National Bible Month, January 2026*
Children's Poster Making Contest
God's Word Brings Life to Our Hearts
and to Our Homes
Dr Abe V Rotor
"I give you a new commandment: Love one another
as I have loved you, so you also should one another."- John 13:34
"These teachings are not empty words: they are your very life.
Obey them and you will live long in that land across the Jordan
that you are about to occupy." - Deuteronomy 32:47
“In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.” — John 1:4
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
— Proverbs 3:5
“Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up.” — Proverbs 12:25
“Let all that you do be done in love.” — 1 Corinthians 16:14
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” — Romans 12:12
“The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.” — Psalm 9:9
Do to others as you would have them do to you.” — Luke 6:31
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” — Colossians 3:2
Ten selected works from a total of 18 posters made individually by students in the elementary and high school at San Vicente Integrated School (SVIS), and San Sebastian National High School (SSNHS San Vicente, Ilocos Sur). January 26, 2026 at the Living with Nature Center.
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.” — Psalm 136:1
“Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths.” — Psalm 25:4
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” — Philippians 4:4
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” — Philippians 4:13
“Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.” — Psalm 31:24
“For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with victory.”
— Psalm 149:4
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* National Bible Week - January 19-25, 226; National Bible Sunday - January 25, 20026
National Bible Day - January 26, 2026. Sponsored by the Philippine Bible Society, United Bible Societies, with partners: CNN, FEBC, LIGHT. Website Bible.org.ph. A yearly activity conducted by The Archdiocese of Nueva Segovia, and the Diocese of San Vicente, Ilocos Sur.
ANNEX 1 - San Vicente Botanical Garden
San Vicente Ilocos Sur - Heritage Zone of the North (RA 11645)
Children's Art Workshop in the Garden 2023
Children’s Interpretation of the theme through drawing:
“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
Dr Abe V Rotor
Instructor
Twenty school children from San Vicente Integrated School and
San Sebastian Integrated School joined in the contest.
First Prize Winner
Harmee Irish Reynante
Our postmodern world, rich in progress,
yet wanting of happiness and meaning;
Unless brotherhood and unity reign
Shall we find peace and true Being.
2nd Place
Jhamier Jake Rebula
A highway with neither beginning nor end,
runs through fast, and only once,
a family in praise of creation and its gift
of life though brief like a trance.
3rd Place
Angel Rigunay
No one goes to Heaven alone,
the essence of brotherhood,
the final destiny of the good,
as the Redeemer has shone.
* In celebration of the NATIONAL BIBLE MONTH CELEBRATION
and Bible Week (Jan 23-29, 2023), a project of
Archdiocese of Nueva Segovia & San Vicente Ferrer Parish,
San Vicente Ilocos Sur
ANNEX 2 - A Place of Gems and Flowers
San Vicente Ilocos Sur - Heritage Zone of the North
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The deep unfathomed caves the ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste their sweetness in the desert air."
Thomas Gray, Elegy on the Country Churchyard
It took Thomas Gray several times of editing to perfect, so to speak, this passage from his most celebrated work, for the reason I believe, that it touches a very sensitive nerve of human society, that the unsung are actually the pillars of institutions - the unknown soldier, the unheard bard, the unknown sculptor of a Venus de Milo's version, the artisan of edifices only by their structure are known, the musician who by ear composed a local Verdi or Othello - these and many others have made epics living and legends true characters - by unknown people, the "sleeping gems and the flowers in the desert".
But the passage speaks well of truth, and if it does not gain much credence to people like in Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, it is because truth is a Diogenes with a lamp at noon time. But indeed there are gems pure and shining but they are in the obscure places, there are flowers sweeter than a Givenchy, and more beautiful than any Vanda or Cattleya, but whose scent and beauty are too far out of reach by the senses.
San Vicente Ferrer 17th century church, unique Baroque architecture, lately declared a shrine. Pilgrims and devotees pay homage, particularly every Tuesday. It has become a tourists' destination.
Perhaps it is there that a piece of San Vicente is found, maybe a doctor or a nurse in London hospital, a professor in an American University, an engineer in the middle east, a teacher in Papua New Guinea, a missionary on the island of Jamaica, a governess in Hongkong.
And when one finally succeeds in his search, he finds a small town classified at the lower rung of the economic ladder in Adam Smith economics. He is unimpressed. There is no fanfare. The old callejon is still the main road. The pre-war elementary school is well preserved. He enters the old church so massive it makes a minuscule of all buildings and houses. He walks toward the altar. A message written on the altar cloth reads in Ilocano: Ur-urayenka Anakko. I am waiting for you my child. But the translation is inadequate to capture the vernacular quaintness of the message.
Unless he asks a bona fide balikbayan. But it is not easy to compress history, to build instant bridges of memory. But it is the homing instinct that reverses the direction of the feet and the march of time. It brings back the life of the dead, relives experiences on the stage, transforms the past to present, dusting off the archives.
It is homing instinct, more than the native Alaskan salmon's determination, or the homing dove's accuracy, that takes every native of the place to go back home - to live the golden years of his life, to die and be buried there. And when a balikbayan is asked, "Where have all the children gone? " he takes a deep breath and releases it with a sigh of joy we call nostalgia. Then silence reigns. And time moves backward. Everything seems beautiful.
Because the gems, even in the deep unfathomed ocean, do shine; flowers bloom - and in all places - in a desert. Then he asks, Where have all the children gone?
And the balikbayan with teary eyes has a simple answer, "They have gone to all corners of the earth. "Memories about people may be short-lived; of events, for a lifetime perhaps; but for a cause - some ideas bigger than themselves, may last for a long time. Or until that particular idea has arrived in its own sweet time.
What is music, for example? Here Maestro Anselmo Pelayre is a pillar in the conservatory of Ilocano music. He wrote for the high mass, zarzuela, orchestra. His own compositions are still played in Ilocano communities and homes here and abroad. Maestro Selmo's commitment to music is its inseparability with culture, tradition and history, the lyrics as conveyors of the vivid, the detail; and music the soul, the spirit. It was, and will forever be, a fight for a cause in the midst of intercultural homogenization, even after the Great Maestro is gone, when music has evolved into abstract forms bordering music and non-music.
In the same way Ilokano, the language, and Ilokano, the culture, are one. Gain in one is gain in the other; lose the language and lose the culture. And gaining both enhances heritage to permeate into the head, heart and soul of the Ilocano, and therefore the Ilocano heritage lives in the person - wherever he goes, he does, he meets, and more so, in raising his own family.
Unless he asks a bona fide balikbayan. But it is not easy to compress history, to build instant bridges of memory. But it is the homing instinct that reverses the direction of the feet and the march of time. It brings back the life of the dead, relives experiences on the stage, transforms the past to present, dusting off the archives.
It is homing instinct, more than the native Alaskan salmon's determination, or the homing dove's accuracy, that takes every native of the place to go back home - to live the golden years of his life, to die and be buried there. And when a balikbayan is asked, "Where have all the children gone? " he takes a deep breath and releases it with a sigh of joy we call nostalgia. Then silence reigns. And time moves backward. Everything seems beautiful.
Because the gems, even in the deep unfathomed ocean, do shine; flowers bloom - and in all places - in a desert. Then he asks, Where have all the children gone?
And the balikbayan with teary eyes has a simple answer, "They have gone to all corners of the earth. "Memories about people may be short-lived; of events, for a lifetime perhaps; but for a cause - some ideas bigger than themselves, may last for a long time. Or until that particular idea has arrived in its own sweet time.
What is music, for example? Here Maestro Anselmo Pelayre is a pillar in the conservatory of Ilocano music. He wrote for the high mass, zarzuela, orchestra. His own compositions are still played in Ilocano communities and homes here and abroad. Maestro Selmo's commitment to music is its inseparability with culture, tradition and history, the lyrics as conveyors of the vivid, the detail; and music the soul, the spirit. It was, and will forever be, a fight for a cause in the midst of intercultural homogenization, even after the Great Maestro is gone, when music has evolved into abstract forms bordering music and non-music.
Re-enactment of the Passion of Christ by the town folks on Good Friday, brainchild of the late Boy Francisco a local sculptor who brought Lenten to the street, so to speak.
In the same way Ilokano, the language, and Ilokano, the culture, are one. Gain in one is gain in the other; lose the language and lose the culture. And gaining both enhances heritage to permeate into the head, heart and soul of the Ilocano, and therefore the Ilocano heritage lives in the person - wherever he goes, he does, he meets, and more so, in raising his own family.
Dr Nicholas L Rosal in his dissertation Understanding an exotic Language - Ilokano, attests that "language reveals structures and expressions that can tell social characteristics of a people... concepts and feelings conveyed are as human in one language as in another." His book revived the formal structure of the language and projected it to international consciousness, It has become an important reference for writers of Bannawag, the foremost magazine of Ilocanos the world over.
At the grassroots, several writers like Fredelito Lazo and Placido Real Jr, have likewise gained fame through the vernacular Bannawag, Samtoy, Ammianan, and through TV and radio broadcast reaping recognition not just for the quality of their work but for the cause in preserving the art of literature and communication - the "fine art of living" threatened by postmodernism.
But what projected San Vicente into the national and international scenes are products of artisans, among the makers of the finest furniture, Spanish fans meticulously carved from lanute wood, which are at par with the world's best; bigger-than-life religious icons, paintings bearing qualities of Renaissance art, salt (asin) whiter and more refine than sugar, basi table wine meeting the standards of European standards for Port and Sherry.
The best cigarette tobacco is raised here, so with vegetables. San Vicente shares with its border neighbor Sta Catalina the vegetable bowl of the Ilocos region. Here semi-temperate crops are grown from cauliflower to shallot and yam. If self-reliance and sufficiency is the main gauge of economic status, then the town is a first class municipality, and in fact can stand by itself from the political structure as a satellite to a metro city, Vigan, the former capital of the province.
But the biggest contribution of San Vicente, though not specific in terms of economics, law, science, education, sports, arts, and the like, is greater than the sum of all these - true service of its citizens. Like goodness itself, it is synergistic, building on the philosophy that goodness builds on goodness, be it in the field, shop, court house, classroom, hospital, street, office, or humble dwelling, whether here or in some parts of the world. As a wise old man from the place proudly said, "Tell me a place in the world and San Vicente is there. Tell me of a career and San Vicente is there, In any event - one of celebration, or compassion, or reverence - count on a Vincentian."
Which speak of the philosophy of Saint Vincent Ferrer, one of the greatest scholars and teachers of the church, the inspiration of every Vincentian. ~
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About Saint Vincent Ferrer
About Saint Vincent Ferrer
For three years he read only the Scriptures, and knew the whole Bible by heart. He converted the Jews of Valencia, and their synagogue became a church. Grief at the great schism then afflicting the Church reduced him to the point of death; but Our Lord Himself in glory bade him go forth to convert sinners, "for My judgment is nigh." This miraculous apostolate lasted twenty-one years. He preached throughout Europe, in the towns and villages of Spain, Switzerland, France, Italy, England, Ireland, Scotland.
Everywhere tens of thousands of sinners were reformed; Jews, infidels, and heretics were converted. Stupendous miracles enforced his words. Twice each day the " miracle bell "summoned the sick, the blind, the lame to be cured. Sinners the most obdurate became Saints; speaking only his native Spanish, he was understood in all tongues. Processions of ten thousand penitents followed him in perfect order. Convents, orphanages, hospitals, arose in his path.
Amidst all, his humility remained profound, his prayer constant. He always prepared for preaching by prayer. Once, however, when a person of high rank was to be present at his sermon he neglected prayer for study. The nobleman was not particularly struck by the discourse which had been thus carefully worked up; but coming again to hear the Saint, unknown to the latter, the second sermon made a deep impression on his soul. When St. Vincent heard of the difference, he remarked that in the first sermon it was Vincent who had preached, but in the second, Jesus Christ.
He fell ill at Vannes in Brittany, and received the crown of everlasting glory in 1419.
Arial View of San Vicente Poblacion The old church is seen at the middle facing left. Photo taken by the author on a helicopter, circa 1976
References: Home, Sweet Home with Nature, AVR; Ti Pakasaritaan San Vicente, Lorenzo L Mata, 2005; Internet (Life of Saint Vincent Ferrer).
Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School on Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday
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*National Heritage Month is celebrated annually in May in the Philippines. By virtue of Presidential Proclamation No. 439, it aims to promote the appreciation and celebration of Filipino heritage and history throughout the country. During this month, people focus on Philippine culture and its rich history.
ANNEX 3 - Ur-urayenka Anakko
(I am waiting for you, my child.)
17th Century Church of San Vicente Ferrer
I am a modern day Prodigal Son. I spent fifty long years searching and searching for a place I may call my own in the whole wide world. Yes, fifty long years of my youth and in old age – twice longer the fiction character Rip van Winkle did sleep – and now I am back to the portals of my hometown, to the waiting arms of my father.
The proverbial Lamp I still hold flickers, but it is but a beacon in embers now, for it had spent its luminance in the darkness of human weakness and failures, it beamed across the ocean of ignorance and lost hope, it trailed the path of many adventures and discoveries, and it kept vigil in the night while I slept.
And what would my father say? He meets me, embraces me, and calls everyone. “Kill the fattest calf! Let us rejoice.”
San Vicente is my home. It is the bastion of my hopes and ideals. At the far end on entering the old church is written on the altar, faded by the elements of time and rough hands of devotees, Ur-urayenka Anakko – I am waiting for you my child. When the world is being ripped by conflicts or pampered with material progress, when mankind shudders at the splitting of the atom or the breaking of the code of life, when the future is viewed with high rise edifices or clouded by greenhouse gases – my town becomes more than ever relevant to the cause for which it has stood through the centuries - the sanctuary of idealism in a troubled world, home of hundreds of professionals in many fields of human endeavor.
“Kill the fattest calf,” I hear my father shout with joy. It is celebration. It is a symbol of achievement more than I deserve. But my feeling is that I am standing on behalf of my colleagues for I am but an emissary. Out there in peace and trials, in villages and metropolises, in all endeavors and walks of life, many “Vincentians” made their marks, either recognized on the stage or remembered on stone on which their names are carved. I must say, it is an honor and privilege that I am here in humility to represent them that I may convey their unending faith and trust to our beloved hometown.
The world has changed tremendously, vastly, since I passed under the town arch to meet the world some fifty years ago. I have met wise men who asked the famous question “Quo vadis?” -where are you going? I can only give a glimpse from the eye of a teacher, far for the probing mind of Alvin Toffler in “Future Shock,” or those of Naisbitt and Aburdane, renowned modern prophets. Teachers as I know, and having been trained as one, see the world as it is lived; they make careful inferences, and take a bird’s eye view cautiously. They are conveyors of knowledge, and even with modern teaching tools and communication technology, cannot even qualify as chroniclers, nay less of forecasters. I have always strived to master the art of foretelling the future, but frankly I can only see it from atop a misty mountain. How I wish too, that I can fully witness the fruits of the seed of knowledge a teacher has sown in the mind of the young.
Limited my experience may be, allow me to speak my mind about progress and developments in the fifty years I was away from home, but on the other side of midnight, so to speak.
1. The monster that Frankenstein made lurks in nuclear stockpiles, chides with scientists tinkering with life, begging to give him a name and a home.
2. Our blue planet has an ugly shade of murk and crimson – fire consuming the forests, erosion eating out the land, polar ice shrinking, flooding the shorelines.
3. One race one nation equals globalization. How we have taken over evolution in our hands. We are playing God, is Paradise Lost II in the offing?
4. The world is wired, it travels fast on two feet – communication and transportation. The world has shrunk into but a village. Homogenization is the death sentence amid a bed of roses for mankind.
5. Man-induced phenomena are too difficult to separate from those of nature. We take the latter as an excuse of our follies, a rationalization that runs counter to be rational. Only the human species has both the capability to build or destroy – and yet we love to destroy what we build.
6. The dangerous game of numbers is a favorite game, and our spaceship is getting overloaded. Man’s needs, more so man’s want, become burgeoning load of Mother Earth, now sick and aging. Will Pied Piper ever come back and take our beloved young ones away from us, as it did in Hamlyn many years ago?
7. Conscience, conscience, where is spirituality that nourishes it. Where have all the religious teachings gone? Governance – where is the family, the home? Peace and order – Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan – another Korea, another Vietnam, only in another place, in another time.
8. Janus is progress, and progress is Janus. It is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is The Prince and the Pauper. Capitalism has happy and sad faces – the latter painted in pain and sadness on millions all over the world. It is inequity that makes the world poor; we have more than enough food, clothing, shelter, and energy for everybody. What ideology can save the world? Capitalism or socialism? – No, not Terrorism.
As I grew older I did not only learn to adjust with the realities of life as I encountered it but to grasp its meaning from the points of view of famous philosophers and writers. I studied it with the famous lines from William Blake’s famous poem, Auguries of Innocence.
To wit.
The proverbial Lamp I still hold flickers, but it is but a beacon in embers now, for it had spent its luminance in the darkness of human weakness and failures, it beamed across the ocean of ignorance and lost hope, it trailed the path of many adventures and discoveries, and it kept vigil in the night while I slept.
And what would my father say? He meets me, embraces me, and calls everyone. “Kill the fattest calf! Let us rejoice.”
San Vicente is my home. It is the bastion of my hopes and ideals. At the far end on entering the old church is written on the altar, faded by the elements of time and rough hands of devotees, Ur-urayenka Anakko – I am waiting for you my child. When the world is being ripped by conflicts or pampered with material progress, when mankind shudders at the splitting of the atom or the breaking of the code of life, when the future is viewed with high rise edifices or clouded by greenhouse gases – my town becomes more than ever relevant to the cause for which it has stood through the centuries - the sanctuary of idealism in a troubled world, home of hundreds of professionals in many fields of human endeavor.
“Kill the fattest calf,” I hear my father shout with joy. It is celebration. It is a symbol of achievement more than I deserve. But my feeling is that I am standing on behalf of my colleagues for I am but an emissary. Out there in peace and trials, in villages and metropolises, in all endeavors and walks of life, many “Vincentians” made their marks, either recognized on the stage or remembered on stone on which their names are carved. I must say, it is an honor and privilege that I am here in humility to represent them that I may convey their unending faith and trust to our beloved hometown.
The world has changed tremendously, vastly, since I passed under the town arch to meet the world some fifty years ago. I have met wise men who asked the famous question “Quo vadis?” -where are you going? I can only give a glimpse from the eye of a teacher, far for the probing mind of Alvin Toffler in “Future Shock,” or those of Naisbitt and Aburdane, renowned modern prophets. Teachers as I know, and having been trained as one, see the world as it is lived; they make careful inferences, and take a bird’s eye view cautiously. They are conveyors of knowledge, and even with modern teaching tools and communication technology, cannot even qualify as chroniclers, nay less of forecasters. I have always strived to master the art of foretelling the future, but frankly I can only see it from atop a misty mountain. How I wish too, that I can fully witness the fruits of the seed of knowledge a teacher has sown in the mind of the young.
Limited my experience may be, allow me to speak my mind about progress and developments in the fifty years I was away from home, but on the other side of midnight, so to speak.
1. The monster that Frankenstein made lurks in nuclear stockpiles, chides with scientists tinkering with life, begging to give him a name and a home.
2. Our blue planet has an ugly shade of murk and crimson – fire consuming the forests, erosion eating out the land, polar ice shrinking, flooding the shorelines.
3. One race one nation equals globalization. How we have taken over evolution in our hands. We are playing God, is Paradise Lost II in the offing?
4. The world is wired, it travels fast on two feet – communication and transportation. The world has shrunk into but a village. Homogenization is the death sentence amid a bed of roses for mankind.
5. Man-induced phenomena are too difficult to separate from those of nature. We take the latter as an excuse of our follies, a rationalization that runs counter to be rational. Only the human species has both the capability to build or destroy – and yet we love to destroy what we build.
6. The dangerous game of numbers is a favorite game, and our spaceship is getting overloaded. Man’s needs, more so man’s want, become burgeoning load of Mother Earth, now sick and aging. Will Pied Piper ever come back and take our beloved young ones away from us, as it did in Hamlyn many years ago?
7. Conscience, conscience, where is spirituality that nourishes it. Where have all the religious teachings gone? Governance – where is the family, the home? Peace and order – Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan – another Korea, another Vietnam, only in another place, in another time.
8. Janus is progress, and progress is Janus. It is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is The Prince and the Pauper. Capitalism has happy and sad faces – the latter painted in pain and sadness on millions all over the world. It is inequity that makes the world poor; we have more than enough food, clothing, shelter, and energy for everybody. What ideology can save the world? Capitalism or socialism? – No, not Terrorism.
As I grew older I did not only learn to adjust with the realities of life as I encountered it but to grasp its meaning from the points of view of famous philosophers and writers. I studied it with the famous lines from William Blake’s famous poem, Auguries of Innocence.
To wit.
“To see the world in a grain of sand;
And a Heaven a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”
And a Heaven a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”
If ever I have ventured into becoming a “redeemer” armed with a pen, I too, have learned from Blake’s verse of the way man should view the world in all its magnanimity yet in simplicity. If ever I have set foot to reach the corners of the Earth, and failed, I am consoled by the humble representation of “a grain of sand” that speaks of universal truth and values.
And beauty? If I have not found it in a garden of roses, I dare not step on a flowering weed. And posterity and eternity? They are all ensconced in periodicity, a divine accident of existence – to say that each and every one of us is here in this world by chance – an unimaginable chance – at “a certain time and place” which I believe has a purpose in whatever and however one lives his life. But I would say that a lifetime is all it takes “to see the world” and be part of it. It is a lifetime that we realize the true meaning of beauty, experience “infinity and eternity”. Lifetime is a daily calendar of victories and defeats.
While the world goes round and around . ~
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