've been dreaming of carne asada burritos con melted cheese, juice drippin' cheeseburgers, perfectly marinated strips of tender tri-tip, and the list goes on. And all of a sudden, for some reason I start reminiscing about home, good ol' Poway, the good ol' boys, and the good ol' times, hanging out playin' cards, and chillin' on a cool summer afternoon as the sun's going down past the painted sky and the Palisade hill side (I know I'm getting graphically poetic, but bear with me) And as I'm chilling on this cool summer afternoon, I look down in my hand and see a frosty ice cold bottle of Corona. What can I say, I'm lost for words right now, but something about Corona. It's good, it's more than good, it's a great tasting beer,........ but I wouldn't say it's the best beer. I will say it is one of my favorites though. Corona is the beer I grew up on. For some odd reason I find it a part of my filipino-american culture. That's the beer I'd find my dad and all my uncles always drinking. Looking back to all my family outings, parties, birthdays, Christmas', Easters, 4th of July's, and ect. I can garuantee you, without a hardcore doubt, Coronas were posting in the cooler. I remember my cousin Jeff Jaro cracking me up when he was speaking the truth and made this comment - "There are two things for sure that filipino men LOVE,....Coronas and blondes" (I actually prefer brunettes, so I've been telling myself)
So anyways, as I'm dreaming about classic Coronas in class, and as my pen touches my paper, all of a sudden this poem hits me like a concrete frisbee to the dome, and to my surprise, this is what came out. (Now try to read this with a spirit of mercy and understanding towards my poor home sick situation.)

Corona

I dream of Corona,

Ice-cold and from bottle,

Blonde with a slice of lime on top,

Dashed with grains of salt around her lips.

Oh Sweet ice-cold Corona,

How my lips await you soothing touch.

Your taste brings me home,

To the summer Sundays,

Of Sunny San Diego.

Until then, My Sweet Corona.

(Now)

After writing this poem, every time we go out, or when we're hanging out on a free afternoon, Corona has been my standard choice of beer.

Sicily

Sicily was amazing!!! WE took a overnight cruise ship from Rome to Palermo Monday night. We only paid 50 Euro for tickets, where the ship had a resturaunt and a huge lounge, and a night club. It was funny there was only six of us and when we entered the night club, now get this, we were the only ones there.......HAHAHAHAHAHHAAH...."WE WERE THE ONLY ONES THERE"....HAHAHAHAHHAHAH........awh man it was so funny ..."we were the only ones there"...Hahahahhahah!!!!!.......(sigh, tear wipe)......I guess you had to be there! (Dude, I wrote this pretty late at night and I was cooked, I was going to erase this but I figured I'll leave it anyways)

So we got to Palermo, stayed there for two nights in the old town of the city by the market place. On the second day we went to the beach in Mondelo, next to Palermo which was gorgeous. Thursday we took a train through the country side of Sicily south to Agrigento where we went camping at this campsite on the beach. It was cool we met these college students from France, 43 of them, who were camping throughout Sicily. They were actually going to all the cities we were going so we saw them for the next few days. But that night in Agrigento, after hanging out in the city, when we got back to the campsite, the French people had a beach bonfire going on, we pretty much crashed their party and hungout with them for a bit. It was crazy everywhere we went, a lot of the pepole we talked too, we were able to do a little evangelizing. When ever anyone we'd meet throughout the whole trip would ask me what I was studying in Rome, it would open the door to talk about the school and about the mission.
The next day we went to the Valley of the Temples, which were Greek ruins, pretty cool, it was a beautiful day that day. Then in the afternoon we went to the southeast part of Sicily to Siracuza, which was also beautiful, and it was dope because it looked like an old pirate's port. The night life was poppin', there was more than a few Americans we met who were studying abroad out there. Then we went to Taurmina on the north eastern part of the island, which a rich touristic town on top of a hillside. The place was beautiful, the picture I took doesn't give justice to the feeling you get of being there and experiencing everything. It was nice, since it was still Easter, (did you know that the Church celebrate Easter for eight days, from Easter Sunday to till the next Sunday, They call it the Easter Octive, 8 days) everyday I wanted to make sure we at least had one real good meal, so we pretty much ate like kings at the best resturants recommended by our guide book. I made sure we took pictures of the meals before we ate the food instead of after, because it looks better. From Taurmina we could see Mt. Etna which is an active volcano. Before the trip Jean-Francois, was telling me how he wanted to go take a tour of the volcano, and I wasn't at all interested at first, because I just wanted to take more time relaxing and taking it easy on the vacation. But as soon as I saw smoke coming out of the mountain, it looked so cool, it brought me back to when I was in second grade and I had this desire for science class to make a papermashey volcano that would errupt and spit out fake lava. We didn't get a chance to take a tour a of the volcano, but I'll see it next time when I go back to Sicily.
But to end this post, I've got to give thanks to the Holy Spirit for guiding us on the trip. It's crazy because all three of us Jean-Francois, Matteo, and I are very strong minded persons, but there was no arguing or disagreements in our disicion making during the trip. When it would come time to make a decision we stop and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us, and so the whole trip felt like it was paved, everything went smoothly. We had the best time!!!

Netherlands Mission Part 1

The mission was amazing, thank you all for your prayers. This mssion for me topped all the other two misisons we went on, Lisbon Portugal, and New Bridge Ireland. Ireland was our last mission and it was an awesome mission, it had a very demanding schedule where we gave of ourselve constantly. It was nonstop, speaking in class after class at schools, and then at night either at an open house, or pub evangelizing. In the Netherland's mission, we weren't able to speak at as many classes to speak at, and the schedule wasn't as hectic, but I'd say the difference between the two missions was that in the Netherland's we were able to make deeper contacts. When I speak about contacts, what I mean is when we speak with someone and really give witness and share about God, conversing adout subjects like life, love, happiness, faith, truth, and more. I probably say that 8 out of 10 people I spoke to said that they didn't believe in God. But then I'd ask them from a scale from one to ten on how much they believe in God with ten being the highest and one being the lowest. The average answer was around four or five. So for most cases it seems that it wasn't a matter not believing in God, but a matter of not knowing anything about God.

A little about evangelizing, we were taught that if your goal in evangelizing is to try and convince or convert then you're sure to fail, NO in evangelizing you are to listen to the person/s and to just speak about God. In the Netherlands I chose to speak about how God truly loves us, and that we can have a close personal relation with Him. I would go in depth about many other things about God, but that was the main message that I would try to share. I'd even share a little about my testimony if I'd get the chance. (I'll post mine up someday) So, when speaking to people, I would first say what's up or hello, introduce myself, where I'm from, tell them about the parish mission and the upcoming events for the mission, then just talk to them, and maybe try to answer any question they might have about the Faith. I would try to speak in all humility, and love, NOT acting as if I have all the answers, NOT trying to push my beliefs, but just try to share my own story of how I've experience God in my life.

Just to tell you alittle bit about the schedule of the mission, we go there on Friday and 25th of March (Jemery Mendoza's birthday, Happy Birthday!) that night was cool because we went to the Scout meeting and got to hangout with them chilling around the bonfire sappin' beers and sharing with them. The Scouts, as in boyscouts, girlscouts, consists of guys and girl, and is a big/cool thing to be in Europe, where the age range was from eighteen to mid twenties even thirties. At the beginning talked who we were and what we were doing, two people shared their testimonies and then we just hung out the rest of the time. The rest of the week we did some street evangelization during the day and in the night time there was some scheduled event that we helped host. On Tuesday thru Thursday we went St. Augustine high school during the the hole day and spoke in sone of the classes. In the Ireland mission we were invited to speak at five different schools, and at this mission one of the other schools that we were scheduled to speak at flaked on us at the last minute. At the hihg school, they had this circular room in the middle of the school, called the Atrium, where students would go and study or hangout during their off periods. The Atrium was key, because it was there that we were able to speak in small, intimate groups of people, and have some profound conversations.

I've have so many more stories to tell, but I'm pressed for time. We're all getting ready for this Easter Tridium Retreat that we are going to serve from Wednesday till Monday morning. After that we have our Spring Break 2K6 for seven days, where some friends and I will be going south of Italy to party in SICILY!!!! I've heard so much about this place and how absolutely beautiful it is. So to be continued my friends, until spring break ends.

Have a Blessed Good Friday, and a Happy Easter!!! "Always, remember Christ." These were the words I remember my grandfather Santiago Puertollano, telling me the last time I saw him before he passed away. He said these words to me at time when I was turned away from God, and chose not to believe in Him.

I invite you all to meditate on the Passion of the Christ this Good Friday, either watch the movie and/or read it in the Bible, Mark chapters 14 and 15. Know that you all are in my prayers. God knows our hearts, and He knows the people in them. God Bless!!! Ave Maria!!!

Ramzi Saade's Testimony

Ramzi is a fellow brother/really good friend of mine/student at the school. He's hilarious, I tell everyone he's the funniest guy in Rome. He is a genius at being crazy, crazy in a funny way. (if that makes any sence) He just had his conversion three years ago so he relates to people very well, he can make anybody laugh, and communicates the in faith to people in a way that is simple and easy to understand. Ramzi is an extremely good evangelizer, and with his permission I wanted to share his testimony with with you guys.



This is Ramzi and I at the Christmas eve party. Ramzi is on his tippy toes trying to make himself taller. It was funny, he had these french girls hysterically laughing when we he told them, "Yeah this is Reggie, he's one of the tall ones of the school, like Chris, Me..., Marco....", and the thing is, is that he was telling this joke in French, but I understood exactly what he was saying.







This is me as the filipino Santa, and Ramzi as Santa's little helper at our Christmas party












Ramzi's Testimony

I am Ramzi, 35 yrs old and I am from Lebanon. I studied computer & communications engineering and then worked in this field for the last 8 years with multinational companies and in different countries.

My situation and life before:

During my youth, my main interest was practicing many sports and mainly extreme ones like paragliding, snowboarding parachuting, bunji jumping so mainly looking for strong sensations.

Later on, my goal was to be successful in the eyes of society, so I was working hard and travelling a lot. I was also going out often, dating girls, drinking, buying latest and best electronic devices (Pcs, big flat TV, surround system) and I was spending more and more time using them.

When I was 30, I had a look at my situation, which I thought was great and started to wonder: Is this what life is all about? I felt like something was missing even though I thought I had everything. So I started to ask myself: ¨What is my goal in Life? And realised that I was asking this question to every person I encountered. It was clear at a certain moment that the answer was: ¨To be happy¨ but I kept on wondering How?

Encounter with young's from Emmanuel Community:

It happened at that period that I was invited by a group of young Catholics to a Kayaking Week-end. I went there, it was great but I started to wonder about their strange relation with God: Why do they praise God like that? What gathers them? Actually, they were from different levels of society and education. Why do they look so joyful?

One month later, they invited me to a week-end retreat in Paray-le-Monial, a holy shrine in France. I discovered there that there was other ways of praying than going to mass and saying: ¨Our Father¨ before going to sleep. On our way back we were asked to share the retreat experience, some persons said that they went there with worries, they offered them to God and that now they come back peaceful. I realized, for myself, that I went there without any worries and now returns with a problem: If God really exists and loves me as they claim, what does this mean for me and for my way of life?

Looking for Jesus:

I also heard there that God said: ¨If you seek me with all your heart you shall find me¨! So I decided I will search for him. But the question was again How?

At that time, I had the opportunity to meet a priest who understood my way of living and helped me in my search: Mainly he encouraged me to pray 10 minutes every day, to go regularly to Mass and to live the sacrament of reconciliation often. Confession was something I never understood and was very difficult for me to do!!!

My conversion (Meeting Jesus):

One year later, again in Paray-le-Monial, during adoration in front of Jesus, I had an indescribable experience of God: I don't know if it lasted a second or few minutes but I received extreme joy while having a vision of Jesus, all in shining white, opening his cape and inviting me to come below it!!! I started to cry, from joy & happiness. WOW! God exists, he is alive, I can have a relationship with him, he could lead my life.
This encounter changed my life. Since then, I know that only Jesus can bring me real happiness. I started to understand scripture. I fell in love with the church, but understood that I was not even aware of basic Catholic teachings. My attitude at work and my relationship with colleagues and friends changed. Many noticed that I was different. Less stressed and very happy. I even got rid of my 2 big TVs and started to spend more time in prayer.

What was next?

During the following 2 years, I was living in Madrid, struggling with all my daily occupations and slowly was caught up by the spirit of the world. So I noticed that I was coming back towards my former way of life and understood that I had to make a decision to protect my relationship with Jesus and that's why I decided to take one year from work and follow the Emmanuel School of Mission in Rome, which helps me to improve my relationship with Jesus and be happier everyday!

Netherlands Mission 2-K-Flippin'-6!!!!

We are going on to mission for tens days to the Netherlands, to the city of Geeldrop, an hour and a half south of Amsterdam. In the Netherlands, drugs and prostitution are legal, so it's going to be a pretty interesting mission. But I writing this to invite you all on mission by helping out (if you would like) through your prayers. I think we are going to need a lot of prayers for this mission.

It was funny, Marco yesterday morning was asking someone, "What if our host family smokes weed?". And I was joking, "What if our host family DOESN'T smoke weed?" (shaking my head in disappointment) I was playin' though.


Alright, Peace. I'm Outrix

Our Ireland Mission

We went to Ireland on mission around the end on January, to a medium size town (30,000
occupents), fortyfive minutes southwest of Dublin, called New Brigde. Paul, a fellow student who is from Ireland, told us to expect a lot of rain, but for the ten days that we were there, it barely rained, maybe twice. So we got there on a Friday afternoon, and right away the we were introduced to our host families. It was Yvo who is from France, Paul, another guy name John who not from the school, and I who were hosted by the Donaghue family. The were grand, we were treated with so much hospitality, they had a beautiful house on this large plot of land.
So the second day in New Bridge we went door to door evangelizing, where we just tried to inform the people of the mission that was taking place that week and its upcoming events. Yeah at first it felt kind of wierd, I felt like Jahovah Witness' at times, but for the most part we were welcomed at some places, and even invited for some tea and crumpets. Most of Ireland is Catholic and the local parishes informed the parishiners that we were coming. So that was Saturday during the day, then at night it was sweet, we went pub evangelizing, where as you can guess, we went to the local pubs and went evangelizing. Now, let me explain how we evangelized, we DIDN'T go in there throwing the bible at people trying to hate on their good time, we went in there chilled, rapped with people, and listened to them, maybe even share with them our faith if they wanted. It was pretty cool, and man they know how to serve that Guiness right. Guiness..... taste the richness. It was nice to drink a couple of beers and walk home at the end of the night, everything was pretty much walking distance in that town. During the weekday we went to the local schools, primary/secondary, equivalent to our elementary and high school, they don't have a middle school in most of Europe. We broke up into teams of 4 or 5 and went to around over a hundred classes to share the faith. We first started out in the first and second grade classes and taught them a childrens church song with hand motions (some sort of little dance) It was funny and cool because these little kids ate it up, and they loved us. Just imagine the cutest little kids singing with all their heart, and the biggest smiles at the top of their lungs a song about Jesus. It was very uplifting, and I see why they started us of at the young ones because as soon as we got to the high school kids they weren't as open and responsive. For the secondary classes we were there for a class period or two. We would have one person share their testinmony, then try to answer any question they might have about the Faith or in general, and then towards the end try to pray with them. It was at this mission where I realized what it meant to be a missionary. Going in the classrooms, as missionary we weren't there to act as if we had all the answer to try to convert and push our beliefs, but as missionaries we are to just talk about God and how we have experience Him in our lives.
In the evening during the week, after dinner at our host families, we would either have pub evangelization or for the most of us we were assigned in groups of three or four to an open-house. An open house is where someone from the parish would invite there friends, family, or neighbors over to their house for a time a sharing. The open-house wasn't a time for teaching, mostly just listening on our part and letting the people converse about what they believe or dind't believe. Then afterwards we would have tea and crumpets or cake. That was how the mission mostly went for ten days, it was tiresum with such a hetic schedule, but it was altogether amazing. It really is in giving that you recieve because we gave our all in that mission, and coming back from that mission, we seriously felt like we recieve more than we gave. We recieve so much in grace, growth in faith, knowledge, love, you name it and more. It was awesome, and the last night of the mission the parish thru a party for us at this reception/pub, the food was grand (Irish Slang), beer was mighty grand, music was grand. They had a dance floor out there and we tour the place down, we had the dance floor packed. What's funny is that you think students at our school of mission wouldn't know how to party, but it's the complete opposite, we got a bunch of crazy catz at our school.




This is me openin' it up on fourth gear on my host families quad. That thing was sweet, I've got to get one of those when I get home. "Cherpin' gears, pulling brodies. Wooooohh!!!!" (Dude, can someone Fedex me my Joe Dirt dvd, also maybe a wiffle ball and bat, and a Carne Asada Burrito con cheese.)

"Alright, check it! It's like this....I don't have no money, but I got my pink slip."

This is random, but I was reading some post off of google for a recommendation on which campsite to stay at, because for this Easter break, some of us are planning to go camping down in Sicily. So, I was reading this guy's post, and it was something about his experience in,.. I don't know I forget, THE POINT I'm trying to get at is that as I was reading his post, and I automatically attached this "Sweet Brody, college frat boy (ha ha me), Tokabowl Brightbill" voice to it. You know, the same kind of voice behind the Carl's Jr. Commercials, "Burger, fries, and Coke, Don't bother me!..............I'm a major tool." Well anyways, I'm adding this voice to this guys post, totally making fun of him, thinking to myself, 'gosh, what a major tool!', and then I realize....hey, this guy could be me. People could be reading my blog and be doing exactly what I'm doing to this guys post, and saying, "dude, what a major tool!". ...................It's all good........... cause I'm tool, I mean cool.

I don't know, I just wanted to share that cause I thought it was funny.

(The quote on the title came from, The Fierce and the Vigorous,....I mean The Fast and The Furious)