Prayer for those Affected by Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana)

Loving Father, you are our shelter and our hope. We come to you with hearts full of trust in your love and mercy.

We pray for the victims of tropical storm Ondoy. May those who have lost homes and properties find shelter, enough food and clean water. Comfort those who are traumatized and those who are grieving for the loss of their families, neighbors and friends. Bless those who are sick and those who are injured that their health may be restored and their wounds cured. May you lead all who are stranded or lost back to those who love them. Guide the hands of the rescuers, the doctors and nurses and other volunteers and give them strength as they serve others with joy.

May this calamity bring people closer together, to help each other and to care for the environment. Give us the faith, the hope and the love to carry on. This we ask through Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

Source: Fr. Stephen
Video source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V6uRHxtQUM

10 Lessons I Learned from FarmVille

FarmVille is a Facebook game which allows members of the popular social network to plant, grow and harvest fruits and vegetables as well as raise animals on one’s virtual farm.

Here are ten lessons I learned while tending my virtual farm.

1. Growth takes time, effort, and lots of patience. You cannot hurry the crops. Or make your cows produce milk in seconds. Growth is neither sudden nor easy. It is a process which requires that one step be completed successfully before proceeding to the next.

2. There are always elements that will try to stifle your growth. In FarmVille you have to deal with leaves, weeds, and crows. I real life you have to deal with difficult situations and people who discourage you and try to pull you down.

3. But don’t worry about leaves, weed, and crows – your neighbors will always come to your aid. Look around, you are never alone. Believe in the goodness of others.

4. Helping others clean up leaves, scare off crows, or kill weeds not only give you extra coins and XP but also make you a better neighbor. Whenever I receive messages like this – “Hiya! Just look at these leaves! Would you help me rake them up?” I always click “yes”. My main motive is not to gain more coins and XP but to return the favor to people who have also helped me keep my own farm clean and healthy.

5. The more gifts you give, the more gifts you receive.
This is true in FarmVille. This is also true in real life. It was Orison Swett Marden who said “We must give more in order to get more. It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest.”

6. If you don’t harvest on time, your plants will wither. Just as in FarmVille, to succeed in real life you have to do the right thing at the right time.

7. You can share your triumphs with others. In Farmville you can share your rewards in the form of bonuses. I know of some people who regularly check their Facebook feeds to see if any of their friends have recently won any ribbons. For there they will find the option to earn a bonus from them. The better the ribbon the more coins you will get.

8. You need to work hard to get what you want and need. Aside from plowing, planting and harvesting and dealing with leaves, weeds and crows, you also have to budget your time and coins. You also need to buy the right seeds, trees and animals for optimum profit. Believe me, it can be complicated. If you want to succeed in FarmVille you have to work hard. If you want to succeed in life you have to work harder. As David Bly puts it – “Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.”

9. You do not become a Good Samaritan through a single act of kindness. You need to help other farmers hundreds of times before earning your Good Samaritan ribbon. In the same way, you do not become a good person just by doing one single act of goodness. You need to be a good person, a “good samaritan” repeatedly and consistently.

10. After a harvest there must plowing and sowing again. Such is life. The end of something is the beginning of another one. And I hope that as you complete one step in your life may you begin the next one as a person who has matured and learned his lessons. Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.

Got cela de Padre Stephen...

Eternal Worth...

My every visit to dad’s mausoleum connotes blessings. Unexpected, overwhelming miracles that paralyzes my emotion. The first was on the half May and now is the next! But sorry to keep these blessings private.

Last month, I dream t my father was frowning inside his casket. Talking with Jacky (my witchy angelic ally), I found out what my dream foretells. My father is worrying for me. Yes, I could feel that. His already 5 years in the city of God, but we are still attached through our spirits. I could still hear his advices. His laugh, I terribly missed. There is no moment that I want him alive. I want to share him my plans, my life, my love life. When I’m sad, a spirit to spirit cuddle with him eases me. When I sob, I converse with him. Eerie but sweet.

If only his alive, I will teach him how to play Farm town and Farmville. I would bring him to Boracay for Jet Ski unlimited, zorb escapade and a wind down with ouzo and gorgeous yorgos. We will call a cab. A yellow cab. Will crave for Mongolian barbecue and crepes and nachos!

But these are unfeasible.

He knows it. That I have so many dreams. So he told me to go on because for him, there is no income tax in dreaming. He doesn’t know his part of it.

And now, he kept on watching over me through touching the people he knew, could unravel, my sticky state.

His a true father in mud and air.