Well, time for another update!!  I hope you’ve all been well.  Thanks for all your emails, it is SO great to hear how you’ve all been.  I always enjoy reading them so keep em coming!

I know it’s been a while, but it’s been a really crazy semester.  I decided that it’d be a good idea to take 4 philosophy classes at once along with my other requirements.  What a genius! (not)  Anyway, it’s all starting to settle down, but we’ve been in the middle of mid-terms up here, and I have a week to go before a well deserved 9 day vacation. 

We celebrated the Vietnamese New Years up here.  Several hundred people from the surrounding Vietnamese community showed up.  There was a whole day long celebration – and all the Vietnamese monks that are up here enjoyed having a day full where their language was the predominate one spoken on the hill.  They celebrated mass in Vietnamese as well as had a HUGE dinner in the gymnasium.  The entire gym was full of tables and people.  The Vietnamese order of sisters volunteered to cook up tons of food.  Oh man it was good.  While they served the food, there were skits and traditional Vietnamese celebrations on the stage.  There were professional, local dancers that had huge dragon costumes that jumped off the stage, ran around chasing people, jumped up on tables, and wandered all over the place to tons of loud drum music and colorful dancers.  It was just like you see on TV at the celebrations – quite a spectacle.  One of the Vietnamese priests lives right down the hall from me and was in Vietnam for a number of years.  Most of those he spent in prison.  The local Vietnamese community is very colorful and alive.  All the skits and dances were put on by Vietnamese youth who had practiced for years.  It was very impressive to see teenagers really engaged in their culture and communities.  The order of Vietnamese sisters are all very young as well, and they’re experiencing a big explosion in women joining which is also really cool. We have like 7 Vietnamese brothers up here and the Vietnamese priest I mentioned before; but the Vietnamese community clearly feels a strong connection with the monastery and the church.

Our annual reviews are just about over.  I had mine back at the end of February and it went very well; but they have been taking this whole time to get through them and there are still more to go.  They did the reviews of all the guys who are closest to ordination first.  What usually happens is the vocation director from your diocese comes up and you have a meeting with him, potentially your bishop (if he can make it) and your formation director from the hilltop community who you’ve been regularly meeting with.  So we’ve been having lots of visiting priest and bishops lately.  They you pour through an extremely thorough document of like 20 pages covering just about every aspect of your growth – academics, spiritual, ministry work, personal, etc.  Then, they usually have 3 commendations for your best progress, and 3 recommendations for future progress (sound REAL familiar Intel guys??)  Then, you go make up an accountability statement giving some measurable ways in which you will work on the 3 recommendations over the next year.  (sound even more familiar?)  I have some interesting goals for the next year and I hope that I can work on them all.  Two of the guys from my diocese were asked if they would like to go to Rome (Italy) and study at the North American College – which is very prestigious.  They both accepted and are heading off as soon as classes end this semester to New York to study Italian.  It’s really exciting to see them get the opportunity, but it’s going to be hard for me personally because they’re two guys I’ve really grown close to.  Ah well, we’ll be getting neat postcards from them. J

The classes have been keeping me very busy.  I haven’t had an opportunity to do much else but study, read, and write papers.  So, I’ve been something of a social recluse.  However, at the end of next week, we’ll be having a 9 day vacation during the Easter season.  I for one intend to take some well-earned rest and spiritual relaxation.  The two literature classes I’ve been taking have been exceptionally fun.  In one we read a lot of the classics and have a wonderful professor.   The other is a class on literary criticism (with an amazing professor) in which we’ve been reading a lot of classics as well.

I’ve been practicing the guitar a lot more.  I’m still not up to the level I’d like to be at, but it’s been a great creative outlet.  There’s a lot of great music programs up here and lots of opportunities to join choirs and bands.  We even have our own student rock band that is actually quite good and quite funny.  The do a lot of comedy stuff.  So there is no end to the different opportunities for fun in that department.  I’m hoping to get good enough to start accompanying some of the songs for night prayer.

We have one more week of classes and then a big vacation.  This Thursday is Saint Benedict’s day which is a day-long celebration for the monks – but I’m not quite sure what’ll be going on yet.  Apparently it’s big enough a fair number of people come up for the day.  I’m just glad we don’t have classes! J  So, I’ll be having free days from March 23^rd through April 1^st.  I’ll be doing a little reading and a LOT of relaxing and maybe taking a road trip or two. 

Oh, it looks like I have a summer assignment.  It’s not confirmed as of yet; but it looks like I will be in a predominately Spanish parish in Cornelius, OR for the summer.  No details yet; but its going to make me get my Spanish in better working order here real soon.  I’ll probably be there for the majority of the summer helping the parish priest out and then have a month or so of vacation.

Well, I guess that’s most of it.  I’m just up here plugging away and trying to get to vacation next week.  3 more papers and a test to go.  In reflection, this has been a very tough (academically and spiritually) semester, but has been so rewarding.  I’m very, very happy to be here right now and feel so at home.  It’s been a wonderful, wonderful year.        

            Here’s your real life seminarian joke for the week and absolutely true.  Our vocations director was here from the diocese and chatting with our youngest guy studying for Portland.  They were standing right outside the doors of the church after morning mass.  The vocations director asked him how things were going and he replied, “It’s been absolutely wonderful!  I know this is *exactly* where God wants me right now.”  Just as he said this, the church door opened and hit him.  Right where God wanted him indeed. 

God bless and write soon,

Matt