LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – In time with the celebration of World Peace Prayer Day, the municipality of La Trinidad and its public and private secondary schools offered prayers on Feb. 22.
Mario “Toots” Fungo, a World Peace Prayer Society representative, facilitated the said ceremony at the town’s park, in front of the municipal hall.
Fungo said that, sometime in 2015, he and the municipal officials that time observed for the first time the World Peace Prayer Day and delivered prayers. They also installed a symbolic peace pole right at the town’s park.
“La Trinidad is one of the five towns in Northern Luzon that has installed a peace pole,” he said.
Mayor Romeo K. Salda thanked Fungo for coming to the municipality for the peace prayer.“We will continue this program which you have started,” he added.
During the said ceremony, Salda offered the prayer for world peace; Irene Tagtag, MSWD Officer, delivered the prayer for peace for homes and families; Francis A. Lee, municipal executive assistant, read the prayer for peace in the social environment; Felicitas Ticbaen, the municipal agriculturist, led the prayer for plant and animal kingdoms; and Rene Vincent Ballug, the MLGOO representative, said the peace prayer for good governance.
Meanwhile, secondary schools in this capital town like Benguet National High School-main, Cordillera Career Development College (CCDC), the Benguet State University-Secondary Laboratory School (BSU-SLS), and the La Trinidad National High School (LTNHS) participated in the invitational Peace Mandala Writing Workshop and World Peace Prayer Day.
Before the peace prayer event, Fungo introduced the Mandala writing as a form of artistic writing through positive thoughts to students.
Fungo explained that Mandala exudes positive words which make a person see things positively.
“People always see their lives or worlds negatively that they don’t recognize the positive things,” he pointed out.
The Mandala writing workshop was done in the morning wherein the participants wrote their own Mandala and shared their reflections about their own write-ups.
Most of the participants accepted that it was their first time to write their own mandala, which led them to discover more about themselves.
By Augustin A. Dao-anis