Married to a loving wife, Rey Yap has two boys. The eldest is 11 years old now, and the youngest is 7. He got to know the life of unity in 1992 when a former officemate of his introduced to him the Focolare and he started attending their meetings.

Rey works for a distributor that supplies various consumer products. He assists the owner of the company to run not only its day-to-day operations, but also its plans for growth and expansion. The pace of transactions in the consumer products industry is fast and tight especially in this period of financial difficulties. Beside challenging customers and competitors, one has to face internal problems such as increased costs of operations and therefore how to keep the business viable.

The company continuously seeks to implement stricter internal controls to overcome these challenges, such as employee embezzlement. Of course, as the level of challenge goes up, the amount of work increases. It is in this situation that Rey tries to put into practice the Gospel. From the moment he wakes up in the morning to the time he goes to bed at night, he tries to find opportunities to love and serve everyone at home, in the office, and in his neighborhood.

Though his schedules are tight and hectic, he finds time to reach out to other people in simple ways, like offering a ride to work when he sees some of his employees by the roadside while on his way to the office or a ride home when he returns home after work at night. He also enjoys simple greetings to his officemates, even to the office janitor. He makes an effort to ask the people around him how they are doing. Sometimes, if time allows, Rey takes out a few minutes to talk privately to the people he is greeting so as to know if their children are in good health, how their family is getting along, how their children are doing in their studies, etc. and therefore lessen the tension and stress at his workplace.
“Most of the time I just try to listen,” he says, “but in some instances, I also share personal experiences about my family and workplace in order to help my workmates in handling problems in life. Though I’m not a person who socializes too much, the fact that I try to make himself one with others gives me some ideas on how to converse and relate with others.”

After sometime of acting this way, Rey’s workers became the first ones to greet, “Kamusta na imong mga bata, Sir (How are your children doing, Sir)?” or “Kamusta ang ilang class, Sir (Are they doing well in school, Sir)?” and the like. “I felt, Ray says, “that love given is really returned.”

One day, Rey went to visit different supermarkets and customers in Mandaue City. A manager of a store happened to encounter him and told him how one of Rey’s workers had been very inefficient and had not served the store properly. The manager then called the store owner so Rey could discuss and resolve the matter. According to the manager, the owner was very angry with the kind of service he got from the distributor Rey is working with. Rey decided to wait for the owner and was a little nervous about the outcome of their meeting, as he never saw that person so angry.

“I believe that work can be a prayer if it is done according to God’s will,” Ray says, “and is offered to Him by loving our neighbors. So in that moment, out of love, I gave my complete attention to the store manager, while waiting for the owner.” Ray soon learned that the store manager was not mad with the whole company, but was annoyed about a specific product line on order that had not yet been received by the store. He also learned that the reason why the orders were not served to the store was the failure of the company’s own supplier to provide them the goods that should’ve been delivered to the concerned store.

When the store owner arrived, he began angrily declaring that he would stop selling the product lines of the distributing company and that he had already had enough. Rey did not make any comment since the fault of his company’s supplier was also their fault, but rather paid attention and listened to the store owner out of love.

After a long discourse, the owner calmed down a little. Rey was able to assure the owner that he would look into this matter. Then their conversation shifted to the store’s performance, which was supposedly one of the most successful in Mandaue City. Rey was amazed by and happy at the store owner’s comment to his store manager, about how the company where Rey works had helped him start up his business and how it had supported him so well in his store’s opening week, drawing over a lot of new customers. He even went on to say that if it had not been because of that distributing company, other suppliers would have not come to his store too… “I left the store assuring the owner that I would return the following day. He was very grateful for the attention given to him and his company. For me, it was just a confirmation of the fruits of the life of love and unity that I try to live daily.”

New City