A prayer for 9/11 volunteers

Curtain-raisers:

• Guess which four actors from a TV station’s pool of talents are (jokingly, of course!) referred to as The Supremes (after the four-female black singing group of yesteryear led by Diana Ross). The four guys earned that sobriquet during the Ad Congress in Cebu late last year because they would get lost at night and were discovered to have been enjoying themselves in gay abandon. Any clue? Let me see... I’d rather call the four, yes, Jolly People on Joyful Rhythm. Good enough?

• Barely a week after Funfare’s Mga halu-halong hula-hula came out, the prediction that four shows would be axed by ABS-CBN came true. They are Your Honor, Loren Legarda’s Kabalikat, Flames and Ang TV. Part of the company’s cost-cutting measures, you know.

•Meanwhile, here’s a letter from Funfare-friendly Paul R. Mortel of MBLA Court, Malanday, Marikina City, correcting an error on Game KNB?: I would like to call the attention of the producers and researchers of the TV program Game KNB? regarding a mistake that occurred during the "Face-off" portion of the said show. I am specifically referring to the statement that "according to the DILG, there are now 73 provinces in the country." Please note that the correct number of provinces in our country is 78.

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I just received the following letter from my good friends Ruben and Janet Nepales (nee Rodriguez), who are based in L.A. with their two daughters Nikki and Ella. Ruben and Janet have good news: Nikki won first prize in a prayer-writing contest. Nikki inherited for sure her mom and dad’s writing talent.

Here are excerpts of Ruben and Janet’s letter:

Early this year, Nikki, our older daughter, joined a prayer writing contest held by the Columbian Mission Education Office in observance of 2001 as "International Year of Volunteers." By the grace of God, Nikki, 12, won first place for her prayer and we are sharing it here with you, hoping it would inspire you to pray for volunteers around the world, especially for the numerous people who helped in the aftermath of the September 11 events:

Loving God,

We thank you for all the kind people

who share their time and talent

to help make this world

a better place to live in.

Please shower these helpful volunteers

with your love and blessings

and may these volunteers’ many acts

of selfless service to others

inspire us to do the same. Amen.

Volunteer chauffeurs, tutors, dietitians, personal assistants, household help, motivational gurus, swim coaches, name it – that’s how we sometimes feel as we shepherd Nikki and Ella, 10, into pre-teenhood. The family’s schedule can get so crazy – throw in our article interviews, event coverage, not to mention our volunteer work with the girls’ academic decathlon and swim teams, parent school board, choir, etc. – that one time we pleaded to each other, "Please, please let me do the weekend overtime work (you know, the one that you get paid for). You stay in the house." (The word "stay" is misleading here, considering the household’s weekend extracurricular activities.) We shared a good laugh on that one.

All these hectic chauffeuring and volunteering have some priceless rewards and moments, of course.

One of the first holiday CDs we played this December is Joy: A Choral Celebration of Christmas (it’s our favorite) by the Philippine Madrigal Singers. As The Madz sang Fuentecilla Que Corres (more popularly known as A La Nanita Nana), Ella remarked, "We’re singing that in our holiday concert." Our 10-year-old is learning this beautiful Spanish song? We’re looking forward to sitting down and listening to Ella, Nikki and their fellow choir singers perform that and other festive hymns in German, Italian and French in a holiday concert. It’s their latest in a series of quarterly performances (their last one, Requiem, was with our parish’s adult choir and members of the L.A. Chamber Orchestra). Throughout the year, on the Sunday morning mass, this children’s choir helps refresh our spirits, recharging us for the coming week’s "volunteering" acts.

And early this year, Nikki duplicated Ella’s feat in the Hewlett-Packard Annual Young Writers’ Contest – she won first place too with her short story entry.

Somewhere between ferrying the girls to pre-school and their first slumber parties, they have been growing up. We couldn’t believe our ears when we first heard, separately, Ella tell us as we hung around like we always do before a practice or something started: "You can go home now." This is the same girl who wanted us to be always within her eyesight in the park playground? Ella said the words matter-of-factly. She wasn’t being rude – she was implying that we didn’t have to watch her anymore as if she was a toddler. (Oh yes, come to think of it, we do have better things to do – there’s that dog poop waiting to be scooped in the side yard.) When we told each other about having experienced hearing the same words from Ella, we just had to laugh at the seeming absurdity of it all – the parent being sent home!

Fortunately, the girls’ pre-teen rites have not involved any demand to see navel-baring pop tarts or any of the boy bands in concerts. At least, not yet. So we have not joined the ranks of thirty-and forty-something parents looking bewildered amongst screaming pre-pubescent girls at stadiums.

– CHEERS,

Ruben and Jane