Jesus in our Midst Concert

We attended a gospel concert at Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church (OLV) in Canoga Park on Saturday, April 5.  The concert followed the regular 5 pm mass and was sponsored by the Oriental Mindoro Association of Southern California (OMASC) with which my in-laws and some of their relatives are involved.  It was put on by three priests from St. Augustine Seminary (SAS) in Oriental Mindoro, Philippines as a fundraiser for SAS.  Father Mimo Perez did the singing and presenting and the other priests did the work behind the scenes such as operate the projector.  They held the concert in the church.

The event was kind of a homecoming for me because I used to attend the 5pm mass at OLV when I lived in Woodland Hills.  I recognized a few faces but not the celebrant, Father Lawrence.  Two of the priests from SAS (not Fr. Mimo) helped celebrate the mass.  Though most of the congregants left after the mass, the middle section of the church was still about half full for the concert.  They set up a screen with a laptop projector to the right of the altar.  They projected the lyrics to the songs along with related images.  If the song was in Tagalog, they projected the English translation.  I had thought that the concert, both the singing and the presentation, would be all in Tagalog.  If it was I could use the concert to do the “technology project” for my ESL instruction class.  I needed to put myself in a situation where all I heard was a foreign language for one hour straight.  But most of the songs and the presentation were in English so the activity didn’t count as immersion.  I’ll look into finding a foreign language film or watching a foreign language channel.

The concert began with the title song “Jesus in our Midst” (in English) with Fr. Mimo singing and playing guitar.  Recorded instrumental tracks acted as his “band.”  He sounded a bit off on the timing and the key and even admitted afterward that he “sang like a nun.”  His other songs sounded better.  He sang with a young girl from OLV a song about Mary, the mother of Christ and the girl had a great voice.  My wife enjoyed the song Fr. Mimo wrote and sang about being his father’s son.  He prefaced each song with the stories behind them.  He sang four songs in Tagalog including “Bulson”, “Buntonghininga” about sighing, and “Pariseo”.  He spoke and sang in English very well without much of an accent.  He also spoke very earnestly about his songs’ subject matter.  But he wasn’t always serious and he was sometimes self-deprecating.  He elicited audience participation by asking, “When did Jesus suffer the most?”  There were several different answers and he said they were all good.  He gave the generally accepted answer as when Jesus said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” because at the time He felt abandoned.

Fr. Mimo told a story about his interactions with the Mangyans, the indigenous mountain people of Oriental Mindoro.  He prefaced another song by talking about the painting by Filipino artist Joey Velasco of Jesus at the “last supper” with poor Filipino children rather than the disciples.  Mr. Velasco also wrote a book about the children and he asked Fr. Mimo to write a song about them.  The translation of the song title was something like, “They are the Ones with Him”.  I thought the song was pretty good even though it was in Tagalog.  I read the translations on the screen.  It had a strong message that Jesus is with the most poor and not the well-off.

Towards the end they had a video presentation of St. Augustine Seminary.  They asked for and collected donations and pledges of support.  They ended with a song about world peace where Fr. Mimo was joined by the girl who sang with him earlier and Fr. Lawrence from OLV who celebrated the mass.  In the lobby they were selling CD’s of Fr. Mimo performing his songs.  Even though it wasn’t what we expected I’m glad we went.