Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Welcome to the Club



Welcome all our new CSsR students to Davao Formation Community for the school year 2010-2011. It has been our trademark now that, unlike other formation houses, here in Saint Alphonsus Theologate, Davao, we welcome our new comers with long days of exhausting meetings. For some, only a few moments later after their feet touched the Davao soil, they already found themselves locked in a meeting room, listening to a discussion of which they had no idea whatsoever. And I’m telling you. This is just the beginning of the all new episode of “Survival SATMI.”



So, one might ask, “what the heck are these meetings all about?” In fact, these meetings at the beginning of the school year are called “the student planning.” It is a venue wherein all the students and formators, aiming at the fulfillment of the core values in the Ratio Formationis, come together, discuss, and plan for the activities and schedules that will be done throughout the whole school year. In addition, the new students will also be introduced to the way of living in this new community. How we do things here. And also how they might get kicked out of the formation program! Of course, there is the pain (3 whole days of meeting is no fun at all), but the gain is also even considerably more beneficial to our growth if we consider ourselves as a mature religious formandee. We are the real co-formators. And we can truly say that this formation program is of us, by us, and for us.


Then, right after the planning is done, another important thing that usually follows is the election of committee coordinators and most significantly the election of the new capo (the head of students). This year the voting was so close that a neck and neck race between the two nominees seemed to go on forever. And finally, at the 7th ballot of voting, we had our new capo, Rufino Jr Mea Macasaet (Jun), a second year student, our hard working, talented, yet very humble brother from the vice province of Manila. Shortly after being elected, Jun expressed his sentiment in his facebook saying, “Now I know what Pope John XXIII felt when he said, ‘They are calling me Pope when I'm just a poor country priest.’ I say, ‘They are calling me Capo when I'm just an ordinary religious.’” Don't worry, Jun, you'll never walk alone.


After we were done with the election, we proceeded to the common room for Gaudeamus, celebrating the end of all the meetings! No, I mean, the beginning of the new school year.(^__^)


(Boy)

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