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In January of 1989 providentially, the sisters received the donation of a large piece of land in Bacolod City for a center for marginalized children and youth.
Once the school year of 1988-1989 was culminated, the Sisters gave up the management of the dormitory in Manila in April 1989. The four Sisters who had opted for a restart of presence in the Philippines moved out from Manila to Bacolod City. (three of them from the “Provincia Inmaculada” and the other one from the “Provincia Sagrado Corazon”). With the help of Manos Unidas, they initiated the construction of the center. That same year, in 1989, somehow they started the Mission of our first house in the Philippines “Holy Family Home, Bacolod” It is a home for abandoned children and girls that at present is focused on an urgent need: rehabilitation of sexually abused girls-youth. The total number of young people living in the center reached an average of fifty children.
Almost at the same time that the sisters went to live to the constructed of the new building, a group of nine young aspirants, all of them from Manila, came also to the building under construction to join our life and mission in June 1989.
Until the present, the Aspirancy forms part of Holy Family Home community.
By 1994, on the site of Holy Family Home Bacolod, a new building, which will provide health service, was constructed with the help of the Basque Government in Spain. At present it offers medical consultation and pharmacy in barangay.
In later years, Holy Family Home Bacolod completed its work with the stage of “social integration of our girls”. With the help of the Spanish agency “Anesvad”, a house was purchased in down town Bacolod where the girls from Holy Family Home can study college education in the nearby universities and colleges. The number of girls living in this center averaged to 16-18 each year. Although, it is part of Holy Family Home, the direction has been entrusted to a lay educator who lives with them but under the supervision of the sisters.
Few months just past when the sisters experienced the necessity of having a house of formation: Novitiate, independent from the apostolic houses. By pure Providence of God, they received a donation of another lot in the midst of a farm, something isolated and belonging to the city of Talisay which seemed to be conducive for a novitiate. The house was built with extreme simplicity and poverty and was opened in 1990 with the first group of Filipina novices. This remains the novitiate house until the present. It is also serves as the retreat house and venue of meetings and assemblies in the vice province.
From the time of annexation of the Philippines to the congregational missionary project in December 1988, the General Council in collaboration with Bishop Federico Escaler, SJ was preparing the opening of a presence particularly missionary and pastoral in the island of Mindanao, the most marginalized and conflictive area in the country. In fact, three sisters of Latin America were sent for the new foundation and on 1991, after few months of learning the local language “Visaya”, the community opened in Titay, Zamboanga, Mindanao with a mission of purely evangelization, pastoral action and health care, not only in Titay but through the wide area of more than 32 villages or chapels in the surrounding area of the town.
In touch with the reality, the sisters saw the difficulty of the young women of the these villages had to study secondary education due to the lengthy distance from home to school which implied from them a lot of risks. With the help of “Manos Unidas”, the sisters built a simple residence for students, “FRIENDSHIP HOME SAN FRANCISCO” giving free housing to about eighty students who would take charge of their daily food provision, although thanks to our benefactors, the community could offer them one complete meal a day.
With the passing of time, the area has progressed and the work of the sisters has focused more and more on the collaboration in the parish, in health care, visits to families, sick and catechesis mainly at secondary school. Lastly, responding to the needs of the population, the community has opened a nursery school.
Another perceived need was, to have a house in Manila, capital of the country where we frequently needed to go for international trips and for other errands. In 1992, the Sisters could buy two small houses, quite close to each other: one in Rosal Street and the other in Umbel Street both in the neighborhood of barangay Pembo, Makati City where our Religious Tertiary Capuchin Brothers have a parish.
Only the community of Rosal was established with a mission to receive transient sisters. At the same time and with great enthusiasm a simple for house for marginalized girls was opened. It was the beginning of Holy Family Home Makati which was formally inaugurated in Umbel Street in 1997. Rosal was also for a time the house of a group of Aspirants.
It was very difficult to attend both houses with only one community. For a time the house in Umbel was used as a boy’s home by our Tertiary Capuchin Brothers. Finally, the existing house was demolished and the current Holy Family Home was built through the help of the “Basque Government”. It was inaugurated in 1997. In addition, Holy Family Kindergarten for the children in the area was opened.
It was at same year when the Postulancy was formally installed in Rosal, thus, making both houses independent from each other. Rosal remained the Postulancy house until the year 2004 when it was transferred to the community of Luis Amigo Ladies Dormitory, Cebu City.
Bishop Escaler put us in contact with the Archbishop of Cebu, Jaime Cardinal Vidal. In a dialogue, he stated us that working with the university youth and particularly having a place to welcome and accompany them was a urgency in city like Cebu precisely characterized by a high number of students from the southern islands of the Philippines. In 1998, after a long search, the General Curia bought a lot rightly located for the purposes which we were looking for: a residence for university ladies and in a city which is the geographical center of the archipelago and the official seat of the then General Delegation. In addition, it is also a formation house for the junior sisters in the intensive program. Having completed almost the whole building, Luis Amigo Ladies Dormitory was inaugurated on April 2004. The dormitory hosts around 190 students in addition to staff and Sisters.
Having the initial formation, a priority objective, the Vice provincial Council sought for a long time a house in Quezon City, Metro Manila, where religious formation centers are mostly located. Finally, a house fit for the purpose, located in Don Antonio heights, was bought and was inaugurated in January 2009. From Luis Amigo Ladies Dormitory, the Postulancy moved to Quezon City in April of the same year.
