Five Things I Learned From Living With 56 People

PLANTED IN A COLLEGE COMMUNITY FOR A PURPOSE

One of the best decisions I ever made in my life happened four years ago when I entered the scholarship center of Enfants du Mekong (EDM) in Cebu City, Philippines. EDM is a French non-government organization founded in Laos in 1958 by Doctor Rene Pechard. Today, it sponsors the education of 22,000 children, runs 100 development projects a year, and manages a number of foster houses and education centers across seven countries in Southeast Asia: Burma, Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. I am living together with 56 scholars from this organization, and let’s just say I’ve been learning a lot about myself and others.

1. It takes a new perspective to have a new heart. The community life provided a new way of seeing life. Life will not always be about you, but also about other people because we need their company in one way or another. Our circumstance might be new and weird but you can always look at it with a better perspective. Everything starts in the mind and rewiring your brain to think positively will help you love the unlovable. In my case, it made me concerned for my co-scholars who love to disobey rules. As an act of love, I learned to correct them in a compassionate way instead of in an angry way.

2. Be patient. I was very fearless when I first started living there, to the point of losing some friends for the sake of following rules and being rigid. I had the kind of feeling that everyone should be rested perfectly and be on time. The truth is each person is different and we can’t manipulate them into doing something. It’s hard to be calm, but it was the thing I needed to be patient. I started to let go of things I couldn’t handle and let God take care of it in His own timing.

3. Right direction is important. Sometimes we pay too much attention to other people’s mistakes rather than focusing first on our own. I knew right from the start why I signed up for the scholarship program. I eventually acknowledged the richness of my community life enveloped by both good and bad distractions. I had the direction but too much focus on the wrong things. Distractions will always be there but knowing that I am in the community for a way bigger purpose gets me back to the right focus.

4. It is good to explore. I used to be very religious but there was a feeling of emptiness deep in my heart. I was in a period of exploring and navigating so I went to different churches. No sooner did I realize that when you are too full of yourself, God lets you realize how empty life could be in His absence. The spiritual exploration let me grasp that we can be near to God, and yet so far. We can be near to Him in practices and traditions, and yet by heart and will power, be farther than you can possibly imagine.

5. Ask for help and He will send it. Jesus sent me a friend who showed me the way out by being renewed in the way I think, believe, and act. Before long, I came to understand that being patient is not something that I need to work for; instead I only need to receive. Right now, my friend and I are prayer partners and we continue to take the small steps of faith every day. We still go together on Sundays to the Living Word Church we are part of and we invite our co-scholars to discover what it means to follow Jesus in our daily lives.

Like me, you too have been called by name out from your desperate situation. Where you are right now is where you are delegated by God for a definite purpose—it is never an accident. Circumstances may arise that cause you to doubt your purpose, but you need to know that God is the controller of absolutely all things. No single event in your life happens without His consent. It isn’t luck or karma. Your life is held by the hands of a Savior that won’t let you go.