I grew up in a christian family. Both of my parents were christians, my dad especially. He even wanted to become a pastor.
But he was a seafarer though, and seafaring is a job that takes fathers away from the family. Even though I respected him and admired his patience, love and sacrifice for us, I grew distant from him cause of the disconnection.
Looking back, I realized that it must be the reason why I was always looking for approval from others. Especially from the cool crowd, or people who were older than me. I never had anyone mentor me, nor walked me into manhood.
Even still, I did grow up in church where we went every Sunday, sat and listened and then went back home. Honestly though I had a lot of misunderstandings about what being a christian meant. Thing is, because both my parents were christians I kind of casually identified myself as a christians. I knew Jesus’ name and his attributes, but I’m the kind of person that don’t think too much of something, so I took him at face value as God, but never really understood what that meant for me.
When I was in high school, skateboarding got so popular that I obsessed with it, wanting to be the best within the first 3 months. I would go out to the streets and dress up cool for the sole reason of being accepted by the cool skaters in the neighborhood. I thought of skating the first thing when I woke up and I couldn’t sleep thinking about it.
One day, together with my skater friends, we went to a skate spot where a skater’s gathering was taking place. There were also people watching. I thought to myself that this would be a great opportunity to show off!
We were taking turns at the railings, where I would jump the skateboard, and then slide it on the metal rail. It was my turn and I had an adrenaline rush. I pushed so hard and fast, and then jumped the skateboard but I felt off balance but still pushed it through. Everything went too fast and when I jumped on the metal rail I heard a bang, and the next thing, I was falling. In my head I was thinking “I gotta get up fast and not embarrass myself. Hurry up.”
I tried to act cool, stood up fast. But when I did, I didn’t feel my left foot so I fell forward. I looked at it, and saw it dangling on my leg. It was facing back. My leg’s bones had completely broken loose off of my whole leg. I got stricken, that I couldn’t process what was going to happen in my future. So many thoughts came running into my head. Like I won’t be able to walk again, but the biggest fear of it all was, what are my friends going to think about me.
I was rushed into the emergency room, and then I had a major operation. When I could finally talk to the doctor, he told me that because of the severity of my broken leg, I probably would not be able to walk normally again. And that shook my world.
Every single night in bed, I would stay up thinking about my future for the next 2 months. Until one night, I remembered what the pastor said in church. About Jesus wanting to bring healing. And so I was so desperate, and I had no more options left. The doctor—who I placed all my hopes and trust—just told me I wouldn’t be able to walk again. My parents, who I didn’t want to talk to, in fear of simply blaming me for my fault, and my friends who laughed at me and said, “that’s what you get for rushing it”. I had no other choice. Except what the pastor said about Jesus.
I was so desperate, that I literally went down on the floor. And I awkwardly placed my foot back, got on my knees, then I said, “Jesus…” It took awhile for me to say the word. Surprisingly, it was more difficult to pray when you want to express something very important to you, fearing it might diminish the weight. I said, “Jesus.. If you’re real. I want to believe in you. You’re my last hope. If you’re real, please heal me. Please make me walk again, and if you do… I will give my life to you. I will follow you, and do whatever you tell me. Please, I beg you. I want to walk normally again.”
Nothing happened right away. But a few weeks into my home rest, my mom suggested me learning the guitar since I had nothing to do at home, but do school homework and I was always in a bad mood. So she got me playing the guitar.
Now, I always say that the guitar is the most difficult instrument to learn, and I am the type of person who has no patience to learn something very difficult. But because I had nothing to do, and that I was so bored. I began learning it, and kind of forced myself into it. That by the end of couple of months, I was reading chords and could play basic songs.
Something was happening too, my leg was recovering. That by the end of 6 months I could walk normally again.
Anyway, when I got to high school, playing in a band and rock music became very popular for kids my age. The kind of music I listened to had lots of screaming and shouting too. And once I was practicing how to do the screaming, my dad happened to be passing by and he got into the room and he got so alarmed, he thought I was getting possessed. (lol)
Anyway so I started growing my hair longer to become sort of like a metal head. And also I was surrounded by friends who weren’t very good influence. There were lots of drinking and some drugs. (I personally didn’t do drugs cause I saw how it broke a relative’s family.) The more I spent time with my friends I begin to do what they did. So I started drinking a lot too. It was becoming my identity, growing up.
I’d keep going to church every Sunday because my parents sort of forced me to keep going. And for some reason whenever I go to church, and whenever I listen to the message I felt like it was against me, and that I should stop doing what I was doing. And felt like God was against fun. I felt like God wanted me to stop doing all the fun things I wanted to do with my life. And the worst part is, for some reason I felt like God was always angry at me because that was the impression I got from the pastor.
One time the pastor said men shouldn’t have a long hair and men shouldn’t have head covering like that. And I was the only guy with a long hair. I felt like being shot by a sniper. Right there and then. And that was when I felt like I didn’t like God. And I began to rebel more.
I began to drink more alcohol to get drunk. And because of that I’d get into a lot of argument with my parents.
One day, I got so drunk the night before I had a terrible hangover. I laid in bed until afternoon, it was always hot in the Philippines you know, and it was particularly hot that day, combination of heat and hangover is the worst. Anyway, I was laying in bed even though I was already awake. When I felt a presence next to my bed.
I thought, here we go. My dad was waiting for me to wake up to have another speech about how bad of a kid I was. And I was waiting for it. Pretending I was asleep. Then the presence spoke, he said, “I love you, my son.”
It wasn’t what I was suspecting so I immediately looked that way but there was nobody there. I stood up from my bed and looked outside the room but I quickly found out nobody was home. Also it hit me that my dad just left to board the ship a couple of days ago. For some reason, I thought that it was Jesus.
For reason I couldn’t explain I went back to bed and I couldn’t stop crying. I never felt so much love in my life. Perhaps it was a dream, or maybe effect of hangover—but I could not the feeling of so much love from the voice I heard.
Now, looking back, experiencing something supernatural doesn’t always change anyone. Nothing happened after that, I went back to the same lifestyle of drinking. But after a few weeks one random guy showed up at my door. He had long hair like me, and he was wearing like rocker fashion like me.
He said, “Hey man, I’m looking for Monci. Does he live here?”
“Who are you?” I said, “I’m Monci.”
Turns out that he was looking for a band member, and he heard about me, and had been looking for me.
Turns out that he was also a christian. And a professional Jazz drummer, and a cool guy. I respected him a lot. And one day he began to talk to me about Jesus.
He told me that to be a Christian you don’t have to be a good person. In fact, there’s no such a good person. I don’t have to be a good person to be loved by God. And that Jesus loves me even if I have long hair. Even when I play rock music, Jesus loves me as I was. I began to understand what that word GRACE meant for me.
Grace meant that Jesus loves me no matter what. And hearing that, it began to start a change in me.
I grew up in a christian family. Both of my parents are christians, my dad especially he wanted to become a pastor. And I respected that my dad especially was a very good man. Very kind to my mother and to us children. I only ever saw him get angry once. However he worked as a seafarer, and so most often he was away while I was growing up.
So I did grow up in church. It’s a really good thing and I’m very thankful to my parents. However, the thing about growing up in church is that sometimes you can have misunderstandings about what being a christian means is. So I kind of automatically identified myself as a christian just because both my parents were church goers, but I never really had any personal relationship with Jesus. I knew his name and I also took him at face value as God, but never really understood what that meant for me.
Anyway, when I got to high school, playing in a band and rock music became very popular for kids my age. The kind of music I listened to had lots of screaming and shouting too. And once I was practicing how to do the screaming, my dad happened to be passing by and he got into the room and he got so alarmed, he thought I was getting possessed. (lol)
Anyway so I started growing my hair longer to become sort of like a metal head. And also I was surrounded by friends who weren’t very good influence. There were lots of drinking and some drugs. (I personally didn’t do drugs cause I saw how it broke a relative’s family.) The more I spent time with my friends I begin to do what they did. So I started drinking a lot too. It was becoming my identity, growing up.
I’d keep going to church every Sunday because my parents sort of forced me to keep going. And for some reason whenever I go to church, and whenever I listen to the message I felt like it was against me, and that I should stop doing what I was doing. And felt like God was against fun. I felt like God wanted me to stop doing all the fun things I wanted to do with my life. And the worst part is, for some reason I felt like God was always angry at me because that was the impression I got from the pastor.
One time the pastor said men shouldn’t have a long hair and men shouldn’t have head covering like that. And I was the only guy with a long hair. I felt like being shot by a sniper. Right there and then. And that was when I felt like I didn’t like God. And I began to rebel more.
I began to drink more alcohol to get drunk. And because of that I’d get into a lot of argument with my parents.
One day, I got so drunk the night before I had a terrible hangover. I laid in bed until afternoon, it was always hot in the Philippines you know, and it was particularly hot that day, combination of heat and hangover is the worst. Anyway, I was laying in bed even though I was already awake. When I felt a presence next to my bed.
I thought, here we go. My dad was waiting for me to wake up to have another speech about how bad of a kid I was. And I was waiting for it. Pretending I was asleep. Then the presence spoke, he said, “I love you, my son.”
It wasn’t what I was suspecting so I immediately looked that way but there was nobody there. I stood up from my bed and looked outside the room but I quickly found out nobody was home. Also it hit me that my dad just left to board the ship a couple of days ago. For some reason, I thought that it was Jesus.
For reason I couldn’t explain I went back to bed and I couldn’t stop crying. I never felt so much love in my life. Perhaps it was a dream, or maybe effect of hangover—but I could not the feeling of so much love from the voice I heard.
Now, looking back, experiencing something supernatural doesn’t always change anyone. Nothing happened after that, I went back to the same lifestyle of drinking. But after a few weeks one random guy showed up at my door. He had long hair like me, and he was wearing like rocker fashion like me.
He said, “Hey man, I’m looking for Monci. Does he live here?”
“Who are you?” I said, “I’m Monci.”
Turns out that he was looking for a band member, and he heard about me, and had been looking for me.
Turns out that he was also a christian. And a professional Jazz drummer, and a cool guy. I respected him a lot. And one day he began to talk to me about Jesus.
He told me that to be a Christian you don’t have to be a good person. In fact, there’s no such a good person. I don’t have to be a good person to be loved by God. And that Jesus loves me even if I have long hair. Even when I play rock music, Jesus loves me as I was. I began to understand what that word GRACE meant for me.
Grace meant that Jesus loves me no matter what. And hearing that, it began to start a change in me.
He told me that Jesus loves me even when I do stupid things. That Jesus loves me even as we spoke, and that Jesus wasn’t angry at me. In fact, Jesus wanted me to know that he wants me to get to know him. Because he wants me to know that I don’t have to work hard to be loved. That he loved me just as I was.
You see, I had a misconception about God. That in order to be loved by God, I had to be a good person first. I had to follow the 10 commandments and be the perfect person I could be. But I learned early on that it was impossible, and I simply thought God was always angry at me.
But my friend shared with me this, and I understood for the first time what it means to be loved by God.
One day he invited me to come to his church. And during worship service I felt God’s presence, and I remember one particular moment in my life.
It was when I prayed to Jesus when I broke my leg, when I said that if Jesus made me walk again I will follow him all my life. And when the preacher spoke that day, he spoke about serving 2 masters at the same time, and that I had to make a choice.
The message so sooooo clear to me that I couldn’t deny what Jesus was asking me to do. Basically he was telling me to quit my band and follow him.
— It was such a big decision because it was my life. All my friends were in that band, and that I would be giving up my dream of becoming famous. But at the same time, I knew that Jesus knew that there was this hole in my heart that I’ve been trying to fill with my band but just couldn’t seem to satisfy. And I knew that Jesus wanted me to try him out and see if I could really become full. But that meant giving up the band.
I gave myself 1 whole month to make a decision. But the more I waited the heavier it got on my heart.
Finally I decided to give Jesus a try. And did the most crazy thing—at least to my friends, I quit the band. At first they thought I was joking. Because we were just about to get signed up with a label. And then I quit. Obviously, they got very angry at me especially with my reason that I wanted to do it for Jesus.
They tried to reason to me that I could still follow Jesus and do the band, but Jesus was very clear. I had to choose only 1. And I chose Jesus. And in the end, they really hated me, and even seemed to hate Jesus more because of me being religious and stuff.
Well, I basically lost all my friends except Fred. Who had eventually welcomed me into his small group. But not long after that decision, I got hired by a Japanese company. And while I was doing training 2 months into getting hired. A huge Tsunami happened in Japan, that was in 2011. And because of that majority of the employees came back to Philippines due to the fear of getting radiation infection and fear of earthquakes.
And it was also because of that, that my manager told me, “Monci, we need you to go to Japan. We don’t have enough employees left to do the job so please go.”
And that was how I ended up coming to Japan, and eventually got plugged into a local church, and fast forward this is where I developed my relationship with Jesus. And the rest is for another testimony