A Saturday full of Surprises

Last Saturday was a busy day but I should say that it was not tiring, actually it was a worth treasure moment for me. In the morning, I had fun time with the children of outreach program facilitated by Sumulong Baptist Church-Makati together with Jive youth and Pastor Jeffrey Aspacio.

After the outreach, I hurried to Quezon City. I was invited to attend a seminar hosted by FRONTROW Enterprise Philippines, Inc. (FRONTROW). This company was hailed in the 2010 Philippines Yearbook: The All New Power 88 as the hottest multi-level marketing firm of today's generation. Its office address is located at 3rd floor of IL Terrazzo Mall, Tomas Morato Quezon City, Metro Manila.

I arrived there at around 2:15 P.M, forty five minutes earlier than the schedule time of orientation. I decided to tour around the mall, and treat myself to a Tsokolate flavored ice cream. At the ground floor corner of IL Terrazzo Mall, I found the famous OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship) Bookstore. Since I still had more minutes left before 3:00 P.M, I went inside and look for some good books to read. It was great that they offered a lot of good books for single women to read.

I started to read the summary of the book one by one, until one book caught my attention. The book is entitled ‘What to do Until Love Finds You’, written by the popular author Michelle Mckinley Hammond. I bought it, even though buying of book on that day was not part of my plan. Also, there were many encouraging books waiting to be bagged home like the best seller book written by Joshua Harris ‘Boy meets girl, say hello to courtship’. I haven’t read a whole one yet, but I heard good comments about it from my christian friends and fine review posted in yahoo.

If you will visit OMF, IL Terrazzo Branch you will find great books like ‘Joyfully Single’ the one written by Harold Sala, one of my favorite christian Author; ‘Saving My First Kiss, why I am keeping Confetti in my Closet’ written by Lisa Vetthouse; and OMF’s newly launch book for the month of February, ‘Love Struck, Love Mo Siya, Sure Ka ba? written by our very own Filipino writer Ronald Molmisa, and ‘Being Single is better than being married to an unsuitable partner’ written by William B. Girao.

Before I left the counter, Ron one of the staff of OMF nicely informed me that they will have a “Words & Music scheduled at 6:00 P.M. So after the orientation, I went back to OMF. At the entrance, they were serving a free unlimited coffee and cookie. Take note, the coffee was not just an ordinary coffee, they called it Kape Musang (Civet coffee) the world’s rarest coffee and was sponsored by Cordillera Products. As printed in their flyer, the beans were gathered from the droppings of the ‘musang’ native name of the civet cat, found in the Arabica coffee farms of the cordillera Highlands and to make it clear, the musang is a palm civet, and eats only the finest coffee cherries. I’m not a coffee lover, and it was actually my first time to taste the civet coffee but I should say that it has a distinct taste than the common household coffee. I enjoyed it a lot; I had two cups of it that night and three pieces of oatmeal cookies :)

At the said event, I met Ms. Ida Torres, Creative and Media officer of OMF and Mr. Kenneth Moteru, Retail and Sales Coordinator of OMF IL Terrazzo Branch. Their staff and crew were very accommodating. When the program started, Mr. Juna the lively emcee asked the audience to hug the person next to us; well it was not a tough thing to do because the person next to me was a Christian Sister :). He emcee excites more the audience when he started the game; there were free giveaways for those who correctly answered the trivia. Yours truly became excited too, I whispered to God, “God I would love to bring home a free book”. So when Mr. Juna asked the second to the last question, which was ‘What is the title of the book launch by OMF for the month of February?” Without hesitation on my part, I stepped forward and I immediately grabbed the microphone and I said out loud… ‘Love Struck?’ To make the story short, I got my free book from OMF entitled ‘Back on Track’ written by a Filipino christian Author Ru Dela Torre. That day, I had another wonderful gift from God; truly we cannot out give Him.

The place became more serene when 'Ron and friends' played the acoustic version of ‘I am Your’s’ they ended their performance with the song “Lead me to the Cross”. The first excerpt reading was taken from the book, ‘Joyfully single’, and the second reading was taken from, ‘What to do until Love finds you’. The program ended with another acoustic performance from 'Nisypoyd', a husband and wife duo composed of Junn (founder of Emanwel) and Anne Esteban (she also baked the delicious cookies).

I should say that I had a good time with Christian brothers and sisters and mostly with God, it was my first time to experience book excerpt reading, and it was really a surprising moment. I am truly thankful to God for the wonderful and another humbling experience. I agreed with Harold Sala when he said this in one of his book,"Really timing is everything’. God’s ways are not our ways; His thought is higher than us.