At the chapel of Mai Thien Loc Theologate of the Oblates of Mary of Immaculate Conception (OMI), the superior of the Vietnam Mission received the vows of eight novices, including Brother Joseph Tinh A Senh, a son of Dien Bien Parish in Hung Hoa Diocese.
He belongs to the Hmong ethnic group. This is good news not only for the newly professed brother, his family and the OMI congregation but is also an indescribable joy for members of the Hmong community.
Brother Senh was born on June 10, 1996, in Dien Bien, the seventh child of 10 children. His family are poor like many other families in the area. Poverty is rife, from one corn season to another. Nothing has changed. The local people have a joke: just the piglet and buffalo grow up, but we grow old and then die.
After graduating from the village school, he intended to go to the fields like many other boys. But Father Peter Pham Thanh Binh, parish priest of Sapa, saw that this boy was smart and virtuous, so he invited him to live and study at Sapa boarding house. He agreed to live there with his friends to study. There are very few who hear the voice of God and respond.