Hope Despite Rejection

“The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you;

He will never leave you nor forsake you.” —Deuteronomy 31:8 (NIV)

We were assigned to Amadeo, Cavite, and we believed, with the easy confidence of those who have not yet been tested, that everything would be gentle. It was an urban place, after all, full of roofs and roads and people, and the house where my partner and I stayed was nice, truly comfortable, the kind of room that makes one think the days ahead will be as soft as the pillows. We unpacked our bags and our expectations together, and set them side by side.

But the first week had barely opened before we were sent into a great crusade. My partner and I stood at the edge of it, still finding our footing, still asking what we ought to do, and my partner most of all, who looked about with wide and searching eyes. How strange it is to begin among streets you do not know, where every face belongs to a stranger and every corner turns toward something unfamiliar.

We had thought that approaching people would be easy, so many of them living so close together, their doors lining the lanes like a long row of open questions. And so we came to the very first house, hearts lifted, voices ready. The door closed against us at once. I remember the quiet afterward, how it pressed upon us, heavier than any word. The heat rose from the pavement. A motorbike hummed past. And then the rejections kept coming, one after another, like rain that will not ease, each door a small shutting, each shutting a small weight added to the one before.

Many times people turned us away because they thought we were scamming them, and that, I confess, was hard to bear, to come with an offering and be met with suspicion. Once we offered medical services to a father, and his son scolded him sharply for listening to us, and we stood there, watching the old man's face fold inward. It was sad. I will not pretend otherwise. We grew a little discouraged, for it is not easy to knock with an open heart and hear only refusal.

Yet we did not lose hope.

Whenever my partner and I set out for another barangay, we would pause at the side of the road and pray. Trucks rattled by, dust lifted and settled, the sun leaned down upon our shoulders, and there we stood with bowed heads, laying our burdens one by one at God's feet. And each time we lifted our eyes again, something in us had grown lighter, as though a hand had quietly taken the heaviest part.

Even when the next door closed, we felt no bitterness, for we knew that everything had a purpose. So we gathered those rejections, as one gathers stones to build a wall, and let them make us stronger. Each refusal taught us to endure; each closed door sent us back to prayer; and prayer, in turn, opened something within us that no door could shut. This is where we proved that prayer is truly powerful. It did not erase the rejection, but it changed the way we carried it, steadying our hearts while the world turned away.

Name: Dearly Calungsod |67th Batch | 1000MM

Mission Field:  Banay-Banay, Amadeo, Cavite