Simbang Gabi!

Hello, Simbang Gabi!

Simbang Gabi is the time in December when Filipinos go to church before the break of dawn and attend the mass for 9 days (Including Christmas). Since I'm living in the UAE, we do not go to church before the break of dawn instead we go to church a little bit later than usual. 

  (Football field view, St. Mary's Dubai)

UAE is a muslim country therefore they do not celebrate Christmas but what's great in living in the UAE is the fact that the government nor the officials don't stop the people who celebrates Christmas, instead they let people celebrate and have fun. 

Saint Mary's Dubai put up a giant Christmas tree inside the Church area so that the people who does celebrate Christmas will feel jollier.

The Christmas tree consists of Christmas balls shaped cards where you can write anything on it but most of the people who writes on the card writes their name. This was lit on the first day of Simbang Gabi. Over a thousand filipinos attend the Simbang Gabi every night, most of the areas of the church is jam packed.

There are a lot of sayings that if you complete the 9 days of Simbang Gabi you will be able to make a wish and it'll come true.

However during the 1st day of the Simbang Gabi the message of the Priest and the sermon that he gave was so touching and it goes something like this, “We are not attending Simbang Gabi for us and for our needs, we should attend Simbang Gabi because we are thankful that we are blessed. This is the time of the year where we should stop asking and start thanking God.” And this made me stop and realise that we do tend to forget to thank God for everything that we have been blessed with. So when the mass finally ended reality finally woke me up and made me achieve a new perspective in life which was thanking God more often rather than asking for something because God knows what is best and what is right for us everything that we're facing it is God's will.

Since this blog entry is all about thanking God for what we have, I would like to thank the 2 people who was with me tonight during the 4th night of Simbang Gabi.

        (Celine Cruz & Mark Miranda)

Another thing that I'm thankful for is the fact that I saw a friend that was about to go back to the Philippines in 4 days after nearly 6 months I got to see him again. 

    (Lynsell Lapure)

Thank you for the countless blessings, make sure you thank God for all of the blessings that you are receiving everyday may it be big or small, thank God!