My name is Lan (Marie). Born in a crowded family of 8 brothers and sisters, I was taught intendedly by my mom around 17 year ago that living in the convent is the best way to run away from the burden of life: No marriage and no husband and no Children.

I said yes to my Mom when I was 16 to go to the sister convent. I couldn’t remember well how many sisters in convent at the time I was in but there were roughly 16 young girls as the same age as me to be together in the convent.

We were trained to become Nuns, who live with the mission of serving community and following the order of the sisters is the most important thing while living there.

We did love the little world inside the convent as we knew that we had found the most peaceful part of life here. We enjoy the life which is different from the outside of the world. We had our own bed/ own corner of room for keeping our own clothes/books and shoes.

Every day we followed strict schedule with early wake up at around 4.30 am then doing plenty of activities mainly about Mass/going to school/learning the good teaching from elder sisters for all types of subject depend on our own capability including cooking/dancing/playing piano or even singing.

After many classes and training time, we had to face a special order of Sisters to select the suitable girls for our future duties. Some of us who could not pass this exam would come back home and left places for girls who could adapt to the life in convent.

At the same time, I was advised to study English harder and harder because Sisters said this language would be useful in the future for me and the convent itself. That is the reason why I chose English as my main major at University of Science.

Athough I had no time to visit my home as I was not allowed to be home frequently, I was very happy with the life style here. While all of my friends at university thought about moving to other big cities to look for jobs, earn money, I moved up to the second step in the convent to be a sister/nun. I was thinking a lot about what God wanted me to do for future…

Five months later, I decided to leave the convent in the pity of Sisters. They persuaded me to be with them for doing community works for society and people but I had to go back home to support my big family. As I trusted if I did not lose hope, God would always by my side, I knew that I would learn more from life and do bigger things for the people.

After convent life, I became a tourist guide – meeting people and practice English for 7 years.

I got married and now run my own travel agent for organizing tour from abroad to Vietnam since 2012.

Until now, I do believe this year is the most suitable time for me to do something for catholic community as CONNECT and SHARE is the main reason I made this page. I hope that I can CONNECT the catholic in and all everywhere, who would like to come to my country/ my city/ my catholic community and my convent, and make them feel that Life is always beautiful and in every step of our life, GOD WILL BE WITH US. From that purpose I will donate more and support more (SHARE) for the POOR/ the children and the catholic community.

I love you all!