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La Sierra starts new year with healing, renewal-focused worship circle
The event, which marked the first Friday of winter quarter, offered employees a worship event of music and testimony that aimed to build community through transparency and care for one another.
The evening began with a dinner followed by the worship which included individual’s accounts about God’s intervention during difficult times as well as gratitude for the contributions of their fellow campus members whose thoughtfulness left an impact. The worship concluded with a talk by Japhet De Oliveira, vice president of corporate communication for Adventist Health, on the importance of openness and trust in forging authentic, healing relationships.
La Sierra University President Christon Arthur opened the evening by remarking on the importance of a shared faith in God’s presence and reiterated the university’s commitment to stand by its campus members and in particular its students during difficult situations, to be a space of comfort, peace and healing.
“When one has a heartache, we all feel the pain, because we’re part of this La Sierra family,” he said. “Let’s find peace and let’s find healing, let’s find the assurance that in His presence, even in the midst of our difficulty, there is fullness of joy.”
The worship circle served as an extension of an exercise that took place in September just before the new school year during faculty and staff colloquia. Arthur led employees in a Healing Circle in which they wrote anonymous messages on sticky notes that reflected on challenges and stressors they had encountered in the workplace and throughout their lives over the past year and beyond. They were also asked to reflect on ways they could support each other going into the new school year. The sticky notes were placed on two walls labeled ‘Hurts’ and on a central wall labeled ‘Healing.’ The notes were collected by administration. During winter quarter, Arthur will meet with campus departments to discuss the situations that had caused prior damage and pain.
“Tonight is a continuation of that process,” said Jason Decena, campus chaplain during the January 10 event. “Tonight we are going to worship together. We are going to testify together, and hopefully we can heal and enter that process together.
De Oliveira culminated the evening by sharing stories and experiences from his life and lessons learned about the value of transparency and openness in building close relationships.
“Hopefully it will bring us to a place of challenge and place of healing, a place of transparency as well. To build trust in the healing [process] is really essential,” he said.
He described the joyous celebrations that once occupied the month of June, especially the warm, humorous memories enveloping June 10 which marked the anniversary of his and his wife, Becky’s first date in 1993 at Pizza Hut.
He recalled the overwhelming life losses that occurred years later, altering the reminiscences of June forever -- the loss of his father in June 4, 2021; in June 2, 2023 the loss of his mother due to pancreatic cancer, and 19 days after that, the loss of his wife of 30 years who died as a result of brain cancer on June 21. Becky was 51 years old, an avid runner, a published author, an award-winning academic and holder of a Ph.D. and three master’s degrees.
“At one point it was this magical month of June with celebrations, anniversaries. Now I have three days of deep loss of people who loved me, that I loved, that have all gone in the same month,” De Oliveira said.
His parents were generous and brilliant people, De Oliveira said. His dad spoke five languages and re-translated the entire Bible and his mother at age 50 returned to school to earn a degree in mathematics. “But [they were] deeply private and because of their privacy, they both passed away kind of alone.”
Becky in contrast lived an open life, De Oliveira said. “She shared her story with people all the time,” he said, including her 18-month journey battling multiforme glioblastoma during which she recorded 11 podcasts documenting her experiences and later 88 voice memos for friends in her community.
“We were loved for 18 months from this journey in a way that I cannot describe to you how strong it was,” De Oliveira said. “You talk about a community that loves you, a community that knows you, we experienced this globally.” Thousands of people watched the livestream of Becky’s funeral and hundreds attended from all over the world. “They loved her because she loved them as she and I were both lifted up … to belong to someone, to be loved by someone is just transformative,” he said.
“I wish more people would be transparently open, would share more about who they are,” De Oliveira continued. “The difficulty is that transparency is very hard. Explaining who you are, telling a little bit about your story is really risky, because the more you share, the more people know about you, the more possible judgment you can have. And you want to be wise about it, but you do want people to actually see you.”
He described how he had wanted a more intimate relationship with his father who preferred intellectual theological discussions and how he created close relationships with others. “I discovered as an adult that I would actually build up communities of the brothers in my life. I would open up to who I am with them, and we became brothers. And I found with that, I grew so much stronger by having people in my life. So I’ve never felt alone through this entire journey.”
“And this is the secret to opening up. It’s not to go and say, ‘Can I help you?’ It’s actually to say, ‘Can you help me.’ That's really hard because we don't like to ask for help. But when you do, oh my goodness, trust builds so quickly. So I ask people for help all the time. Because the more I ask people for help, the more I am owing them and thankful for them, and the more I realize that people actually love to help, and I love to help in return.”
De Oliveira recounted biblical stories that exemplify openness and vulnerability, such as the moment of reconciliation between the apostle Peter and Christ following Peter’s denial of him. De Oliveira encouraged those gathered to take care of each other and to reconcile with each other the way Becky did when in the last months of her life when she strived to bring together people who were politically opposed to each other. “We have to find ways to see people for who they are, and remember who they are, that they're a daughter, they're a son, and they belong to God, and we are honored to be part of our lives,” De Oliveira said.
“The more you become this magnet of joy, the more people will say, ‘surely that was someone who walked with Jesus.’ So I wish this for all of you, La Sierra, that you are the people who are going to transform the lives of generations to come, that you look after each other, that you embrace each other, and that you forgive each other. That you give each other the grace that everybody deserves, and by so doing, we will [transform] this place.”
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