Dream Catcher Stories

Source: I Can't Believe It Facebook Page

As I was reading this story, I can't stop feeling bad for poor Faith for being born without two legs. But at the same time, it made me realize how nothing is really impossible if we have faith and if we work hard to achieve what we want. There have been times when I felt hopeless during my hard times. I have experienced feeling so down that I feel I have nothing more to do to improve my situation. But compared to what life has thrown to Faith and to other people who have experienced, and are still experiencing, greater problems than mine, my worries seem meaningless.


But during these trials, we get to appreciate more what we have. Faith and his owner didn't look at his situation as being a problem. Probably they thought to themselves "At least he's got to other legs left." They looked at their situation as a glass half full, instead of half empty.


I hope that people will get to learn from Faith's story. And I think that Faith is living proof that "Success is ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration" as said by Dr. Harry A. Becker.

Like people from all over the world, I am also a part of the Hunger Games series craze. I read all three books in six days and suffered from tired and twitching eyes afterwards. But it was all worth it! And aside from the story itself, the food that was incorporated into the book also caught my attention (being a little foodie myself). As I was reading the book, I badly wanted to have a taste of the roasted groosling, all the various breads, and the mouthwatering Lamb and Plum Stew. So after reading the series, I went on and looked for recipes online of the stew. I was able to read a few recipes and modified them to fit my liking. In my recipe, I used beef instead of lamb because beef is more accessible here in the Philippines. This isn't really a food blog, but I felt proud of what I've made that I wanted to share them. Happy cooking everyone!

Lots of Love,

J<3

It was almost 7pm a couple of nights ago when my dad called me from downstairs asking me to start cooking our dinner. I was on my laptop doing what I usually do (i.e. Tweeting, Facebok-ing) when he called me.

Lazily, and a bit madly, I went down the stairs and proceeded to the kitchen. The stove had no more gas so I had to wait for the delivery guy to bring it to our house. I waited five, then ten, then fifteen minutes for it to come to our gate, but no luck. I was already very irritated because of standing by our gate in the darkness waiting for nothing.

I barged in and told him "Why can't you ask her (my sister) to wait for the guy instead?!" She wasn't really doing anything at that point so I felt it was unfair that I was doing all the work. My dad said, "I'll do it." When he didn't come out a few seconds after, I screamed at him again "I thought you'll go out?!" He just stood up and went out without any comment.

I was surprised by his reaction. I thought he would scream or get mad at me for being rude. I guess I've taken my dad for granted (again :( ).

I went back to the kitchen, prepared the rice for cooking, chopped up some veggies, and prepared the shrimp. I saw that I had some water bottles to fill, so I went on and did that as well. As I was doing all these, I've been having mad imaginary conversation in my head about how my sister's doing nothing and here I am, doing everything.

I still did what I had to do. I prepared all the other ingredients for dinner, waited a lot more for the delivery guy (who finally came after lot's of phone calls to their place), prepared the table, fed our pet rabbit, watered some of the plants, and cooked our dinner (which included my new recipe Corned Beef with Green Beans, hence the title).

Yes, I was mad at my dad for seemingly making me do all this without help (all my sister did was wash the dishes - which I hated doing the most). I was also mad at my sister for not helping me and just staying upstairs the whole time. But it all melted away when I started realizing how hard it was for my mom to do all these day in and day out, but she never felt this way towards us. I never heard her complain about not being able to do what she wants while we get to do whatever we fancy. She may sometimes cry out that some part of her body hurts, but she would still do all the work wholeheartedly even if she was very tired from working.

Now I try my very best to lessen the work my mom has to do at home now that she's back. And I will always keep in mind whenever I would here my mom how tired she is or how her back hurts that what she's doing for us is as hard as it gets.

An anthropologist studying the habits and customs of an African tribe found himself surrounded by children most days. So he decided to play a little game with them. He managed to get candy from the nearest town and put it all in a decorated basket. at the foot of a tree.

Then he called the children and suggested they play the game. When the anthropologist said "now", the children had to run to the tree and the first one to get there could have all the candy to him/herself.

So the children all lined up waiting for the signal. When the anthropologist said "now", all of the children took each other by the hand ran together towards the tree. They all arrived at the same time divided up the candy, sat down and began to happily munch away.

The anthropologist went over to them and asked why they had all run together when any one of them could have had the candy all to themselves.

The children responded: "Ubuntu. How could any one of us be happy if all the others were sad?"

Ubuntu is a philosophy of African tribes that can be summed up as "I am what I am because of who we all are."

Bishop Desmond Tutu gave this explanation in 2008 :

"One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity."

Lots of Love,

J<3

Oh the joys of being a teenager - being in high school, hanging out with your BFFs, going to parties, being carefree and living life to the fullest, and the best of all, having SLEEPOVERS!

I was 15 when I first experienced my first sleepover, although it wasn't really a sleepover 'cause the sleepover happened in our house. Since then, I've only experienced one real sleepover because most sleepovers we have that I get to go to are held at home.

Although this was the case, I always have a blast in all my sleepovers. In a stereotypical slumber party, you would imagine teenage girls in their jammies, playing board games, giggling over boys and painting each other's nails. To tell you the truth, this isn't really what we do (although we may do some of those sometimes, i.e. giggling over boys and being in our jammies).

But really, is this all we do? Nope! We do tons of other stuff. Take my recent sleepover for example. My high school friends and I decided to have a sleepover at our house, and at first we DID have a little "guy-talk". But afterwards, we had other things in mind. We watched a movie, chatted even more, took photos, sang, played some instruments, more chatting, watched videos, tweeted (a lot), slept (DUH!), exercised (something unusual, but we still did it), cooked, defrosted our fridge (unintentional and tiring, but fun) and teased each other along the way.

And in each sleepover we have, we get to learn something new about ourselves. During lunch, we realized how mature we already are. In high school, we used to talk about silly things like scary movies, jokes, funny stories and other stuff. We still talk about these other times, but we were surprised when we found ourselves talking about politics. We may be incoming college juniors, but we still feel like the high school girls we once were. That's why we end up a little stunned when we find things which makes us more adult than kids. We do realize that more than half of our group are already considered adults by the society for being 18 years old. And the rest of us are turning 18 ourselves in a few months, so maybe age-wise we are kind of mature.

At the beginning of writing this blog, I thought I was doing this because I wanted to write about what really happens in sleepovers. But as I went along, I think what I wanted to write more about is how I miss spending time with my high school friends. Being with them made me miss high school a whole lot and it made me realize how much I don't want to be an adult yet because I don't believe I am ready. I don't know how to face life as an adult because I've been so used to being a kid that I'm gonna miss being one. But actually I think no matter what we are doing - whether it's having a sleepover or growing up, what makes it fun and enjoyable is not what we do, but who we were with.

Lots of Love,

J<3

Yay! Eat's Easter Sunday! A day filled with Easter Egg Hunts, egg painting, people in Easter Bunny costumes, and all other fun and games especially those made for kids.

Okay. I know a new post is long overdue. But with college coming up, and then transferring to a new school a year after, I became too busy that I didn't get to post anything since my first. I guess I have to start writing again. HAHA

So.. Let's start with something appropriate with the season. I mean it's already the middle of Holy Week, and what am I doing? I am lying on my bed on the computer while the TVs on. Maybe it's best to use this time to reflect on what the season's really about.

It's been more than a month since we've started abstaining from meat every Friday (and maybe even fasting for some). But do we really know the reason behind everything? I'm not a theologian or anything, but the way I understand it, it's our way of trying to experience what Jesus felt as He suffered for our sake. People in some parts of the Philippines go to great extents to do this that they end up experiencing the Passion of Christ the way it is - walking down the street with a cross on their back, getting hit at the back with metal ropes, and getting nailed on the cross. But for most of us, we try the more convenient alternative - skip eating meat every Friday and eat just one full meal.

But aside from this, I think we should try harder when it comes to sharing Jesus' suffering. Maybe we could give up an hour of our usual internet time. Or maybe avoid drinking fizzy drinks or eating junk food. This doesn't only help us share in Jesus' Passion, it helps us cut down on non-essential things in life and maybe give us a chance to experience something else.

We still have four days left, and I know it may be short, we still have a little chance to start with changing our ways.

Lots of Love,

J<3