A New-born Tradition

     A new tradition was born in our town on August 2020 called "Halad", few months after Rev. Father PePe reinstated in the parish church he decided to build the Halad organization, according to him during one of his mass on Sundays that he build this project to help the poor and to show how he spend the money that the church got during the offertory of the mass. Halad or Handumanan sa Ligdong mga Alagad sa Diyos is a church project founded by Father Pepe, it's goal is to build a house for the poorest of poorest. The first Halad house they built was on August 29,2020 that took them a whole day building it, the house is 14’ x 14’ (200 sq. ft. or 18 sq. m.) with two bedrooms, comfort room and dirty kitchen cost around PhP 25,000 excluding the appliances that the church will provide as well. 

     Fr. Pepe would ask the St. Vincent Parish church-goers who their neediest neighbors were. Thus they learned to see the last and the least among them, and to grow in compassion and love. It did not matter if these poor families were observant or practicing Catholics, or their political allies. Five of the core group formed a screening committee. Just like trained social workers, they visited the identifiably poor families to verify and document their circumstances. They were especially mindful of special needs which might further exacerbate poverty, such as having elderly, seriously ill or disabled family members. During their monthly meetings, the ad hoc screening committee presented their findings. Then the so-called Parokya ni San Vicente decided who would receive a gift-house. 

    Over the first six months of this homegrown apostolate, the number of volunteers grew to such an extent that the tiny house which used to take a day to build, took just only 5 hours. Some of the volunteers are well trained carpenters, residents and children from different church youth. The volunteers spend their last Saturday of the month in building the Halad house, how busy they are in their individual jobs and in the school. For over 16 months the halad house build also 16 houses and help 16 poorest of the poorest family. They recently build the 16th Halad house on Ilihan, Ubay, Bohol last December 22, 2021 despite the calamity that happened because of the Super Typhoon Odette. Because of this new-born tradition Father Pepe observed that more people are made offering to the church during the mass with big amount of money, and many donors reached out him to help him with this project. Such an amazing tradition of love, caring and giving was born in our community and hopefully this tradition will remind us the joy of giving.