Unit One

When I think of the word “faith”, I don’t think of it as a religious word, I think of positivity and hopefulness. The word “faith” is an important word to me and my Christian community. This word brought my bonds with my church friends closer and even started a friendship. 3 years ago when I was a sophomore in high school, I was spending spring break with my church community at a big vacation rental home in NJ. It included a few parents and their children and me and my parents. One of the parents rented the vacation rental house for a church bonding opportunity. I barely knew my peers even though I met them before and talked to them once. One day while our parents went out to spend time with each other, my and my peers were hanging out in the house and we started to hang out and have conversations about God and other religious stuff in the living room because we felt it was a nice place to talk about things like these deeply and interesting and it was better to sit around each other. We were then watching Netflix and no light was on except for the lamp. Since it was springtime, the living room was at a normal temperature, it wasn’t too cold or too hot, it was just lukewarm. I was sitting on the couch with two people and the others were sitting on another couch.  After we watched Netflix we decided to bake cupcakes. While we were baking cupcakes, we were talking about our everyday life thoughts. We then finished the cupcakes and started eating them in the living room. We played around with our cupcakes by smashing in each other’s faces and laughed and we cleaned ourselves after. We were back sitting in the living room and one of my friends asked about what do we see ourselves in the future and I said that I see myself as a pediatrician living somewhere across the country or in Canada with a small family. Others shared very interesting things such as operating a business and being a lawyer.

It became nighttime and we having more conversations and hanging out. As everyone was talking I  went to get more cupcakes, and when I came out of the kitchen, I heard something coming from outside and I went to go look at the window and I thought I heard it was my parents and the other parents coming home but I was wrong, it was a man who lived across the street. He walked towards our doorway banged on the front door very loud. We didn’t know or seen the man before and we were all wondering what is going on. We suddenly hear him screaming “where you at” and “I know you inside” and was trying to peek through the window to look inside. We thought he was crazy or drunk and we thought he had the wrong house and were looking for someone.  He was banging very loud that it might break the window of the front door and set off an alarm. We were a little bit terrified because we knew we were going to be safe in the house because it had armed security and with God on our side and also that it was funny that the way the man was acting and we started laughing and joking around

Then we all started to pray for our safety quietly just in case if he came inside the house by trying to break in, one of my peers started crying because she was scared I told her to just breathe, pray and have faith. The others agreed with me and we told ourselves to think about faith because it was a word to use in case we’re in trouble. Even though we barely knew each other, we prayed together.

Suddenly we hear silence and we carefully opened the door quietly just to see the noise stopped and the crazy man was gone. Three people decided to go downstairs to check while the rest of us stayed back because we were unsure. When one of them came back after searching outside to see if he was still there, they said he was gone we were so relieved that it was over. We were all crying and laughing with glee.

When our parents came home, we told them what happened and they relived and we joked about how one of the men was acting and we started laughing.  Throughout the vacation it was very peaceful, we started to get to know each other more and it formed friendships. It was a funny and terrifying moment that started a friendship between us, and the bonding we had during the trip brought us closer. Not only that but “faith” also because it helps trust each other confidently and started a friendship because of that.

The word “faith” helps me to be brave and trust people in a believable and optimistic way every time when I’m in some kind of trouble or a small situation I think of the word.