Unique Experience

by Marvin Magat

I will start this article with a lune I composed:

Mind-blowing and eye-popping
APC Bendum is all about
Truly unique experience

I am Marvin A. Magat, JVP Batch 42, presently assigned here in Bendum as a Youth Formator. I am from the Manila local chapter. My JVP journey up here in Bendum (fondly called as “Belgium” by one of our participants in WIN-YWE: Women in Organic Farming -Youth Work Engagement) is definitely an experience that will be marked in my life’s logbook as special and very near to my heart. I will most-certainly never forget it for the rest of my life.

Bendum is one of a kind and I have grown to admire and love this place. The youth and staff here are amazingly remarkable in their own ways. The simple smile that welcomed us on day one still sustains us until now. I see God in my mission in every living creation here. The folks’ concern, sentiments and daily living have become my own too. Yes, it is hard to live here, but I found out their struggles are so big to live with. If other people would ask me one day, ” What you perceive in that kind of endeavor you are doing?” I would say, “I found a ‘family of community,’ because in them I cast the eyes of inter-connectedness.

Despite the challenges that we will be facing throughout the entire year, my fellow JVP volunteers and I will breakthrough to excellence this year of service, YES, we are crazy. We really admit. Amid the pandemic, we continue to respond to the call – the voice that calls within. We are here for the mission entrusted to us. So be it.