TORONTO, ON. It was as a Press Head for YCOM that I started developing a strong inclination for serving. During the first year of my first service, I had made it my responsibility to make sure that Pastoral Formation Track events were covered by Documentation, which ended up in myself going to events, a lot of them. At the time I was only 17-18, and I was traveling around the GTA for the first time usually to places and though transit systems I wasn’t familiar with, and all the while surviving without a job. Also cellular data also wasn’t something I started having until two years after, so I ended up having to save directions offline by screen capturing them from Google Maps with my bottom tier barely smart-phone, or going to a public wifi and using my laptop. I also don’t remember having a working music listening device at the time, (man, how did I survive). It was during this time that I think I first started becoming known for two things, one being the “YCOM Guy”, and two, inducing the phrase “how did Phil get there?”.
I bring all this up because I was reminded of what crazy and stupid lengths I would go to back then, when a few nights ago, when I was at a lonely bus stop, close to mid-night in the cold rain, half way home from Markham, where I just had a meeting. I was reminded of the being lonely, often times I was by myself for a majority of time I was traveling. I was reminded of the lack of agency I had back then. Even today, having a job, having travelled to the Philippines, and through Korea by myself, and through all preparations to be ‘mission ready’, I know there will be times in which I don’t have it all figured it out or I will not be fully capable of handling the situation at hand. Yet at the same time, I was filled with nostalgic joy, of being the YCOM kid that was just crazy for serving.
That was my life four years ago, and YCOM was was the service that brought out the dormant missionary spirit in me and gave me a tasted of what God had fully in store for me, and now with serving in a new way, as both Advocacy Head, and as an MV, I’m reminded of how I need a degree of reckless pursuit of God. Not wondering “How am I going to there?”, or fearing “How am I getting home?”, but having confidence in my God.
— Philip Isidro