The Manila Internatonal Book Fair (MIBF) is in full swing. It's the third day, and if I don't go to the happiest place on earth, I w...

I used to hear this conversation (argument) between my sons and their father.  Whenever Tony gave street children food or treated them to sn...

This lomboy ( duhat in Filipino; Java Plum in English) tree standing tall at the corner of two roads in our village is 48 years old. It was...

Sarcasm is a figure of speech defined as a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression; it is a taunt. They are words that mean the opposite of wha...

Have you been duped by unscrupulous people because you were too trusting?  Sallie was in the mall, and had just shopped for her upcoming tra...

Meet-ups with friends used to be frequent . We’d find all excuses to get together. But these days, they have become fewer and fewer.   The p...

Home is where the heart is. But when home is not what it used to be, where will the heart go?  Our home is 48 years old. It has aged tremend...

Many articles have been written about this topic. I read a few when I learned that I was about to become one.   But as soon as I held my gra...

Too little time to take my maintenance pills, take off my shoes, put up my feet, close my blurry eyes, and put new batteries in my hearing a...

“No fuss!” I ordered my boys, knowing how people grandly celebrate an 80th birthday.    They fussed anyway. My thought balloon, Don’t kids l...

Ranting and raving are not my thing. They sap every energy from mind, heart, and body.  And yet, I dove into them last year.  It’s all about...

Finally, the paperback version of Mitch Albom’s “The Little Liar,” published in 2023, reached our bookstores. I had waited for it for months...

This time last year, I was assigned by the Discipleship Ministry Team of our home church to facilitate a seminar for Sunday school teachers...

Heartbreaking. The town of Mateo (the hero in the Oh, Mateo! series of 16 books) is underwater again. This time, Umingan is suffering fro...

Moses was summoned from retirement at the age of 80. He had been living as a shepherd for half of those years when God appeared to him in a ...

Since this huge butterfly (which is actually a moth) parked itself on our terrace post, it never left. Or it seems that way. The next day it...

If you love to read, you won't let a day pass by without reading something (several sittings within 24 hours, in fact). We’re on the sam...

Wearing an apron is below my conscious mind. My close friends and family know this: I don’t (or can’t) cook.  Once I dabbled in painting th...

While the US is grandly celebrating its Independence Day, I am quietly remembering, honoring, and thanking God for the life I shared with To...

Have you ever written a letter to yourself?  I have—too often in fact. As frequent as every four days, or less. That's the cadence that ...

You can’t find the word “devoseries” in the dictionary—not yet anyway. It was created by CSM (Church Strengthening Ministry), the publisher...

Contrary to popular belief, air conditioning is not the solution to the punishing heat we are suffering from in the Philippines today. In fa...

Brief is a polymorphic word. It can function as multiple parts of speech.    Verb: I’ll brief her about the meeting.  Noun: He wrote the b...

On Tuesdays, I am reminded of the now-classic  Tuesdays with Morrie (a memoir by Mitch Albom), which I enjoyed reading sometime in the late...

“Grace is not something we find,” I wrote in the Author’s Note of my book, Grace Found Me . “Rather, it finds us—but only if we allow oursel...

Butterflies flit from flower to flower in our garden every day. They are my early-morning delight! At mid-morning, the heat hits hard and so...

This happened many moons ago, but after I had blogged about writing for children , memories came flooding back. I am glad I kept photos of t...