0115-0839ISSN COLLABORATIONS The Road to Our First Olympic Gold
REGULARS 4 iContact Michelle Anne P. Diamante Powerful Partnerships 6 Stewardship Rose F. Fausto Money and Life Lessons From Modern-day Swindlers 8 Life Musings Health & Home Staff We’re All in This Together 14 Grace in the Act Leslie R. Bagagñan Asking for Signs 18 Home Gardening Saul L. Roylo Siling Labuyo 20 Modern Homemaking Royce Bellaire G. de Luna Home Cleaning Checklist 22 Education Corazon D.C. Hernandez Of Shared Meals and Letters About the Cover Achievement Unlocked. Team Hidilyn Diaz (Team HD) ended in 2021 the Philippines' gold medal drought in the Olympics. Read more about the team's dynamics through sports nutritionist Coach Jeaneth Aro on p. 24. Cover photo courtesy of Coach Jeaneth Aro Unless otherwise credited, all photos and graphics are by Harold Bryan L. Namoca and Lebette Angel M. Baybay, respectively. SEPTEMBER–OCTOBERCONTENTS2022 COMING UP . . . Devotions ∙ Mayor Lucy Torres-Gomez on Relationships ∙ Gout Out ∙ Be Glad to Plant Tanglad ∙ How to Speak in a Loving Way ∙ Living in a Post-truth World ∙ Entering Menopause ∙ A Doctor Amid Devastation COLUMNS 5 Journey Toward Eternity Dr. Carlito P. Quidet, Jr. Collaborations 13 Personal Answers Dr. Sheryll Ann M. Castillo Someone to Talk to 21 Dear Doctor Linda L. Varona Diabetes and HbA1c Monitoring 27 Consult Your Lawyer Atty. Silvino L. Sumagaysay, Jr. Sensitive InformationPersonal 32 Food for the Family Dr. Miriam R. Estrada Food Jags 38 Standpoint Nathanlie M. Baldoza Backyard Lessons 40 Learner’s Lab Dr. Mary Grace L. De Guzman Are Bacteria Your Buddies or Enemies? 28 6
33 A Day in the Life of . . . a Vlogger Eman R. Bustamante Making Memories Count 34 People & Places SULADS Tagakolu: Perseverance Amid Poverty 36 Children’s Corner Children Around the World The Lauhala Tree 39 Arts & Crafts Gabriel S. Tiano Heart Book Folding 44 Hope for Today’s Families Series Willie and Elaine Oliver How to Live Happily Ever After 46 Word for the World James Rey M. Cabañero Community of Faith 47 Notes From the Frontlines Maricel L. Candelario An Addiction for Many Good Reasons FEATURES 10 SuperChamps: Kids Helping Kids and Communities Health & Home Staff An NGO started and continued by kids and their parents 16 Teamwork Lessons From the Tortoise and the Hare Elias Y. Apacible, Jr. Some things are better than winning the race 24 Coach Jeaneth Aro: Team HD and Working Collaboratively Health & Home Staff How it takes a village to win in the Olympics 28 Space Will Not Save Us Ryan Stanton The ethics of the recent space race 30 The Responsibility of Privilege Mark Delaney Could you be blinded by a silver spoon? 42 When Love Fuels Collaboration: Our Journey to Better Health Megan Fleur C. Crampatanta In sickness and in health 39 24 30
H ave you figured out your life’s purpose when you were just 10? Most of us were probably just playing with our friends, watching TV, or bonding with our family. But what if you can find your purpose, reach out to others, and have fun at the same time?That’s the opportunity that SuperChamps Life Mission Center (SuperChamps) offers to children (and adults).
HEALTH &
Kids Helping Kids and Communities
S uper C hamps
NavalesF.Aireenofcourtesyphotos Health & Home ︱ 10 ︱September–October 2022
Beginning It all began on a usual Sunday, September 1, 2013, in the house of Rey and Aireen Navales in Quezon City. Their then 3-year-old son, Vince Matthew, and then 2-year-old daughter, Jia, invited five neighborhood kids over to their home. Vince and Jia played with their friends. Aireen taught them songs and told them stories. Rey supplied the needed materials. That one instance became a regular occurrence every Sunday, and within eight months, those five kids grew to a hundred. This prompted the Navales family to organize the program into what they call Play, Learn, and Serve (PLS). At PLS, the family trains and mentors kids in leadership, discipleship, career awareness, and health. To achieve these goals, the group organizes outreach activities for poor urban communities, children with cancer, children with special needs, the elderly in care homes, indigenous communities, and the homeless.
By HOME STAFF
“Is it him, Lord?” I whispered. “Sir Jay!” called the superintendent. The man came closer to where we were standing. He looked exactly like the man I was praying for.
Could the absence of a sign itself be the sign? I was not sure then. The feelings eventually fizzled out. I moved on and forgot about those signs.
photoscourtesyofauthor Health & Home ︱ 14 ︱September–October 2022
Frozen in time In October 2011, teachers in our region/administrative area had a three-day retreat in a school nearby.
Grace in the Act
While the superintendent and I were talking to each other, a man from a distance suddenly captured my attention. Things suddenly moved in slow motion.
By Leslie R. Bagagñan
L ike many girls, I prayed for a tall, dark, and handsome Prince Charming who would make me the queen of his kingdom. But as I became older, I realized that true love was not all about appearance. It is a principle. It is not gained by simply asking for a sign but by earnest prayer. No sign I find midnights the best time to talk to God, especially when I have special requests. I remember telling Him once what I believed my future husband would look like. I was not praying to meet him soon, though. I just prayed for a sign for me to know when I would finally meetThenhim.it happened—or so I thought. In college, I fell for an Engineering student. I was so enamored with the guy that I kept asking for signs if he was God’s answer to my prayers. Those signs never happened.
As soon as I arrived at the venue, the superintendent told me he wanted to introduce me to someone. I smiled and nodded, not because I was interested but because almost everybody in the retreat was trying to set me up with a gentleman. I was just 21 at that time. Quite frankly, I did not find their efforts entertaining.
May your team—be at school, in church, at work, or anywhere—gain useful insights from this story as my team and I have. The online story
A story that has been making rounds in business sites, albeit with unclear authorship,1 features a retelling of Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare.
Lesson #1: Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady. If you have two people in your organization, one slow, methodical and reliable, and the other fast and still reliable at what he does, the fast “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb
Teamwork Lessons From
TianoS.illustration/Gabriel Health & Home ︱ 16 ︱September–October 2022
By ELIAS Y. APACIBLE, JR.
So he challenged the tortoise to another race. The tortoise agreed. This time, the hare ran without stopping from start to finish. He won by several miles.
Once upon a time, a tortoise and a hare had an argument about who was faster. They decided to settle the argument with a race. After agreeing on a route, they started off. The hare shot ahead and ran briskly. Seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise, he sat under a tree for some time to relax before running to the finish line. He fell asleep shortly.Thetortoise, plodding on, soon overtook him and finished the race, emerging as the undisputed champ. The hare woke up and realized that he’d lost the race. This is the version of the story that we all know. But the story continues. . .
the Tortoise and the Hare and reliable person will consistently climb the organizational ladder faster than the slow, methodical person. It’s good to be slow and steady, but it’s better to be fast and reliable.Thetortoise did some thinking and realized that there was no way he could beat the hare in a race the way it was formatted. He thought for a while, and then challenged the hare to another race, but on a slightly different route. The hare agreed. They started off. In keeping with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast, the hare took off and ran at top speed until he came to a broad river. The finish line was a couple of kilometers on the other side of the river. The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the meantime, the tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, continued walking, and finished the race.
The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he reflected on his mistake. He realized that he’d lost the race only because he had been overconfident, careless, and lax. If he had not taken things for granted, there was no way the tortoise could have beaten him.
“And what of teaching? Ah! There you have the worst paid and the best rewarded of vocations. Do not enter it unless you love it!”
Although I did not fail your subject, I got my lowest grades from you. I wish you can teach calmly, so at least I can try to like your subject. I will try to understand your subject, but I cannot promise I can do better. I am sorry . . .
Of
Shared Meal and Letters
To Sonia’s surprise, students seemed to enjoy writing. They would even have keys to their journal for fear others may read their work. Sonia assured them, however, that the journal would only be between them and her as their teacher.
articleofsubjectsnotmodels Health & Home ︱ 22 ︱September–October 2022
One of her students, Carlito, wrote a letter to his Mathematics teacher that looked like this: Dear Sir, I know you are a very good Mathematics teacher, but I do not like the way you talk about students’ errors. You may not be mentioning names, but I feel guilty every time you ask, “ When will you ever learn? ” You see, I hate numbers. When we have our Math class, I honestly wish to leave the room. I do not know why, but your booming voice when you get irritated sounds like an erupting volcano.
Sonia pitied Carlito for he was really good in class. She knew that his feelings toward his Math teacher might affect his overall performance.
Hating Math
A s a teacher for decades, Sonia had been living by this quotation even if she couldn’t remember the author. She would have wanted to become a journalist or a lawyer, but her disciplinarian father forced her to take up Education. “It is the only course where money can be easily earned,” he said. Sonia never thought that teaching would make her life inspiring and unforgettable. After weaving through different educational systems—public, international, and private—Sonia picked up strategies to make her students enjoy learning. English journal Since she taught English, she required her students to write in a journal. Here, they got to express emotions they couldn’t easily and personally convey to others. Journal entries were typically addressed to: parents, whom the children could not talk back to; teachers, who might respond to the students’ rants with a reprisal; and crushes or enemies, for whom the students had intense feelings. The only rule was that their thoughts and feelings should be written in English. The journal was one way the students could practice and develop their written communication skills in English.
By Corazon D.C. Hernandez Education
After Diaz won silver in the Rio De Janeiro 2016 Olympics and since 2018, the team had been vigorously preparing Diaz for Tokyo 2020. But COVID-19 came.
A fter almost a century since the Philippines joined the Olympics in 1924, it finally won a gold medal through Hidilyn Diaz (weightlifting, women’s 55kg category) on July 26, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan.1 Diaz credits her success to God and to her support team (Team Hidilyn Diaz or Team HD) composed of head coach Gao Kaiwen, strength and conditioning coach Julius Naranjo, sports psychologist Karen Trinidad, and sports nutritionist Jeaneth Aro. 2
COACH ARO Team HD and Working Collaboratively STAFF
Coach Jeaneth Aro shares with Health & Home the Team HD story and her craft as a sports nutritionist.
By HEALTH & HOME
“She has a very short recovery period during events. She has to lift two hours after the weigh-in,” Coach Aro explained during our video conference interview.
JEANETH
How did they work together to achieve what seemed impossible?
“In terms of producing a worldclass athlete, nutrition may just be a small factor. The more significant elements are talent, training, and motivation. But when you enter world-class competitions like the Olympics, everyone there is talented, motivated, and welltrained. Thus, it will boil down to the little details. That’s when the value of nutrition and sports psychology gets magnified,” she continued. Collaboration
Coach Aro described the Team HD dynamics as very collaborative. No one singlehandedly makes the decision.“Weregularly have team meetings to discuss whatever we need to talk about,” she revealed.
First meeting Diaz and Coach Aro first met through a common friend in a sporting event. At the time, the champion weightlifter from Zamboanga was concerned about optimizing her strength after cutting weight.
Coach Gao is Chinese while Coach Naranjo is Guamanian.
AroJeanethCoachofcourtesyhotosp
Health & Home ︱ 24 ︱September–October 2022
Inherited
Much of my privilege is “inherited.” It is not due to any effort of mine whatsoever. The nature of my inherited privilege first dawned on me during a high school trip when I lived temporarily with another family. That family was a broken one. I realized my stable home with loving parents was not everyone’s experience. Nothing I’d done merited such an upbringing, and nothing my host family members had done deserved their more challenging life—it is just how it was. Related to having a stable family is the privilege of opportunity—the chance to try new things and, in so doing, acquire new skills. Learning to swim or play a musical instrument were opportunities I thought every child had. Only later in India did I find that most children in the world actually can’t swim or read music, let alone travel, skateboard, orAssurf.a19-year-old, I spent a year in Denmark as an exchange student. That privilege allowed me to see that other cultures, in some ways, are better than our own. Denmark also showed me that having English as my mother tongue was an undeserved privilege. I hadn’t realized how illogical English grammar and spelling were until I watched others trying to learn it. Why is the plural of “house” “houses,” while the plural of “mouse” is “mice”? I had no idea. I just knew they are!
G rowing up, I thought I was “normal.” I didn’t feel particularly better or worse off than others around me. However, as I’ve journeyed further along the road of my 54 years of life, the more I’ve realized just how privileged I am and how this privilege can affect my daily life. That realization should, I suggest, give rise to a sense of responsibility to use our privilege to help others. privilege
The Responsibility of Privilege By MARK DELANEY pexels.comfromphotos articleofsubjectsnotmodels Health & Home ︱ 30 ︱September–October 2022
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