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My heart is filled with joy and hope after reading different stories and experiences of my classmates being pastoral ministers in their assigned missions. What inspires me most  is that these stories and experiences of service and mission are leading into one main goal that is to glorify God. Most of us experiences struggles along our way that may possibly hinder us to begin and continue the mission God given us but then with faith and courage, we chose to serve, to live and to be with God.

I am happy realizing different positive values from their sharing: First is the faith. Many have shared doubts, struggles and problems that had been encountered in the mission, this is what surely the thing that is common to all of us. But despite these barriers, all of us hold on to our faith and pursue the mission God has called us for and through this faith, all of us experiences success in the mission. Our faith is also the reason why we are still giving away ourselves for others, making a lot of sacrifices and continue denying ourselves to give glory to the Father. Second is the willingness or the openness. When God calls our name for a specific mission, we dare ourselves to say "Lord, challenge accepted". We also envision ourselves to pursue God's call for us or what ever mission He may give. It is through the openness of our hearts that we respond YES to him. Third is a loving heart to God. Everyone, as pastoral ministers, have shown love to our mission, to the people we are catering and to the ministries we are with. These are the manifestions of our love to God. Loving the people and the mission, is loving Jesus.

I believe that our desire to serve is known by God, that is why He continue to send us the Holy Spirit to guide and to work with us so that we may become joyful and fruitful servants.

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The moment I read all the personal grace-filled story of my classmates, this statement from Mother Teresa came into my mind, “Yesterday has come, tomorrow has not yet come, we only have today. Let us begin.”

Selfless. This is the first value that is magnified. Each story I have read is a person being a living saint for others. These people did not waste any time, they are all ready to respond to the need of the Church and to God’s call. They are ready to deny themselves and respond to what is needed.
Generous. It seems also that the language of Love is Giving. They are willing to give their time and effort to all the task that is given to them. It feels like the more they give, the more they receive. The more they receive Christ Himself.
Hopeful(l). Despite the challenges, struggles, worries, and negativeness, they are FULL of HOPE. Even if there are times that they are being tested up to the lowest that they can be, they never give up. Why? because Hope is with them, Jesus is working with them.
How amazing it is that God placed people here on earth with the same task - to share Him to the people around us, and to love others the way He does but also in their own unique way - teachers, Catechists, volunteers, religious, mothers, brothers, sisters and many more.  These people work with God every day with the fire in their hearts, They begin.

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My Personal Synthesis on the Class Postings

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My Personal Synthesis on the Class Postings

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"The strength of the Church is not the strength of its institutions but the authenticity of its witness." I am amazed how God was able to transform and mold lives by calling and sending out Shepherds to pasture His sheep. The sharing of peak experiences, discovery, and dreams led me to realize that God really never stops working in calling His people and making us feel His love. Their experiences verified the burning fire I have within me whenever I do what God calls me to be.

With this, I have seen these following values during the process of this appreciative inquiry: First is our openness to God's call. Most of the Pastoral Ministers were not 100% sure of taking the challenge or does not know if we are equipped enough for the mission.But because we have heard God's call, therefore we accepted it wholeheartedly. If he was the one who called us, therefore He was the one who qualified us. Second is, the sense of gratitude. Because we have experienced ourselves, God's love for us and so we would like to share that also to others so that they can experience His amazing love that transforms and completes. Even if we are to face rejection, hardships, and difficulties but because our hearts are thankful, we make sure to give back to God through our mission. May the Holy Spirit sustain us on our work and mission especially during these trying times.

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Once more, I was enjoying the happy time when rereading and reading my synthesis and that of my groupmates and classmates. I thank God for this graceful time and for the positive values that God sent in my heart on the discovery and dream Phase and those of my classmates. First, I realize that all of us feel happy and grateful in what we are doing as our job or mission. Normally, experiencing joyfulness and graces in daily life is not easy in the trying time of this Pandemic but now we can. That is to say God is good forever. Forever God is good.

Second, I understand that the reason why we feel happy and grateful is the graces of transformation in our life, work or mission. We recognize that God enforces our faith, strengthens our hope and enriches our charity so that we perceive our burning pastoral heart. This improvement inspires us to dedicate more to the vocation and mission that we are engaging and carrying now. This “more” is seen in our dream that we shared.

Finally, as a consequence, I hope that if our dreams come true, we can serve more effectively as envisioning and God’s graces that we are receiving now will not be wasted. Moreover, I believe that once put in our heart those dreams, God also prepared and bestowed on us necessary assistance. For my part, I see we are trying to do what St. Peter taught that: As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace. (1 Pet 4:10). Yes, with God’s graces, we can serve more and more effectively and can perform all God wants us to do.

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“Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; Yes, our God is compassionate.

Psalm 116:5

God works in mysterious ways.  This I have been proven while reading the posts of other groups.  I am amazed at how God touches the lives of each one.  In spite of the many instances that we offended Him because of the wrong choices we made.  He is always there to give us many chances, to rise up and learn from our mistakes.  From this, we will realize that those are blessings in disguise.

I also discovered three values from the posts of each one.  First; Obedience to the will of God because this is what is best for us.  Second; surrendering to Him everything so that everything will be in the proper place.  We are just doing a little while it is God doing the rest.  Third: Steadfastness in the midst of persecutions because these are all necessary for us to grow in our faith, hope, and love in Him.  These are also means for us to be one with God in His suffering.

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After reading the sharing, comments and realizations of my classmates it led me to a realization and to discover the top three values emerge from each post.

The Church are filled with (1) servant leaders/ shepherd who will guide his flock. (2) Compassionate and (3) openhearted disciples inspire by the loving examples of Christ.

I am amazed with their story of vocation, on how God touch their hearts to be his instrument in leading the Christian community especially the poor. Despite of different challenges and rejections they encounter along their journey as Pastoral minister/evangelizer they still chose the right way, to serve and to remain in love with God.

To serve God is to surrender everything, deny ourselves and take up his cross. Perhaps we don’t even know what life/path ahead, but because of the love that we received from our loving Father it fueled our engine to continue the life of service, painful ways and bridge the word to those who needed the most.

May we continue to follow our hearts and find our deepest joy in service and love for God.

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MY SYNTHESIS ON THE CLASS POSTINGS
“What is Apollos, after all, and what is Paul? Ministers through whom you became believers, just as the Lord assigned each one…The one who plants and the one who waters are equal, and each will receive wages in proportion to his labor. For we are God’s co-workers: you are God’s field, God’s building.”( 1 Cor.3:5,8-9). There is a spiritual revolution happened to St.Paul after his conversion in Damascus, and as minister of Christ in the community of Corinth. Reading and reflecting the discovery and dreams of my classmates made me reflect that there is something more that we can do living our own life selfishly. Like St.Paul we are called to be channel of God’s grace to others.
There are three positive values that emerged in my insight on the Discovery and Dream phase of Affirmative Inquiry. First, we discover our identity as Pastoral minister. Through the process of Discovery phase we go deeper and see the goodness and holiness of each person. Second, we accept the dream of God in our life with humility. We realize that it is God who noticed us first, who called us, valued and loved us. We are being set apart by God to conform our lifestyle according to His Gospel values. Third, living the dream of God to the community that we are ministering. It is so beautiful that we wake up in the morning and ask ourselves, what is the mind of Christ? What is the dream of God? What would Jesus do? (WWJD). Let us continue to walk with Him as a fellow traveler in the “companioned journey” of our life as God’s co-worker because without Him we can never make it on our own.

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First of all, all their stories from their peak experiences are inspiring and motivating. Actually, I also had a chance to reflect with the help of this activity and most especially with their wonderful life-giving sharing. I was able to discern and silently crafting my dreams for my beloved mission. As I read their stories, most of us showed these following values:

Faith. All of us encountered challenges and these challenges tested our faith in God. We were able to experience fears, doubts and even hopelessness but we hold on to God who is the source of our strength. And this faith keeps us going and making us the Pastoral Minister God wants us to be.

Love. This wonderful value makes things beautiful. Even we are in the midst of uncertainty, doubts, and anxiety, God showered his love to us through the people around us. We were able to feel that we are loved through situations and people we never expected at the moment. God’s love and providence through his wonderful instruments make us stay in His love through our chosen vocation.

Perseverance. As we go along our journey, there were times that we would feel tired because of the many demands of the world from us. There were also times that we wanted to give up because we felt discouraged through the rejections and criticisms we encountered. But we all know that we are created and called for something bigger and that is to continue the work of Jesus in our own little ways. This maybe tiring but we continue to move on and make the best in our chosen vocation. Just like St. John Paul II said, "I plead with you-never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never be discouraged. Be not afraid."

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My Personal Synthesis on the Class Postings

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My Personal Synthesis on the Class Postings

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As I have read the peak experiences of my groupmates and the synthesis of the postings of the class, I can conclude that it is clearly visible God called us all in different ways. We all have our own stories, we have different situations in our life but all of these are used by God to draw us nearer to Him.  All of us are being called in specific missions whether to serve in our parish church, to serve as catechists in schools,  to serve in the families and youths by guiding and bringing them closer to God and to the Church. We have different gifts that are used in the service and it has one goal, that is to fulfill our ultimate purpose in life.

Here are the 3 positive values that I recognized from their sharing. First is the openness in each of us to God’s call. All of us responded with a YES!  to God even though we cannot guarantee that we can fulfill it but we just trust God for the mission that He has entrusted us. Second is our dependence to God, we know that we cannot do anything possible without Him, we are nothing without Him that is why we ask for His grace to guide us and put everything on Him to fulfill our mission. Third is the passion in our service, when God called us to a specific mission, we learned to embrace and put love in it. We desired to nourish and dreamed it to bear more fruit.

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PERSONAL SYNTHESIS ON THE CLASS POSTINGS

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PERSONAL SYNTHESIS ON THE CLASS POSTINGS

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It's truly a blessing to be able to have the opportunity to read through my groupmates' and classmates' sharing about their peak experiences and dreams as pastoral ministers. Reading what they went through, what moved them the most, what changed them for the better, and what they learned through their experiences move me. It inspires me to all the more give myself as a gift to Christ and to His bride, the Church. Doing the first two stages of appreciative inquiry - dream and discovery - indeed helped me to have the eyes and heart that see what I can appreciate more and even learn from.

The top 3 positive values I have seen considering all the sharing I've read are: (1) Sincerity of heart - as pastoral ministers, one cannot bear fruitful work in the ministry if the minister is not sincere in his or her love for Christ and love for service and mission. (2) Generosity - I believe that generosity is the fruit of a heart that truly knows how much he or she is blessed because of the love of God. A minister who recognizes his or her blessedness can't help but be generous of himself or herself too towards God and other people. (3) Sense of Mission - Because of the love springing from the hearts of my classmates who are also pastoral ministers, their love for working for the mission of God's Kingdom does not end with what they have already experienced and where they are serving now but actually extends even further to a life of continuous mission even after our studies. I believe that all these beautiful values are the fruits of the work of the Holy Spirit in everyone. May God be praised!