20 years have passed since I attended my first mass in Vietnamese. I was a child then and my friends brought me to the church. In fact the place was a meeting hall where Vietnamese from several places of Tokyo accustomed to meet once a month, on Sundays, for mass with a Vietnamese priest.

The Choir gathered for practice before the mass started at 10:30 and the leader asked me to join them. Although I was a little surprised I agreed and joined them for several years. For a while I was busy at home with my family and could not attend those gatherings, but for the last 4 years I continued participating in the activities of the Choir.

About 30 members, male and female, age 20 to 40 years old participate regularly in the Cecilia Choir. The masses are solemn masses and everybody can participate in the songs. Since the Choir bears an important role, every month once the Vietnamese mass is ended all members of the Choir remain together for almost three hours to prepare and practice for the mass of the next month.

During the year 2005 we have also participated in various events and Charity Concerts, like the one held several months ago to raise funds for the Indonesian victims of the terrible Tsunami or the one held at Kawagoe Catholic Church to finance programs for poor Vietnamese children.

Although everybody is quite busy and in spite of living in far away places, like Kanagawa and Saitama provinces, we spent hours on Saturdays to prepare the Charity Concert. People were tired but everybody was quite cooperative and dedicated because we understood the meaning of the Concert. We are happy of the success of the project.

We also organized other activities during the year, like parties and "hanami" events and during summer we go swimming to the beach. In the future we plan to hold a mini concert, but in order to do that we need a lot of preparations.

Finally, as a representative of the Cecilia Choir I want to invite those with capabilities and free time to join us as members of the Choir.