President of California Scholarship Federation, Class of 1996, Rialto High School, California.
Born in 1978 on a United States Air Force Base Hospital in the island of the Philippines and baptized in the Roman Catholic Church two months from birth; I was raised in an American Born United States Air Force family and was confirmed under the Archdiocese of Military Services USA by Most Reverend Bishop Gerald Barnes of the Diocese of San Bernardino and became a residential Southern Californian since my move from the Philippine Islands in 1981 and arrived on American Soil for the first time in Cannon Air Base, Clovis, New Mexico; I have lived my Roman Catholic Faith under these Religious Convictions of a child who has always been guided and highly regarded for my father and mother’s work in the Federal and Military United States Government and I entered into religious discernment in February 1997 after graduating in 1996 with a High Ranking of Recognition as Salutatorian for Rialto High School of a class of over five hundred students. As President of the California Scholarship Federation, I was honored to begin University at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana with a G.P.A. of 4.18. The Federation gave me the opportunity to seek higher education under the grounds of fulfilling my heart's desire and I decided instead to enter Religious Consecration as a Carmelite Sister of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles in California in 1997 after graduation in 1996.
In my convictions of faith and American standing of Religious Freedom, I was invoked by the Holy Spirit to follow a call towards Religious Consecration in a Congregation of the Carmelite Order in Alhambra, California of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where I grew and learned the grace and the solidifying gift of consecration to Christ through the Evangelical Counsels of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience until my evaluation of their religious consecration was denying me the Charity towards Perfect Consecration and the Fullness of the decision; a series of events caused me to return to my family in which this brought a greater conversion and tremendous courage in my daily desires to fulfill my conviction of faith. In 2003, before renewing a new year of vows I returned to my family after my mother and father's brutal divorce and sought for a return from a devastating separation between my siblings and returned to care for my mother and grandmother. In my return to my family during this tragedy, I sought to find a source of continued living and gained employment as Diocesan Accounting Clerk under Most Reverend Bishop Barnes and began attending University at California State University of San Bernardino to complete a Master of Arts in Education with an emphasis in Curriculum and Instruction and graduated in 2010.
In my affiliation with the Bishop, I volunteered and worked with the youth and choir of Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral and combined parishes in the Diocese of San Bernardino and have been an effective transmitter of the Catholic faith working with young adults, high school, elementary and preschool childcare. While also employed in the San Bernardino Unified and Ontario School Districts as a Teacher and Substitute Teacher in all grade levels until a very strong movement drew me away from what I had always desired to live before I had to return to my family from a life of consecration. And I sought to find healing from interrupted life hopes and dreams. Since 2011, I pursued the greatest heights of what I never realized could lead me under a strong call from the beatification of Pope St. John Paul II and I have begun several forms of primary integrations to bring to completion what I have always wanted to conclude and my devotion has been seen as a hope and renewal in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church; Universal Religious Freedom of Goodness in dignity and human kindness.
I am presently an aspiring Graduate Student for Harvard University Graduate School of Education to implement a form of doctor and philosophy on private and public sectors of religious studies and secular outcome in public and private schools. There is a research proposal I would like the California Scholarship Federation to participate in through my association and experience with them and I hope this reunion will find this well for consideration with Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Meryl Viola Bravo, M.A.
President of California Scholarship Federation
Rialto High School, Class of 1996
"Meryl, are you trying to make me Christian?"
"Actually, although this may be a Christian personification of instruction, there is an honorable consideration of which a higher condition is being sought under a secular and state or city-wide university level course. This is the decision of honorable considerations in our acts as a student and one who reaches a level of membership into the California Scholarship Federation. For one, what made you decide to nominate and elect and vote for Meryl Bravo to be the President?"
"She's honorable."
