Encouragement from my younger brothers

Yesterday morning when I checked my phone for any messages that were sent through the night, there was one message sitting there from one of the youth leaders that I have mentored.  His text said “thanks for prayers. Now I can buy a laptop.”

I smiled at the thought because I have told him a couple of times that I had been praying for a laptop to help him with his seminary studies.  At a Board meeting last month, he even suggested that I need to upgrade this laptop I am using and then simply hand this to him.  I thought it would be feasible, but these hard times call on us to be more frugal.  But I kept praying that God would give him the means to buy his own.

And God did.  He will be buying a similar laptop ( Dell, of course.)

Then yesterday afternoon, I checked my email and there was another encouraging email for me from another young man whom I had taken in as my younger brother.

I was really encouraged by what he wrote as a response to a quick email I sent through my cellphone last week. I was walking in Megamall and chanced to see the place where we had our conversation.  This younger brother was at that time, out of work and I was trying to be helpful when I said “why don’t you try working in a cruise ship?”

Well, he has been working on a cruise ship for more than a year now and I have not heard from him in recent months, and last week at that mall, I suddenly remembered how he was when we last talked.

Over a cup of coffee at Seattles Best in Caltex along SLEX, this young man poured out his heart.  The store was about to close but the manager sensing the sensitivity of our conversation, politely told us that we can stay for a couple of minutes more.

But this email I received yesterday was very different from how he felt as we talked last.  He was full of hope and he was beginning to understand how God has been patiently working in his life. He has grown amazed at the love of Jesus and how in his surrender, the Lord is beginning to transform him especially since he is outside his comfort zone.

He even attached several pictures and one of them showed him practicing with a worship band.  He attends Bible Studies and regular worship services.

I had to smile when he said that he would like to help out at our youth camp as soon as he gets home next year.  And he quickly added “we need to talk right away when I get back…”

It was awesome. His email made me smile and made me teary-eyed at the same time.  I was really grateful that God had not given up on him and how God had allowed him to go through some difficult times (like being mugged and beaten on his birthday last year!)

Thank you Lord for keeping him safe as they travel through the different ports.

Thank you Lord for looking after him and allowing him to benefit from the work of his hands.

Lead him away from any temptations and walk with him God through the discouraging times.

When loneliness sets in because of him being away, surround him with people who will affirm your love toward him.

Thank you for allowing us to have a small part in his life. It is a privilege to have shared a part of his journey with him and we look forward to sharing many more with him.

He ended his email with the usual “gotta go but will keep in touch…”

The last line of his email made my heart swell with joy and pride…

” I love you Kuya…”

Thank you Lord for allowing us to invest our lives on others, and in doing so, you have enriched ours a thousand times over.

Excellent Customer Service of Innove Communications, Inc.

This afternoon, I found my Broadband internet bill hiding inside my mailbox. I was on my way to take care of a bill so I just nonchalantly tossed this bill when I got into the car.

As soon as I parked at the mall where I was going to make payments, I opened the Broadband bill and was pleasantly surprised that it was a little bit lower by about P70.00

Almost P100 less than the usual subscription rate. I turned to page 2 and to my amazement, the mystery was solved.  My ISP automatically gave me a rebate, OUTAGE REBATE amounting to P58.14!

And now I remember, there was a time when there was no internet for about 8 hours. And when I called up their 24-hr customer service, I was able to talk to their Customer Care officer named Peter who asked me questions detailing the technical difficulties I was going through.  He even gave me a reference number so that I can immediately follow it up.  He assured me that the technician will be sent right away.

Well the following day, an outsourced technical company came representing INNOVE.  It was very prompt. I basically just explained that my internet signal is usually affected when it rains.  All the installations and wires were okay so the man said he will check about the internet programming on my subscription ( whatever that means…I was just glad that someone was going to check up on it..)

I forgot about the whole thing until I saw this bill. This is my second bill from Innove since I changed ISP from SmartBro.

There it was, P58.14 rebate for an OUTAGE that they acknowledged. I remember when I was a subscriber of SMART, we experienced 5 days without any internet connection. I emailed them asking for the rebate since I complained that our payment has been made in full every month, despite their lack of assurance that they can give us 24/7 connection.  I thought they really did well when they gave me a P30 rebate to cover the 5-day outage!  Now look at Globe/Innove, it automatically gave me the rebate even if didn’t ask for it.

Just one of the many reasons why it is SMARTER to switch to GLOBE BROADBAND.

Let me detail here why their services are better:

1. Customer service hotline actually works.  You dial it from your handyphone whether it is a landline or not, it is toll-free.  With SMART, once you dial their landline, you are charged accordingly.  Since I was a Globe user, calling a PLDT number, I would minimally spend more than P100 just waiting for the customer service to get back to me and give me some reasonable answer than the usual “there is an ongoing work in your site…” .

2. The outsourced technical company is located where I live.  These companies have been outsourced by Globe to meet the immediate needs of their clients. With SMART, we would need to go to the Wireless Centers and really try our best to explain to their customer service client what the problem was.  Then they will give us the standard answer “paki hintay na lang po..papupuntahin namin, kasi may on-going work po sa site ninyo eh…” Ongoing work to an unknown site which has affected the internet service… whoaaa that qualifies as a pinhead response don’t you think?

And I remember one time when I lodged my complaint when I was a SMARTBRO subscriber and the answers I got were:

- that depends on the area ( when I said the internet signal was intermittent)

- SmartBro is really separate from PLDT ( when I said it took forever for their technicians to get to my place)…

Since I transferred to GLOBE BROADBAND by INNOVE COMMUNICATIONS, my internet connecton has been reliable. I am paying LESS for a MORE SUPERIOR quality of service with a much bigger bandwidth size compared to what had been promised by SMARTBRO ( up to 384kbps)… I did a speedtest on my connection and it has been consistent:

I know that in other countries, this speed would look very primitive. But this is what we have here and this is way better than what my previous ISP – SmartBro was able to give me.

Quality service, superior technical handling and excellent customer service.  These are still some of the non-negotiable core values that should never change.

Now I should let my friends who work at Globe read this blog.

They would be very happy to hear from a very pleased client.