Introduction to the Memorial Service

Garry M. Senna

Senior Pastor, Harvest Valley Christian Church

My name is Garry Senna and I am the senior pastor here at Harvest Valley Christian Church and a Police chaplain. I didn’t know Sharon at all. I came to know a great deal about her in the last week. I simply responded as a police chaplain to an emergency call informing me that there was a tragedy in our community. In my visits to Shanghai and Hong Kong I have witnessed the depth of your culture, from its character to its customs all of which has been modeled for me this week in my interaction with Yuming and Meihua and many others. Thank you for representing the integrity of your community to me as a Westerner during a very difficult moment in all of your lives.

One minute of silence to honor Sharon

A memorial service, a time like this is like the converging of several great rivers into one. There is a churning and upheaval of three things; Emotions, memories, and perspective.

Emotions – We have lost someone that we loved. We have a loss; there is a grief and the sense of mourning. It’s natural and it’s healthy, it is good for us to start the process of grieving and remembering. It’s OK to cry, it’s not OK to pretend that you don’t have a loss.

Memories – Times like this force us to remember, the good times as well as the rough times. Death forces us to stop our pace of life, if even for a moment, and pause, reflect on a life that intersected and impacted ours, in some shape or form.

Gained perspective – Memorial services give us the proper perspective for our own lives. We realize that life can be pretty short and brief and the final evaluation of our lives is best spoken with words such as legacy, heritage, and memories. When all is said and done that is really all we leave when we die. It is at times like this when we are forced to explore the conclusions of our belief system. What we believe about life after death and things like that. Your belief system should be an anchor for your emotions and your soul during a time like this. My Christian perspective gives me a hope for life after death, it gives me a source of strength during trying moments, if you would like to talk to me about the Christian perspective on death and the afterlife I will be honored to discuss that with you .

We may never know the reason why this happened – we may never know what went wrong in Sharon’s body that caused it to shut down. The why it happened may never come to us, we may not ever be able to understand why Sharon’s life was so short on this earth.

What we can do is explore the how to we move on from here? We start by sharing memories and stories about the young woman’s life that had deep impact on those around her.