Hello people, my name is Allan. In this chapter, I will tell you a summary of my life before I met God. Please bear in your mind that this is just the summary, so I will only tell you about the important thing in my life, not the details such as my feeling or my daily life.

I was born in a small city called Alagoas in Brazil. It is about 2000 km from the most famous city in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro. I have a little sister called Diana. We grew up together with our grandparents after my mother died right after Diana's birth. For my father, well, only god and my mother know who he is. But that's okay. I was happy and love my family.

Like every kid in Brazil, I spent my childhood time playing many sports and dreaming about being rich in the future. But, while almost all of the kids love to play football, I found my heart in volleyball. From the moment I hit my first spike, I know that this sport was meant for me. After the first game I played, I was hailed as a prodigy by all of the players. But I know that talent is not the most important thing in the world. Hard work beats talent when the talent doesn't work hard. That is the first thing lesson from my Grandfather that I carved in my heart.

So, I spent all my days training hard to be a professional volleyball player and playing with my little sister at the night. Regarding Diana, I will admit that I was spoiling her a lot. I will do everything to get anything she wants. But that's okay because I know growing up without parents is hard for her. And I don't have to worry about her being spoiled too much because our grandparents raised us to be hardworking people.

At that moment, I thought that my life is perfect. We were not rich, but we were a happy family. But everything changed when I was 17 years old. A pandemic virus called Covid attacked the world. The first time I read the news about that, I didn't think that it was a serious disease. That was until our grandparents got infected by the virus. They have to live in an isolated area for almost 2 weeks before they died with their hands holding each other. That was the best ending for them.

But for me, it was the beginning of my life. A month After the death of our grandparents, my little sister also got infected by that damn virus. And just 2 days after living in the isolated area, she died peacefully. I was sad but glad that she only suffered just for two days. And at that time, I know that my life in Alagoas was over. I will not forget, but I need to move on from the death of my family. So I sold my grandparent's house and went to Rio de Janeiro.

At the beginning of my journey, I thought about pursuing my dream to be a professional volleyball player. But after searching for information about how much money to spend just for joining the club, I left that dream far away and try to search for a new dream to pursue. And to search for a new dream, I need to learn how to survive.

I spent my first week in Rio searching for any job that I can do. And at the end of the week, I got a new job as a janitor in the branch of a big restaurant called WD. While the payment was small, after 6 months of working hard, I got a rare opportunity to be an apprentice for the chef of the restaurant. I learned a lot about cooking, from simple things such as how to properly cut ingredients to complex things such as studying the chemical components of each ingredient. After several weeks of being an apprentice, I realized how I feel about learning. It was the same feeling that I felt when I played volleyball for the first time. And at that time, I knew that I love anything about learning.

I continued my apprenticeship for about five years. And that was the best five years period of my life. I learned everything about Brazilian cuisine until my teacher felt I was better than him. I also studied a lot of things such as management, chemistry, mathematics, and my favorite topic, language. Before my apprenticeship, I only knew how to speak Portuguese. But now, I am proud to say that I was also proficient in several languages, such as English, Germany, and Japanese.

I also have a new hobby, reading manga. It started when a manga called Haikyuu was released in Brazil. It was a great manga about a volleyball competition for high school in Japan. The story really reminds me of my childhood dream of volleyball. After reading that manga, I try to read another manga, and after reading a lot of manga, I realized that I got addicted. I also tried to learn how to draw manga, and while the result is better than average, I don't think drawing manga is a good career in Brazil, so I left anything about manga as a Hobby.

After five years of learning about Brazilian cuisine, my teacher felt that he could not teach me anything new, so he recommend me to several of his friends to learn about other countries' cuisine. And that was the beginning of my new journey.

I spent my next ten years traveling around the world, to learn about their cuisine and culture. I spent my first year in Indonesia learning about their exotic traditional food. And I love this country because they remind me a lot of Brazil. After Indonesia, I went to India and studied their spicy food for about a year. And the next three years, I traveled to East Asian countries to learn about their famous cuisine. I have to say, I have a lot of fun in East Asian countries. I enjoyed my time learning Japanese, watching Korean idols, and learning about Kung Fu in China.

I spent the next five years traveling around the world, and in that period of time, I saw that the world is not okay. I spent a year in Afghanistan watching a lot of families struggling to survive the war. I also went to many poor countries in Africa and saw how poverty kills a lot of families. And because of that, I created a foundation to help people in poor and warred countries.

And after ten years of traveling around the world, I set a new destination to spend my life, New York. There is no specific reason to go to America. It is just that, I thought it will be good to spend my time in the city where people from many different cultures go to find a better life. And so, I start my new life in America.

In my first year in America, I decided to start my own restaurant, with the name World Wonder, and the restaurant's concept is it served foods from different continents each day. On Monday, the restaurant will serve foods from Asia, Tuesday will be Africa, Wednesday will be Europe, Thursday will be Australia, Friday will be America, and the restaurant will be closed for the weekend. World Wonder is the fruit of my hard work for about fifteen years traveling around the world and I am proud of my journey.

I have a good life. Maybe not a perfect life, but I am still happy. That is why, when I feel like I am dying in my sleep, I know that I can die peacefully, like my family. But to my shock and amazement, I woke up when I hear a beautiful voice says,

"Hello, Child."

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Author note:

Well, this is my first chapter. What do you think? You can also read five more chapters at my patreon account, pat_reon.com/zwolf1 (without '_' ). Thank you.