I worked in a mission in southern Mindanao. As our plane landed at the Davao International Airport, I peeked through the window and saw rows and rows of tiny houses. I felt so excited to live in a new place and make new friends. One month later, my excitement had dissolved; I felt I had made a mistake in volunteering.
The community I worked with must have come straight out of a soap opera with all its nasty, tell-all episodes. We encountered mothers who would hurl books at each other, youngsters who would wrestle with kitchen knives, and senior members who would walk out of services when somebody they disliked started to speak. One time, we even had to settle a quarrel that nearly ended in bloodshed.
At the end of one day, I lay down in bed, tired and dejected after what seemed to be a further day. Through the open bedroom door, I could see our cook, an old lady who did the housework with mechanical precision, silently stirring soup over the kitchen stove. I told myself, what a lucky lady! There I was facing rejection and ridicule, and she was just doing her work without all that trauma. I wished I could just be the cook!
Well, now as I look back, I'm so glad that wish never came true.
You see, things started to change when we got a new local leader, young man named David. No, I don't mean the book hurling or the kitchen knives or the walkouts - just the way I looked at things.
One boring rest day, David told me, "Lets go to the meetinghouse and tidy it up." We went there in slippers and shorts and started planting big-leaved tubers along the walkway. Despite constant care, the plants died after a week. Another useless job, I thought. But the community members saw it, and related to others what we had done. We had actually planted something more than tubers!
We did other things that seemed thankless - at first. Despite being so tired one night, we managed to pay a visit to a couple and their three very young kids who were all expecting us. We responded to the invitation of a community leader who was trying to organize a town event - and discovered that we had been one of only two organizations that had responded and fully cooperated! David even had a jobless father come to our quarters everyday and paid him to shine our shoes, this despite the fact that the dusty, rocky town roads made shoe-shinning seem foolish.
I realized I had been complaining because I was looking only at myself, my own comfort, my own expectations. But David was thinking not of himself but of others. Through his service, he was planting seeds that he knew in due time would grow and bear fruit. People can change if somebody makes them feel they are special, that they are good people.
Know what? I tasted the fruit myself. Years later, when I was back in Metro Manila, I met the three kids, then already grown up, and their mother. Her husband had abandoned the family, but their faith was so strong that they stuck together and survived, strengthened by the memories of David's unselfish service. One son even decided to follow in our footsteps.
I learned that the membership of our organization had grown so rapidly in the area that another community was organized. The mothers were hurling no longer books but kind words at each other. The wrestling teeners became parents whose children got along well with each other. And the walkout specialists? Some of them became new community leaders.
When I heard all this, I was happy, very happy. David and I had planted something out there, and whatever it was, it grew in spite of the hostile ground. I learned a lot of things from him that have guided me. And yes, I'm happy for it.
There was this railway guard who lived with his family along a train route. His job was to open the tracks whenever a train approached by lifting the huge metal barriers that blocked the way. One day, his teenage son was fixing a loose bolt on the tracks when his foot got trapped in the tracks. All of a sudden, both father and son heard a train coming. "Dad, the train's coming!" his son shouted, and the horrified father didn't know what to do. If he saved his son, the train would crash into the barriers and many passengers would die. If he opened the barrier, he wouldn't be able to save his son. In the most agonizing moment of his life, his father ran as fast as he could and pulled the lever that lifted the barrier but came too late to save his son.
The train passed safely but the passengers hardly noticed the sobbing figure with his head resting on the cold steel lever. But as soon as the train's thundering screech melted away he heard a familiar voice.
"Dad, dad, I'm safe, I'm safe!"
The overjoyed father rushed to his son, who was sprawled on the ground but definitely out of danger. The son recalled that, at the very last moment, he got his hammer and pried a bolt to loosen the track, freeing his foot. Father and son knelt down to pray and give thanks for this mighty deliverance.
When you think of others before yourself, those feelings come back to you stronger than before. In helping others, you help yourself. Happiness is like a paint, you can't spread it without some of it getting caught on you!