Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from TNF Torrance!

TNF began the Christmas season with the annual Christmas TBDT that includes presenting presents, caroling, and spreading the Christmas spirit to one another.

TNF Torrance had a festive Christmas carnival with beautiful crafts and competitive games.

The fun did not end there! The Thieu and Nghia Christmas party added more warmth and bonding to the season, through food and games.

Lets not forget the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of baby Jesus. With hard work and dedication TNF Torrance presented the Nativity play on Christmas Eve, celebrating the coming of Jesus.

Once again Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from TNF Torrance.

Chị Veronica

Huynh Trưởng 

Đoàn Thiếu Nhi Fatima

Đức Mẹ Truyền Tin Torrance

Read More

Peter's Pickles #5: Understanding the Theme - KTH: Go in Peace!

Hello friends,

And, welcome to the latest installment of this blog.

For this particular segment, I would like to discuss the purpose and theme of this year’s Khoa Tinh Huan.

Khoa Tinh Huan (KTH) is a spiritual retreat held every year by Lien Doan TNF, typically on the weekend after Thanksgiving. Many have come to associate KTH with the initiation of new HTs, but the main focus of this retreat is to develop the spirituality of our organization’s current and future leaders. It’s a time to rediscover and strengthen our commitments to God. It’s a time to understand why we are Thieu Nhi Fatima.

So, let’s dive straight into it.

This year’s theme was — “Go in Peace”.

Although I do not remember it being explicitly mentioned throughout the retreat, this theme was actually chosen in commemoration of the Angel of Peace’s appearance at Fatima 100 years ago.

The phrase seems pretty straightforward in itself, but at the same time, it might be difficult to explain in words what it means to do so.   

The word “peace” is often used in many secular (nonreligious) contexts, yet we do encounter it regularly throughout our faith. Here are a couple places you might have heard it mentioned:

1) In the Beatitudes, Jesus underlines peace as an important virtue that all Christians should strive towards.  

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called Children of God” (Mark 5:9)

2) In the tale of the sinful woman, a weeping villager falls before Jesus as he eats at the table of a Pharisee. She allows her weeping tears to fall upon his feet, wiping them with her hair, and anointing them with precious perfume.

“And Jesus told the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace’ “ (Luke 7:50)

3) Peace is one of the major themes of Advent, the period in which we anticipate the coming of Christ, our Savior. We progressively light the candles on the Advent Wreath to signify our efforts. We bring positivity in the form of hope, love, peace, and joy iso that we might be worthy of God’s love.

4) We greet each other in Mass with “Peace be with you”, a reference to Jesus’s greeting to his disciples following his resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

5) The concluding rites of Mass each week call us to “Go in Peace, glorifying the Lord by your life!”

Peace is all around us and is an important part of our relationship with God. It reminds us of good, tranquility, comfort, contention, silence, positivity, happiness, and love. The feelings ascribed to peace are the very same ones we use to describe our God. They are everything that we strive to complete ourselves with. They are all the things we try to pursue in our lives.

Yet, peace is not always easy to acquire, much less retain for long periods of time. As we move through our daily lives, chaos and evil are all around us. They are the ugly, the problematic, the drama, the sadness, the anger, the inconvenience— the conflicts. They are what stand between us and our peace.

Peace and conflict are both internal and external. Both describe how we feel about ourselves and our standing with others.

They both play a large part in our lives, but our need for both are not the same. There is no one that truly desires the negativity of conflict in their life. Although it might serve as temporary motivation at times, nobody ever wishes to swim in it.

When we cannot find peace, we cannot find God.

Over the course of this weekend, I asked everyone to think of ways in which they might bring peace to their life and the lives of others.

While there are many things out of our control that we leave to God, we do have a significant influence over the way we live our lives. We are by no means powerless beings! We must learn to pursue peace with all that we have.

One hundred years ago, the Three Children of Fatima were met by the Angel of Peace and Our Lady, because even those that are so young and small can effect change in the hearts of humanity. She asked them to pray, and sacrifice their livelihoods so that peace throughout the world might become a reality.

We are Thieu Nhi Fatima, because that too is our calling.

We do big things in small ways.

We are ready to give everything for our kids, so that they might live their lives close to God.

I became a Huynh Truong because I wanted to give our kids the love that I constantly yearned for as a child. Peace is not something that we can always find on our own. We need the affection and guidance of our mentors to help us!!

Someday, you will all be that person to our kids. Until then, I will never abandon you.

Go in Peace, and glorify the Lord by your life.

Anh Peter

Read More

SCL 2016 FIESTA!

Last week on Friday October 7 to Sunday the 9th St. Catherine had its annual Fiesta to raise money for the church. Our youth group joined in again and sold boba: strawberry, mango, peach, thai tea, and ice coffeeeeeeeeee! Our boba booth alone raised over $7,000, combined with the whole Vietnamese community we raised over $15,000! All of your hard work whether it was buying, selling, making, or advertising our boba was well worth it. Your positivity and enthusiasm definitely made the whole experience that much better.  See you all again at our boba stand next year!

Check out our facebook for more fiesta photos!

Chị VeronicaHuynh Trưởng Đoàn Thiếu Nhi FatimaĐức Mẹ Truyền Tin Torrance

Read More

TNF Torrance Khai Giang (First Day) 2016-2017

Welcome back to TNF everybody! On September 10th we officially began TNF and TTGLVN for this school year! There were many new faces and many familiar faces, but despite which face you were, we hope you all enjoyed the first day just like we did! 

Blessed with nice weather, cotton candy, and free play, that is how we began ngay khai giang. After lining up, we spilt up. Thieu/ Nghia went to a session with Thay Long and the Au went to play games and make name tags.

We are very happy and excited for this new school year! The school year began with a bang, and we are all looking forward to what will happen throughout this school year!

Chị Veronica

Huynh Trưởng 

Đoàn Thiếu Nhi Fatima

Đức Mẹ Truyền Tin Torrance

Read More

Peter's Pickles #4: Understanding the Theme - What is your Net Worth?

Dear friends,

This past weekend, Torrance hosted its 3rd annual One Day Spiritual Retreat, an event aimed at developing the spirituality of our older youth (16+). As Chi Pauline explains, “in preparation for the coming school year, we want to remind ourselves about what is important in our service and renew our faith”-- why we are here.

So, the focus of my post will be to explain the theme that was explored at this retreat, and why it matters to us as leaders of our youth.

For those of you that could not attend, the theme this year was “What is your Net Worth?”

“Net Worth” is a term often used to distinguish a person’s assets in a monetary way.

For instance, a quick google search tells us that Bill Gates net worth (counting his property, investments, savings, etc.) is somewhere between 78 and 90 billion US Dollars. On the other hand, if one were to calculate Anh Peter’s net worth, it would probably be a lot lower, counting 4 years of college tuition.

It would not take a genius mathematician to conclude that Bill Gates is probably worth alot more than me. He drives a nicer car, lives in a bigger house, and has a way fancier education. These are all things that money can assure.

Moreover, Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates, are known to be one of the BIGGEST philanthropists in the world. A philanthropist is a person who promotes the welfare of others for nothing in return. They use their enormous fortune to help millions of poor, sick and starving people around the world everyday. Money allows them to benefit the world in so many ways.  

Bill Gates makes more and does more in one day, than I could ever do in my entire life. That is a very likely a fact. So, knowing that, why should I continue living? Why should I keep learning, and working, and loving? These are among the biggest questions that we explored throughout our 10 hour retreat.

So, let’s move past money for a second. Because, aren’t there other ways that our society determines value? Of course.

Here are a couple:

• Education: Knowing more means that we are able to do more. Even 10 lifetimes is not enough to learn everything there is to learn about our world. But, at least it makes us more qualified than someone that never received an education.
• Athleticism: Not everyone can be a cop, or a firefighter, or Michael Phelps, or even a construction worker. Strength has always been valued and adorned in every society for thousands of years.
• Social Skills: Progress cannot be achieved by one person alone. Many of the great innovations of our time were built by thousands, even millions, of people working together. Being able to communicate effectively, and maintain relationships is a crucial part of that.

Anyways, my point is that the list goes on. A person’s net worth is not just about money. There are so many ways in which the world values its people. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Think about your immediate families, like our parents and siblings. If you didn’t have any of the above qualities— if you weren’t rich, or smart, or strong, or outgoing— would your parents still value you? If today they were given the chance to sell you for Bill Gates entire fortune, would they accept it? Easy answer: No.

Through the eyes of a parent, their children are worth far more than anything else in this world. There is no amount of money that comes even close. Why? Because of love.

Love is one of those things that throw all logic and reason out the window. It is not something that can be measured by the gifts we give, or the things we do for each other. It is something that drives us, that sustains every fiber of our being. We can live without money, without materialism, even without food for awhile. But, we cannot last without love.

That prepares us for the biggest question. If our net worth depends on the person assessing it, how does God value us? How does God see us in comparison to his other works?

The short answer: God does not value us at all.

Okay, hold on, I know that sounds a little bit weird, but let me explain. We call God our father, because our connection is not limited only to that of a creator and their creation. There is affection. We aren’t stone statues built from clay or plaster. We are living, breathing people capable of marvelous things. We cannot be recreated or replicated. Not even identical twins are the same. We do not refer to ourselves as mere offspring, because it fails to capture the whole picture.

God loves us, in the same way that our parents do, perhaps even more. He did not make us, and leave us to our own devices. He watches everything we do. He sees our anger, our delight, our pain, our excitement, our grief, our enjoyment… He is there to commend us in our achievement, and hold us in our failures. God does not stamp a price tag on any of us. We cannot compare ourselves with others, because that is like comparing staplers and rulers, apples and oranges. None of us are similar in God’s eyes, except for the fact that we are priceless and irreplaceable to him. Although we may disappoint him, often, his love for us does not change.

"God does not make junk, only masterpieces". So, go out there and live knowing you are loved. There are times where we forget that, but we are not alone. We have God, and we have each other.

Remember, that God made us all with purpose. Move forward knowing that you will someday realize it. You have something to offer us all. Let’s make this a great year. We got your back.

Anh Peter

Additional Resources: Here is a beautiful video shown at our retreat by Sister Thanh that I highly encourage all of you watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhfUzodLRvk

Read More