Prayer Meeting

We were excused from 3 periods after Lunch time to attend our last Yr 12 Prayer Meeting conducted by Yr 12 teachers. This meeting is basically a routine that's there each and every year, a meeting where we sat as a year group and listen to some teachers and students pray for our upcoming HSC, our parental support for the HSC, a condusive environment either in school or in our country for our HSC, our future etc etc.

By (almost) the end of the sermon, we had Principal's Message, a sharing given by the principal of our school. She talked about how a night she was turning on her computer to print off some documents while reading the newspaper. There, she read about Kenji Nagai, a Japanese reporter who was shot to death when reporting in Myanmar (the actual article here). As soon as she finished reading this, she leaned across the table to get some used paper to print the documents. And you know what she found there? Her daughter's Curriculum Vitae (CV) when she applied for an internship at the Jakarta Post last June.

She read the CV for us. Her daughter (Jenna) was a passionate believer in words, she believes that words can change people. Her love for journalism developed slowly, but steady.

"I live side by side with poverty in this country. I understand it. When I was in high school, I used to go to kampongs to talk with the people, and write something about it, to be distributed to others around me. I know this is slow, but I believe that words can make a difference."

Her mom (the principal herself) was near to tears as she read the lines to us.

"I believe in my country," she wrote.

Jenna is now in Japan, pursuing further education in journalism. The reason her mom was so near to tears is because she believes that this coincidence (reading an article about Kenji and Jenna's CV) is God trying to tell her something.

She was overcome with emotion, that one day, alas, her daughter might be Kenji. And she'll be in the same position as Kenji's mom now. She knows that her daughter is passionate about this, and she might put her life on the second place as she pursues her story. The whole room is silent.

And deep inside me, there's this respect growing for Jenna, a girl whom I have never even met before in my life. She had a purpose, her life might be meaningful limited to those around her, but someday as she fulfills her purpose, I believe that she will touch much more, strangers like me who have never met her.

You can make a meaning out of your life. But to have a purpose, you'll have to listen deep into your heart.