CFC FFL Singapore – Sharing God’s Love to Us
First of all I am writing this topic to share the wonders of God’s love to me and to share His love to all of us. Ever since I came here to Singapore and started a commitment to my never ending personal development blog, the next best thing that came to my life was God’s community. CFC FFL Singapore (Couples For Christ – Foundation for Family and Life) is a community of God’s love and a commitment to my spiritual growth. I remember writing a Family Mission Statement based from one of our household gatherings which was a challenge for me and for other brothers and sisters in Christ as well. What really touched me was when my wife told me about my 7 year old son, Jed’s sharing about family mission statement in school. Her teacher really appreciated and thanked us for our son’s sharing. She wished that if only every family will practice the same kind of teachings, our country will be a better place to live in. Wow! that brought tears to my eyes.
It was never my plan to join any religious program or organization having attended different religious groups from the past. I attended my first seminar during the second half of 2008 when my friend invited me and told me that dinner was free. Without hesitation I attended the seminar with the food in my mind and did it again and again for the next series of seminars or talks. Yes I was indeed nourished by the food served to us. But it was from the talks and sharing of personal experiences that gave me the nourishment of my spirit.
It is truly a blessing to belong to a community of God’s servants considering that my family is not with me here in Singapore. When you’re alone working in a foreign country, any temptations are possible. CFC FFL community is a place where you can share your personal problems, inspirational stories, love, gratitude, fun and the smiles the can melt a heart. Indeed a family that you can count on whatever prayer requests you need, whether for a good health, a good career, or just a better relationship. Here, I was able to communicate my personal challenges in life, my experiences in personal development and also learned from others more challenging experiences. When I listened to other people’s experiences, I realized that my personal challenges are small compared to their life experiences. I heard about a wife leaving a successful business in the Philippines despite family and friends continuous discouragement of living a new life to be with her husband and family. Others shared their success and blessings from their career through continuous hard work, persistence and prayers. Truly with God nothing is impossible. It is through our abilities to believe, to desire and unwavering faith that we can achieve what we want in life.
I highly encouraged those who are away from their loved ones or for those who simply need peace at home with their family to seek us to share God’s love. I’m not limiting your choices to our group, there are also wonderful communities that will suit to your culture, religion, beliefs, or faith. What is important is you develop a personal and spiritual relationship with God and the people that you can connect with your life experiences. I assure and guarantee you that the time you spend with God and the relationship you develop with your community is truly worthy of your time.
To you, I offer you my short prayer of gratitude for visiting my site. I wish and pray for you all the good things that you deserved in life. To share the blessings that you deserved to our fellow.To learn from the bad things to become a better person. Please share God’s Love to Us, Amen!
PS
I’m sharing with you a presentation from the male group made during the CLS or Christian Life Seminar day itself so this was not really practiced well but the message was from the series of seminar talks. Also, please checkout How To Pray Effectively!. God Bless!
How to Deal with Homesickness and Challenges as an Expatriate
How to Deal with Homesickness and Challenges as an Expatriate (Overseas Filipino Worker or OFW, in our local term)?
- Living a Life away from home and family.
It has been more than 2 years since I worked here in Singapore as a Mechanical CAD Engineer for a Marine and Offshore Engineering/Consultancy firm. Working in a mixed diverse culture can be challenging especially when you’re 1,486 miles apart from the Philippines. It was really tough working in my first few months here as I have to deal with different personalities (egocentrics) being the only Filipino from an Indian dominated company.
In my first few months here in Singapore, I invested a lot of money from my long distance calls to the Philippines. After sometime, I managed to invest a laptop and a PC at home. With the current technology of internet, my family is just a computer away through Skype or Instant Messenger.
Being alone can really be tough so here are some of my effective tips to keep you active;
- Believe You Can Lah – You are the Best!
In my first few months, I received discouraging remarks from my senior colleagues about my poor drafting work. I was told that I was very slow and I must admit that I have challenges in 2D Drafting since I was hired there for my expertise in 3D modelling software (AutoCAD Inventor). My self-esteem was affected and lessened. These people can not even suggest how I can increase my speed and effectiveness when I asked them, so now I know where I stand. Here’s what I did, come closer so that you can hear me and so that you can apply this as well to your life if ever, I simply psyched myself up. Deep in my mind, I was shouting within myself that “I am the BEST and FASTEST “(repeatedly over and over again) while I was doing my 2D design detailing job. Well, it didn’t work right away but after sometime when I submitted my work for review, this guy told me, “You’re so fast huh”.
- Simply Connect
Days before my flight to Singapore, I simply get in touched with my friends, school mates so that they can help me in securing a place to stay. They are even generous to offer their place while am looking for my own place to stay. I managed to get a room for myself by joining some online forums. Google will always be there to help you connect.
- Join Groups, Meetups, Seminars, Sports Activities – Connect More
Even before I arrived here in Singapore, my friend already told me that he included me in their basketball line up for the coming basketball league. Joining sports activities will always be a good way to connect with different people as well as to keep you physically fit. Speaking of being physically fit, I managed to join a health fitness gym just in front of our office building.
My friend was the one who introduced me to join our University Alumni Organization (University of the Philippines Alumni Association of Singapore). This organization offered a lot of activities like seminars, sports, tambayans (a place for hanging out), and a lot of fun. I recommend you to check out your college/university alumni organization.
I would highly recommend that you join religious community in your area. Here you can share your personal challenges in life and you’re assured of trust and confidentiality. Most of all you’ll have a deeper relationship with God. In my case I joined, Couples for Christ – Foundation for Family and Life which I considered as a gasoline station for my soul and spirit.
Meetups and Seminars – one way of reinforcing your beliefs or if you want
To learn and grow is by attending seminars. This is how I develop myself which I will not find in my job.
- Read Books a lot – in my case listening to audiobooks
If there is one thing that I love about Singapore is the public library, my wealth of knowledge. Public Libraries are very accessible in every corner of Singapore. When I read their Vision and Mission, I was inspired that I can see the passion that it brings to Singapore; I’m sharing here their vision
“An inspiring beacon of lifelong learning, bringing knowledge alive, sparking imagination and creating possibility for a vibrant and creative Singapore. Spurring the heights of imagination from the depths of our resources. This is our vision, our NLB”
I would love to hear from your experiences living away from your family as an expatriate.
How Do You Deal with Bully or Bullies in School?
being bullied at school
Have you ever experienced being bullied around in your early years at school?
How did you deal with bullies?
Or, Are you the one playing as a bully?
Yesterday, me and my wife had a conversation over skype about our son’s experience in school of being bullied by his classmate. She told me that two weeks ago, Jed (my son) got some bruised over his upper leg and last week, a wound in his lower right eye.
First, I asked her if she reported this to the teacher? Yes, she told the head teacher and they did inform the parents of the bully. They told us that the boy had some attitude problem.
Now, here’s the meat part, what if the bully will repeat the thing that he liked to do? I mean what if he hurt my son again physically? I told my wife that we should set boundaries about self respect and teach him about self-confidence. I insisted that we can not tolerate this from happening again as well as to other inferior kids as well. I told my son that he needs to defend himself and teach the bully a lesson, a dose of his own medicine. If he hurt you again, hurt him with greater pain, i told my son. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not teaching my son to become violent or become bully as well. I told him that being a bully is bad and so that he (the bully) will not do it again. He should defend other inferior classmates or friends (victims) if ever he’ll witnessed an event. This is not just physical will but more importantly mental, about self esteem.
Here’s another tip, create a buddy system or a need to hang-out with like minded friends and develop a relationship around your circle of friends. Share ideas among your friends and make an offer of help among them in times of trouble.
It will be wise to enrol your child to a self-defense sport like martial arts. This competitive sport will develop one’s self confidence and of course you’ll have a physically healthy child. Now, this gives us an idea to continue what Jed had started in his summer two years ago.
What if you’re child is the bully? That’s tough for me to share. Let’s just put ourselves in their shoes as to why are they doing this? It could be they want to win more friends? They want some recognition and attention? They want to become popular? Whatever their reasons are, I don’t think they are making sense since bullying is totally wrong. I believe that they need more help and the role of the parents play a vital role in molding their child in becoming what they should be. There should be no excuse for this as the responsibility as a parents is very important. If they need help, they shoud seek advise from an expert, a family counselor, their parents, friends, teachers. The Internet is great cool resource as you can join forums from different parts of the world. Check my previous article, I strongly suggest that you create your own Family Mission Statement.
Lastly, my take is please stop bullying. Its not worth of your time and energy.
stop-bullying
P.S.
I would love to hear your experience about bullying.
Family Mission Statement
Family Mission Statement
Finally, I got the chance to write about this topic on Family Mission Statement. I remember just a few months ago at a our household of CFC FFL (Couples For Christ Foundation for Family and Life) here in Singapore, I made a challenge to everyone to create a Family Mission Statement. We had a good learning discussion at that time about the challenges and the practices of day to day family life like disciplining the children, effective study practices for school, husband and wife relationship such as self-esteem, daily good and bad habits, and a lot more. Family Mission Statement will definitely keep you on track about your family values and principles. So if most of the companies that we worked with have mission-vision statements, why not apply to our family as this is the basic foundation of the society.
My reference for this discussion is , How To Develop Your Mission Statement by Dr. Stephen Covey bestselling author also of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He used one of the habits, Begin with the End in Mind. You need first to create in your mind where you want to go then create it in physical reality. You need to involve everyone in your family, children and even grandparents. This could be done in your family room, dining room or any convenient place of your home.
There are 3 steps to develop a Family Mission Statement;
First, Explore what your family is all about – you can ask a series of questions as to what governing values you wish to live by as a family.
Second, Write your Family Mission Statement
Third, Stay on Course.
Explore what your family is all about. Think deeply and discuss this with your loved ones. Some guidelines for you to start with, ask
1. What is the Purpose of your family?
2. What values do you want your Family to live by?
3. What is your Family all about?
4. What kind of Family do you want?
5. What kind of home do you want when you invite your friends and guest to?
6. What embarasses you at home?
7. What makes you comfortable at home?
8. for your children, you can ask them, What makes you feel drawn to us (parents) so that you are open to our influence and us to your influence?
9. for newly married couple, you can ask, What is the purpose of our Marriage? What’s the essential reason for our being? What is our high priority Goals?
Well this might be of a challenge to you so there are 3 ground rules of discussion.
1. Only one family member speaks at a time and everyone else listens to that family member with deep respect.
2. This is more challenging but enormously powerful. Whenever there is a kind of disagreements, Simply agree that no one can make their point until they restate the last person’s point to his or her satisfaction. This keeps people from judging each other. Instead they get them to thinking within the frame of reference of the other person. An example, Let me see if I can repeat what you’re saying. If the other person say yes, thats what I’m trying to say, I feel understood. Then it’s the next family member’s turn to speak and to have that also respected and impactedly listened to. This way you can avoid disagreements or attacking the person and so forth. When people communicate in this manner it brings out the best in every person’s belief.
3. Simply write it down or record it. Some one should write down the thoughts expressed by the family member. Writing crystalizes thinking , instills meaning, and bridges the gap between the conscious and the unconscious.
Now I also challenged you to include this task in your to do list. You don’t need to get it right the first time, you just need to get started and plan your course. Share me your experiences after sometime.
Remember, Stay on target! Stay on target! Stay on target!
Home Sweet Home again
I am here at home in Mandaluyong City, Philippines spending time with the family and time to celebrate my son, Justin Daniel (a.k.a. JED) 7th birthday today. I managed to teach my son yesterday how to create his own blog at http://justindanielcastaneda.blogspot.com/. He is currently having fun playing his Nintendo DS lite as my gift to him for being top in his class as grade 1 last year. Now is the opening month of school here in the Philippines and I’m here to have a great time with the family despite the rainy season here.
I managed to watch tv here again though I really seldom watch at singapore. It was my only time to watch a replay of NBA championship (i know L.A. Lakers is the champion). Prior to the game I managed to watch a NBA championship classic between the Huston Rockets and New York Knicks. Hakeem “The Dream” Olajuwon, an all-star center of Huston Rockets had been my favorite and a model when I was very active playing back in college in University of the Philippines. I remember dreaming and playing his moves in my mind when asleep. When he received his MVP award as a champion team, he told that “you know that basketball is a team sport and I share this award with my teammates”. Truly they were a complete team and a great coach Rudy Tomjanovich who guided them to two NBA championships in 1994 and 1995.
