Dearest Brother Seminarians,

We, your beloved confrere seminarians from the Rogationist Seminary Manila
Community would like to say thank you for writing a letter telling your life and situation there in
Vietnam. We are glad to know the number of your aspirants, formation houses, daily activities,
apostolate, weather and as well as the culture and character of the people. We would like to
share also our activities and daily routine here. It has a slight similarity with you. But there are
some differences for instance your rising time in the morning. You rise up 4:30 AM while we,
our rising time are 6:00, followed by morning prayer and the Holy Mass at 7:00. Like you we
study too, but we don’t go to other school or universities instead we study in our own
seminary. We have 54 seminarians in our community and all are philosophy students. We have
7 freshmen, 17 sophomore, 13 juniors, and 17 seniors. There is also other congregation who
are studying with us in the seminary that studies philosophy, the Sons of Holy Mary
Immaculate. Our professors here are good and all of them are coming from well known
universities here in the Philippines.

We do have also our children’s apostolate and this is done every Sunday in our
seminary. More than 500 children every Sunday are coming in our Seminary who are coming
from the different squatter’s area near Merville subdivision where the seminary is located. The
postulant stays with us also in our community. We have 24 postulants’, 13 are from Manila, 10
from Cebu, and 1 from Vietnam Joseph. However our beloved postulants are out for the
meantime in our community, they are on their exposure program. It means that all of them
were staying in different communities in the Philippines. Like in St. Anthony’s Boys Village in
Silang Cavite, St. Anthony’s Boys Village in Davao, St. Hannibal Empowerment Center(SHEC), St.
Francis Xavier Parish in Parang, Bagac, Bataan, Our Lady of Pillar Parish in Bolinao Pangasinan,
and in Rogate Center in Merville Subdivision. But soon they were coming back again on January.

However the Christmas season is pass approaching once again. Time to share and time
to love again for our Savior will be born again. Every December all of us here are going for
caroling. It has been a tradition of the seminary since before. We are doing this caroling every
December for the children. Now we are gathering funds for the coming Christmas sharing for
the children. The proceeds of the money that we get from our caroling are going to the
children. This is the one that we used to purchase can goods, groceries, toys, and clothing’s for
the children. Every December we are having our annual Christmas Sharing. This is the event
that every kid is waiting on the month of December. During the month of December children
are increasing in number. In our ordinary apostolate every Sunday they were just about 500 but
when it’s Charismas Sharing they are more than 2000. We called these children “Rogate Kids”.

Lastly we hope that we could visit you there. As a sign of our gratitude for your concern
and love, rest assured of our prayers. We want to greet you an advance Merry Christmas and a
Happy New Year. May this season of Christmas be filled your community with more abundant
blessing.

Sincerely Yours.

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