Author: Gyan Delos Reyes

Recently, I’ve been feeling so out of place. I felt so much void, yet was filled with so much noise. The past few weeks became super busy, super fast… and it was in this haste of environment that made me lose sight of how restless my heart was becoming.

The pressures and deadlines with school and service all meeting up at once, the desperation to find a job because of the worsening financial struggles in my family due to my dad’s wavering health, the awkward transition out of HSB without a program head to take my place and a national assignment to still complete… All of these things were running through my mind. And there was only one thing I felt in this struggle: Loneliness.

I felt so lonely, yet I had so many brothers and sisters to talk to about how I was feeling. Sometimes I felt like no one would understand, to the point where I couldn’t even tell my own best friends how I was feeling. The bottled feelings exploded eventually and in a way that got me reflecting on why I would bottle things up in my heart anyway.

My 21st birthday was this past Friday. After my morning lectures, I drove to Perpetual Adoration at Holy Cross, but once I got there, I couldn’t focus. All I heard was noise, distraction, chaos. I realized that my heart was no longer beating to glorify God, since the inner most crevices of my heart contained such disorder. It was simply just beating to keep my body alive, even if my soul was in a state of poverty. So I looked at Jesus, tried my best to cut the noise, and placed my hand on my heart. I prayed to Him: “Jesus, let me hear you.”

In my moment of prayer, some sensation came about me. The Lord let me hear His Heart. I realized in that moment that though my heart is filled with noise and voids of sorts, The Lord’s Heart is complete. It beats perfectly… for us. It beats constantly, pumping blood into His body– and we are His body. His Love outpours with every constant beat of His Heart and I can’t help but feel so grateful from simply knowing this Truth.

There’s so much noise in our lives because we fail to internalize His heart. Sometimes we fail to understand and seem to forget that His Sacred Interior, His Constant Peace, His Eternal Love… all come from the steady beat of His Heart. Let us strive to hear His Heartbeat with our own hearts, because as this earth changes, as things change around us and as we change… His Heart will always stay the same.

After the True North Conference, I’ve been constantly affirmed in several ways. One being that I’m exactly where I need to be–to be discerning for Full Time Pastoral Work as a Mission Volunteer. After TNC, my prayers somehow meant more; in a sense, I grew so much more passionate as I prayed.

If you know me, you’ll find that whenever I’m explaining something, I tend to lose words and can’t justly explain what I want to. It’s funny because sometimes, I just find a word that I think will make sense to fit whatever I’m trying to say. Hahaha. And honestly, this happens in my prayers as well. After TNC, one word that kept coming out of my heart during my prayers was the word ‘Ardency’. I wrote it down in my journal because I had no idea what it meant (lol). I never looked at it’s definition until a few days later when I was in the Adoration Chapel. I only remembered to look it up because the Liveloud song  “Mission-Ready” was stuck in my head.

“Every knee will bend before You
Every tongue confess, You are the Lord.”

This part of the song was on repeat in my head. And while staring at the monstrance, Jesus really tugged on my heartstrings. How beautiful of a vision is this? EVERY knee will bend before You and EVERY tongue confess, You are the Lord. The depth of these lyrics had me at awe and it had my heart burning with the desire to witness this with my own eyes. I’ve learned that in order to become a missionary, having a vision is key. This vision will keep our hearts ignited to remain mission-ready, inspired and motivated to let Christ ignite the hearts of others through us. After pondering on these lyrics, I remembered the word ‘Ardency’ and decided to look it up on my phone.

The origin of the word ‘Ardency’ comes from the latin word ardentem, which means blazing or to burn. It means ‘having or characterized by intense, passionate feeling’. Though I didn’t know what it meant in my prayers, it was so fitting that the Lord would let me pray to Him, “Lord help me have a heart of patience, a heart of humility, a heart of ardency.”

If there was one thing I can say that Our God is calling me to be after TNC, it’s to be patient, to remain faithful and hopeful. As long as I lay down my fears and worries, His love will lead me to where I’m supposed to be. As long as I continue to hope in the depth of His beautiful promise, I will see my true hopes and dreams become a reality in my life.

So let hope rise, and darkness tremble in Your Holy light,
that every eye will see Jesus, our God, Great and Mighty to be praised.

I find that sometimes, I have really bad trust issues. A couple of weeks ago, I first started realizing that I have this problem when my hair was getting really long. If you ask any of my close friends, they’ll confirm that I hate what my hair looks like after a haircut (even if half the time, it doesn’t even look bad)… and so I avoid haircuts as much as possible.

2+ weeks ago, Kuya Kyle offered to cut my hair… It took a few offers since I didn’t trust him to cut it (hehe sorry mentor), but I let him cut it eventually. That’s when I first realized that I don’t trust people enough, especially if there’s a possible outcome that I don’t desire.

If you ask anyone that I’ve served with, they’ll confirm that it’s easy for me to trust others in service, but hard for me to let go of my plans and trust God with His. In this TNC season, it’s honestly been such a struggle for me to keep my cool.

I just want to take this time to honour Nikki Dionisio, Kevin Solis and Sab Espina. Working with them in the Accommodations Team is truly a  rewarding and humbling experience. Praise God for you three!

Sab and I were saying that being apart of this team is also kinda scary. We can’t help but worry about drivers and hosts and time and etc. There’s only so much the two of us can do to help Kevin and Nikki because we’re not from Vancouver. As a team, we’ve encountered so many obstacles and we’re heavily relying on our Vancouver counterparts to bring us through. I’m humbled every day because as my worries are heightened as the days grow closer to TNC, I realize that I simply need to trust God. His voice is so loud and so clear when He says, “I am faithful. Have more faith in Me.”

Like the haircut that I’m so afraid of because of what I’ll look like afterwards, there’s so many situations that can lead to undesirable outcomes. And that’s what scares me. Except The Lord is calling me to look past these fears because whatever the outcome of the situation, it will be desirable in the end because The Lord’s plan is always desirable.

Oh Lord, how Your beauty reaches out in the simplest forms and how Your heart beats so explicitly in timing, help me trust that You have everything under control in this life and let me put all my hope in the greatness of Your promise. Amen.

PS. Ask Kuya Kyle how my hair turned out.

My dad always tells me to honour Mama Mary. He always told me that I owe my life to her.

Yesterday was Mother’s day. Sadly, I never got to spend it with my own mom because she was at work all day and I had a lot of studying to do. I went to 9PM mass at St. Ignatius last night and after the mass had finished, I stopped by to say Happy Mother’s Day to Mama Mary. For some reason I remembered my National MV interview from a couple weeks back. One of the questions that really hit me was “Do you have any devotions?” and truthfully, I don’t. But I should.

In that short moment, I realized that I don’t honour Mama Mary enough.

When my mom was in her teens, she developed some form of cancer in her reproductive tract. After surgery and treatment, the doctors had informed her that she would not bear any children.

My dad’s dreams were to raise a family, but his love for my mom was (and is still) so great. He knew about the fact that my mom would not be able to become pregnant or have children, but he loved her anyway. My mom went to Canada before my dad, and he still waited for her to come back. Once my parents got engaged, my dad went to the Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Baclaran every Wednesday for 10+ weeks.

He asked Mama Mary to grant him the opportunity to raise a family. He asked that he have at least one child, preferably a boy. He promised that if the opportunity came and he were to have a child, he would give this child to The Lord. He promised that if he were to have a child, he would want this child to serve God.

“Panginoon, bigyan niyo po kami ng anak. Kapag nagkaroon kami ng anak, ibabalik ko po siya sa inyo.” – Papa Delos Reyes

When my mom finally came back to the Philippines to get married, she was only there for about 2 weeks. Marriage prep, wedding, honeymoon, then back to Canada without my dad. God is so gracious and Mama Mary’s intercession truly works wonders because my mom came back to Canada pregnant with me, despite the doctors saying that she wouldn’t be able to conceive! Ten months later, my dad arrived on Canadian soil and held me for the first time. He said it was the best moment of his life.

Even though I’m an only child, I am so blessed to be serving in this community with my brothers and sisters in Christ. My dad had asked for me, but he promised to give me to The Lord. Here I am today, a CFC Youth For Christ falling deeper in love with God, learning to serve Him with my all. I am only His.

Mama Mary, thank you for always interceding for me. I owe you my life, and so let me appreciate you more with every day. Your heart is so beautiful. Please pray that our God lets my heart be as faithful and ethereal as yours. I ultimately pray that I learn to be more like your son, our Lord Jesus Christ. I love you Mama!

I’m a person that likes to have control over things (and I’m sure a lot of us in this community do). I need to know the details of what I’m doing in order for me to do it confidently. I need things planned and I get stressed when things aren’t “working out”. Sometimes I would break down/give up if my situations became so drastically disordered.

Every RYC season (i.e. first 4-5 months of the year), planning always gets so busy. These were a couple of stressful thoughts I’ve had in the past week:

Okay good, camp is done… finals are done… time to focus on RYC
WOAH RYC is in two weeks
REGISTRATION AHHH
TSHIRT ORDERS ARE DUE OH NO
Did we inform every member in Winnipeg?
Does Regina and Saskatoon need help with anything?
Oh wait… WHEN IS HSB PRACTICING
DARN I forgot I work Friday nights
Maaah school starts again next week
OK here’s your to-do list: Print more registration forms, pick up youth’s registrations, buy name tag materials, make resignation letter, continue looking for another job, meetings for service, buy textbooks, buy bus pass, pay tuition, get haircut, etc.

“Wahhh… Lord please slow down”

On Thursday, I got into a car accident. It wasn’t disastrous or anything really horrible, but ultimately… it was my fault. My first thought was OH NO there goes my TNC registration. But thank God we were okay. My second thought was WAH how am I going to pay for TNC?… All of those stressful worries came into my head again: my car, my job, money, TNC, my members, RYC registration stuff, school, tuition, textbooks, etc. etc. etc.

I was on the verge of just breaking down. Thankfully, we were planning to go to adoration right before the accident. So we made our way to Holy Cross and when we got there I still felt very uneasy. I asked The Lord to give me peace because I was just so shaken by that stress. I asked Him again, “Lord… Can You PLEASE slow down with everything… I can’t keep up.”

It’s kinda funny because when I realized what The Lord was trying to tell me, I smiled and thought Oooooooooohhh! Maybe I was in that accident because I was rushing and I wasn’t focused. He told me,

“My timing is perfect. YOU need to slow down. Follow My lead.
Why worry? Everything’s already set.
You worry too much, you doubt yourself too much.
You need more faith. Just have faith.
Focus on Me. I am with you.“

Though I lost money from the accident, I feel as if it was the reminder that I needed. I was so caught up with rushing to meet deadlines, stressing myself out and gradually becoming overwhelmed with everything. Even walking into the adoration chapel– I almost forgot to take off my shoes in my rush to get my heart at ease in the presence of Our God. In the midst of all this planning, I’ve been rushing and as a result, I’ve grown less focused on Christ.

We may make our plans, but God has the last word. You may think everything you do is right, but the Lord judges your motives. Ask the Lord to bless your plans, and you will be successful in carrying them out. – Proverbs 16:1-3

AMDG

In the past weekend, Big Sky was blessed to be able to have another Entry Camp. I was tasked to handle Registration and help out with Music Ministry. But for some reason, walking into the camp, I felt a sense of unworthiness and I felt that I didn’t belong there. I was simply stubborn and I felt unworthy as a leader.

Yes, I haven’t been keeping up with my blogs. Yes, I haven’t been keeping up with my emails. Yes, I haven’t been keeping up with my one-on-one’s. Yes, I’ve missed a lot of camp meetings. Yes, I haven’t studied enough for the MV exam. In the past week, I’ve been feeling so inadequate as a brother/leader.

By the end of the camp, I was reminded that no matter how I feel and no matter how many shortcomings I have, I am already loved. I realized this through many brothers and sisters that I’ve encountered during the camp. As I kept telling myself how much I didn’t belong there, God would always bring someone to me, to affirm me not only in my service, but to affirm me that I am where I’m supposed to be. He was very persistent because I was very stubborn! He used MANY of my brothers and sisters to affirm me in some way. Here are a few examples:

Almost 3 years ago, in the very first youth camp that I facilitated, there were four brothers in my discussion group. John Laracas was a facilitator in the past weekend’s camp and John Arevalo visited the camp as a prayer warrior. Both of them (at different times during the camp) told me they still have the letters that I gave them during their own entry camp three years ago. They both said that they keep the letters close to them because it reminds them of their calling as God’s son. One of them actually told me how much of an inspiration I am to him.

I was also able to witness two of the brothers within my household serve. Oneal Marcelino served his first time as a facilitator and Vic Dela Torre was the camp servant. In the duration of the camp, both of them (at different times during the camp) thanked me for being there for them. Witnessing their growth up until the youth camp really affirms me that God really used me in their growth and that I myself am still growing as well.

My HSB counterpart and fellow MV, Ate Lara Suarez, was the assistant team leader for the camp. Initially, I was supposed to sleep at the campsite for the two nights, but I decided to just go home because I felt so out of place. She offered to pay for my registration fee in case I wanted to stay. This simple offer almost had me at tears. When I got home the first night, I was looking for my glasses, but instead I came across old SHouT letters. It’s so funny because the first letter I opened turned out to be Ate Lara’s from our last FHouT, expressing her excitement as my new counterpart and her promise to always affirm me as a brother.

Nearing the end of the camp, two sister leaders in HSB visited the camp for mass. After mass, we had the session with the parent’s. When the participants were praying over their parents, the HSB leaders present at the camp prayed over Ate Lara and I.
“God has given you to me, Ate Lara and Kuya Gyan…” 

I couldn’t help but feel soooooo loved. The sense of unworthiness and detachment became feelings of motivation and belonging. I knew that in that moment, that was where I was supposed to be.

In our stubbornness, Our God will continue to tug on our heartstrings, tap on our shoulders, and call our names until we realize what we’re failing to see. I was blinded by the mistakes I’ve made and I failed to see that despite the shortcomings I have, this is exactly where I am supposed to be.

Heavenly Father, thank You for Your persistent grace and relentless love.

I always had the desire to become a Mission Volunteer, yet I denied it every single time someone would ask me if I was open to the idea. I think I somehow convinced myself too that I didn’t want it or that ‘it just wasn’t for me‘… but I still found myself randomly asking others about the program.

I remember one of the Titos here in Big Sky telling me that this Mission Volunteer program would strip my heart’s walls, leaving the truth of my interior exposed for many to see. The idea of being broken down really scared me. But even with this in mind, I still applied completely aware of my fears and doubts, and still unaware of how ‘broken down’ I would actually become.

A few weeks ago, some leaders and I here in Winnipeg went on a mission visit to Saskatoon for their Youth Power. On the Saturday of the trip, we attended mass in the evening. Something Father said in his homily that night continues to stick with me until today. He told us to ‘feel the hunger and feel the thirst.’

At the time, I was just so boggled and confused as to why we had to feel our hunger and thirst. I understand that our cups must be emptied in order for Our God to fill them with His richest, purest wine… But I still didn’t understand why we had to feel this thirst. I myself don’t like to dwell on my spiritual desolation and emptiness, and I couldn’t imagine anyone who does… So why did Father remind us to do so?

In my personal prayers these past few days, I always came back to that same question: Why did Father ask us to feel our emptiness? And I slowly realized that I was wrong and that I misinterpreted what Father was reminding us. This thirst, this hunger– it’s not just desolation or dryness or emptiness… It’s a deep desire! It’s the desire in our hearts wanting us to be one with God. We’re hungry and we’re thirsty because WE ARE INCOMPLETE without our God. And our God is the only one that can satisfy this hunger and this thirst.

The past few days have been really rough on me with finals and other things happening in my life. But coming to this conclusion in my personal prayer, I know now that these struggles I face in my life are because I am slowly being broken down of my walls, like what Tito said before I had applied for the MV program. God is slowly tearing me apart so that He can build me up even stronger.

As He tears my heart’s walls, I begin to realize my heart’s true desires. But in order for me to grasp and fully understand these desires, I must first realize how empty my heart is, in order to feel the hunger and thirst caused by His absence.  And as I discover more about my faith and the underlying joys and fears that I carry in the interior of my heart, I pray that God will truly break my heart.

“There’s a cry in my heart,
for Your glory to fall,
for Your presence to fill up my senses

There’s a yearning again,
a thirst for discipline,
a hunger for things that are deeper

Could You take me beyond?
Could You carry me through?
If I open my heart, could I go there with You?”

– Cry in my heart, Starfield

Gyan D
AMDG