MIRACLES do happen.

Each new day in our lives may present miracles in unexpected ways. The most life-turning encounter I had last Jan. 18 touched greatly my spiritual consciousness and served to drill deeper the depths of my faith.

About two weeks past New Year, my 3-year old niece had a serious fall at home that later showed itself as a fatal emergency which sent everyone into panic mode. When she was brought to the nearest hospital, the doctor said she needs to be transferred to a much bigger one in Q.C. for CT-scan and neuro exam. She was exhibiting seizure attacks which terribly scared us all.

In the hospital, I was squeezing in silent earnest prayers and was holding to my rosary while I hurriedly processed all paperworks for her immediate CT-scan tests. The sight of my niece's little and fragile physique giving out bouts of seizure was just too hard to bare. Deep inside me I felt desperate and helpless. I was longing to spend some quiet moments of deep prayer to turn to God for help. I know He's the only one we've got at that crucial time.

Finally, I found this mini-altar for Mama Mary at the end of a secluded hallway just near the CT-scan station. I rushed towards it and succumbed into a silent deep prayer for my niece, asking for God's grace, mercy, and help for her to be cleared from all tests and whatever illness she may have. Then I saw these numerous novena copies to OUR LADY OF VAILANKANNI neatly stacked before Mama Mary's statue, thus making them hard to get unnoticed. Though sounding foreign and unfamiliar, I recited and prayed it as I felt it was the nearest and only lifeline that could bring me closest to God for my prayer.

Before my niece was brought back for a 2nd CT-scan, a woman came beside her stretcher. The woman struck my memory for she was unusually wearing a PINK "belo" and "sistery" attire draped over her street clothes and had "morena" features with the prominent Indian/Muslim circular mark on the forehead. She gazed upon my niece, prayed over her, and marked her forehead with a sign of the cross. Afterwards, she looked at me and uttered "Gagaling na yan!" Then I just faintly smiled back at her for me wanting to thank her but amidst the cloud of thoughts and emotions blurring my head that time.

I only got to sigh with relief when I saw my niece gave out a big yawn after she was pulled out from the CT-scan-- a strong sign her senses are finally back to normal. Thank God! More joy for me when she opened up her eyes into full consciousness as we were wheeling her back to the ward station. And finally when put back to bed, I talked to her lightly and jokingly to gauge her up if she was finally really okay, "Kumusta ka na, anu na pangalan mo?". Then she replied back loudly and clearly with her full name! That sounded like the finest music to my ears which ultimately brought back smiles to our faces. And I thanked God deeply from the silence of my heart. Thank you, thank you Lord!!! My niece recovered amazingly and unscathed from that moment afterwards.

Days after and I finally had the spare time to find out more about the unfamiliar "OUR LADY OF VAILANKANNI". But my Google search results only gave me the goosebumps and led me to tears. She hails with a basilica church from the town of Vailankanni in India. She's known as the Our Lady of Lourdes of the East, Our Lady of Good Health, and Our Lady of Miracles as I also learned later. She also has web images dressed in fuchsia PINK! The Indian features and the pink dress-- all these reminded me of the woman who prayed over my niece. If all those were co-incidental, there surely was some divine intervention. And I fell into tears by myself for I got to thinking Mama Mary may had actually came down before me face-to-face!

Photo courtesy via https://goo.gl/images/Z8lZdA

Photo courtesy via https://goo.gl/images/HSWEsL

Though this writing comes as a much toooo late post, I committed to sharing this experience and NOVENA PRAYER to as many people as I can. It's a pay forward for my niece's answered prayer. It's also my way of helping those who are also currently in deep waters.

Photo courtesy of GoEntrepinay

Never lose faith in God through the loving intercession of Mama Mary. Indeed, GOD IS REAL! I experienced His great miracle and anyone is never far from experiencing His divine love and mercy, too!!! God bless everyone.

It's only the 7th day and so it's better to greet you all now than never at all...
Happy New Year to all Entrepinays!!!  

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Walk with us in your entrepreneurial journey for 2017.
Keep dreaming big, sissies.
And cheers to your future negosyo enterprise!!!  

Waiting for some speck of inspiration for your business? Here are seven suggested movies which should be a "must-watch" for female entrepreneurs.  Hopefully, the list knocks you off from your seat and pushes you even more to pursue your dream business. 

Try a movie marathon featuring women entrepreneurs.
Photo courtesy of  Ginny via Flickr, Creative Commons

You may catch a glimpse of the film trailers at Youtube and pile up which to see for a movie date night or marathon for the coming long holiday weekend, Aug 29-31.  Enjoy watching!

1. Julie and Julia, 2009. 

Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, a New York employee tired with her daily job that she challenges herself to cook all recipes from the the game-changer cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child, portrayed by Meryl Streep.  The movie then weaves the life story of Julia and how she mastered French food with her genuine passion and boldness.

2. Sunshine Cleaning, 2008. 

Life seemed to have taken the opposite direction for sisters, Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blunt) Norkowski. But not until when Rose discovers there's money from cleaning services for crime scenes.  Rose then puts in all that she's got for growing her new found business despite the odd work involved and finally help change Norah's life with a job.

3. P.S. I Love You, 2007.

After the death of her husband, Gerry (Gerard Butler), Holly (Hillary Swank) painfully sulks into grief, but gradually finds the courage to live anew.  Unknowingly, Gerry prepared before his death a series of letters designed to help her move on.  Enrolling herself at a fashion school, Holly found her passion in shoe design and eventually, opened her footwear company. 

4. Chocolat, 2000.

Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) and her daughter arrive one winter day at a quiet French community deeply seated with tradition. When Vianne opened her extraordinary chocolate shop to business across the church, this didn't meet warm reception from the villagers. But she managed to turn this around with her steadfast devotion to grow the shop and eventually, won their hearts with her delicious chocolat. 

5. Sliding Doors, 1998.

Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow) gets fired from her advertising job and hastens to catch the train trip, but two situations happen. At first, Helen lands inside the train and arrives to see Gerry, her boyfriend (John Lynch), with another girl. She dumps Gerry, meets a new guy and betters her life with her own advertising firm. At the other, Helen misses the train and gets home when the other woman already left. She grows suspicious of Gerry's love and turns dismal. 

6. You've Got Mail, 1998

Small-size bookshop owner Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) despises big-time competitor Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), owner of Foxbooks bookstore retail chain that opened just across from hers. But their online meeting results to an anonymous romance via Internet, with both remaining unknown to each other's real identity. Later however, they uncover who the real persons they're falling for and struggle to merge their emotions and business positions.   

7. Baby Boom,1987.

New York-based career woman, J.C. Wiatt (Diane Keaton) is tied up to her job all her life. But suddenly, this changes when she's made to take care of a baby left by dead relatives. Having the new baby with her, J.C. is led to life-changing events and to move to Vermont where she starts her own company on baby food.     

This red, pocketbook-sized prayer book was given to me by my loving mother-in-law one afternoon in June last year.   The book "Straight From The Heart, A Prayer Companion" is a 360+-paged collection of prayers compiled and edited by Rev. Fr. Mario Jose C. Ladra and published by St. Paul's Philippines in 2007. 

A treasury of prayers from this little red book. 
Photo courtesy of Go Entrepinay

From the looks of it, with the book fully clad in rosy red and heart visuals slightly embossed in between its title phrases "Straight From The Heart" on front cover, it proved to me as a gift really special for it opens up a wealth of various prayers from which you could draw out peace, inspiration and strength during one's down moments.  

Found inside of course are our common prayers like The Lord's Prayer, among others, and prayers for various parts of the day. Other prayers included those directed to Jesus, Holy Spirit, Mama Mary and popular saints.  It also has inspirationals and Psalm Verse Prayers, foremost favorite of mine is Psalm 23: The Good Shepherd.

Straight From The Heart also comes handy and useful for church ceremonials like Holy Mass and Novenas, and during Holy Week's Stations of the Cross.  The book seems endless with prayers for one can also come across a prayer for almost every need --- for families, for healing, for depression, for protection, for generosity, for serenity, for peace, for strength, and so on.

My favorite part is the list of prayers rolled out for students, religious and people from different professions.  I was amazed to find a couple of prayers exactly fitted for my current pursuit of entrepreneurship, and so I decided to share them as well to all Entrepinays out there. May the prayers below help articulate all hopes and aspirations for our businesses' success.

A Businessman's Prayer (from page 311)

Almighty Father, thank you for the business you have enabled me to begin and sustain.
Enlighten my way in leading and inspiring people engaged in the business organizations,  industry, and communities that I serve.
Allow us the mastery of your will for the role you would want this business to play in your divine plan.
Provide us all the resources, human and material for this enterprise.
Sustain us financially for growth and development, and keep us humble with our successes and innovative and creative in our endeavors.
Help us in our crises, and guide us in every step we take as we run and manage our business.
Let our business involvements be models of inspired integrity  and allow it to bring good health, wealth, and prosperity among your people.
Bless our business partners, clients, and suppliers.
Give us the faith and confidence that we can accomplish even what seems to be impossible.
Move us to dispense all our actions to be full of love for you and the rest of mankind.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.

A Consecration Prayer for an Enterprise (from Page 342)

Heavenly Father, you tell us in the sacred scriptures that any house that is not built on firm rock cannot withstand dangerous storms and tempests.
You are our rock and salvation.
Without you, our efforts at building up our enterprise will come to naught.
Without your grace, everything we touch can easily crumble into nothingness.

We humbly come before you to acknowledge all the many blessings we have received---                   all these come from you,
for in you do we live and move and have our being, and that without you, we can do nothing.
All our success comes from you.
Thank you for the countless favors you have showered on  (Name of company).

Loving Father, in gratitude, allow us to consecrate (Name of company) to your loving heart.
We consecrate to you our stockholders and business partners that they may be guided by Your will in their decisions.
We consecrate to you our officers - may they continue to faithfully serve you as they carry out our company's mission, vision, and goals.
We consecrate to you all our employees as well as their families.

May we all continue to do our best as we go about our work and commit ourselves to the betterment of our company, our community, and our country.
We consecrate to you our clients and customers.
May they continue to patronize our products and services.

Bless and protect all of us in our dealing with one another.
With the help of our Blessed Mother, we make our consecration to you.
In the name of your Son, Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

It had been almost a month since schools opened and news from PAG-ASA ended summer officially. But I can't help look back at the summer that just passed with special regard and soft spot in my heart.  It was my best summer ever.  It was the summer of 2014. 

Create your best summer ever. 
Photo courtesy of Unsplash via Pixabay

Admit it, it isn't always that we find strength to push ourselves from our comfort zones.  It just feels so convenient and secured to do that which we are most familiar with--- no questions, no doubts and most of all, no worries. But just last summer, I once again found myself stepping up to try something new and taking action to actualize it. And finally, making a turnaround into something real from a mere aspiration, just a dream. 

The last time I did the same was back in 2012 when I formally registered my biz.  But this time around, I knew and felt it was much different. Getting into the internet as a publisher for the first time was like venturing into an unknown space. It also ushers in a totally different experience as your actions do not affect only yourself, but a wider public audience as well.

I've long been wanting to bring my business online with its own website and to level up promo efforts via social media marketing with the highly visited facebook site. But the downside is, I'm neither the hard-core techie who understands all those HTML computer programming languages, nor the computer savvy Gen Z-er who is much hooked with the web that navigating through facebook, tweeter, google+, pinterest, linkedin, and other social media sites seems just so much like a simple task as malling or strolling by the park perhaps.  At the least, I consider myself a computer literate person with quick learning abilities and above average mental aptitude.  If these assets alone would suffice to compensate,  then I thought I can also do internet marketing just like others.  From the overall view of things, it appeared to me the world wide web was the ultimate frontier to conquer.

And so I tried and carried on.  It was the mere thought of seeing my future blog entries and business website that pushed, pushed and pushed me.  I had no choice then but to do lots of googling, reading and learning from relevant websites to help me put pieces of the big puzzle together.  Sometimes, it was also a frustrating hit and miss thing....trying out a new site and finishing on a dead-end, then try again.  It was totally a self-learned endeavor. But amazingly, one click just led to another, and another, until all my questions were answered and my thoughts were cleared on how to go about with things.  Then finally, the full picture came into view. 

And now from the time I started trying around March this year, I finally went live with my own Facebook business page last May 17, posted my first own blog entry at Go Entrepinay dated May 29,  and published my events marketing website last June 28.  Best of all, I did all these without spending a cent!  Quite trivial they may seem, but these outputs give so much sense of accomplishment to a humble and regular netizen like me without any high-flung computer expertise at all.  Couldn't believe it?  Well, I really DID!

Thinking back, what a co-incidence that all these nice developments happened during last summer.  And as we know, most people look forward to summer for good things to come their way as all the time and the world are theirs during this sunniest season of the year.  Summer means breaking away from homeworks, fun late-night hanging out with friends, finding new love, travelling to far places, finding new discoveries, and still a whole lot of possibilities one can think of!
 

But for me, I remember most the summer of 2014 as the time I rose above myself and totally evolved into another new, different, but definitely, better person in the end.  And this came about starting just from a dream, a try, a struggle, a learning, and finally, a reality. I guess that translates into an excellent analogy for the making of an entrepreneur.

So how about you?  When was your best summer ever? 

I've always loved to write since I was young. But eventually, I ended up pursuing a business course in college. No much hurt feelings though. The love for writing remained just there and came handy whenever writing tasks strolled by or it's needed.  I imagined my flair for writing like a tool or weapon that I could draw out help from during my own personal challenges and it served me well.  More often that not, I got results that I wanted from writing for family and friends, at school, and later, even at work. There was silent gladness whenever I heard praises from people who got to read my stuff. They gave confirmation somehow that my inner wanting to write deserved some place. At least even just inside me...for the moment.  Oh well, that WAS me during my life's journey BACK then.

And so I went on with the years working on a challenging yet fulfilling career in FMCG marketing for local and multinational firms.  But even then, my feeling for writing never left and it stuck with me like a best friend.  Writing was like an empowerment to me, a gush of adrenalin that lighted me up whenever I'm engaged at it.  It assisted me well in churning out successful campaigns and promos. Sometimes, it just helped me get through those hell days ravaging at marketing plans, or just finishing little crazy tasks in marketing's fast- paced world.  While at it, I have evolved to become my own person, at least to that which I think I am, hahaha!....a strong-willed, independent-thinking and business-minded person.  Oh well, that WAS me during my life's journey BACK then.

So strong has my business inclination become that I found myself embracing later the call for entrepreneurship.  Currently, I face the demands of my own business alongside marriage and family.  Before I just saw my mom's juggling of all those tasks for managing the home as one easy task. But now, I say it's NOT!  Being an Eve's descendant myself,  I realize the many roles that we females have to play at home, at work, and at community.  Once again, I succumb to my writing so I can rise above another goal and manage to be best at it. But finally this time, my writing has founded a brilliant place--the internet.

Internet blogging as one brilliant venue for writing buffs.
Photo courtesy of StartupStockPhotos via Pixabay

And so I created this blog, Go Entrepinay.  May it be a venue for sharing my business, economics, and marketing knowledge, plus practical work experiences as an entrepreneur.  May it also be a venue for finding ways that would help fill in a woman's many other roles while entrepreneuring!  Lastly, may it be a venue for women, especially Pinays, to find and become the best of themselves. 

To all enterprising Pinays, I send out one big cheer to you... Kaya mo 'yan, sis!

Oh well, this IS me during my life's journey NOW. 

Join me!