cast themselves at the feet of Christ Jesus, recognizing Him as the
true God and ardently pleading to be joined to Him in faith through
the mystery of baptism. And here I began to recognize the favor which
God had shown me, in calling me forth from Espana in these days;
for this single instance was enough reason to call me forth. On the
very first occasion when we baptized, we plunged a hundred persons
in the sacred fount; on the second, all the rest without exception.

"When I was once explaining to a fierce and barbarous fellow the great
glory of paradise and the dire pains of hell, he answered, just as
if he had been possessed by a demon, that he had rather go to hell
than to paradise; and, as he was one of the chiefs in that region,
he carried a great many with him to the same decision of a perverse
mind. But I did not hesitate to attack the foolish fellow again and
again, and I insisted upon the horror and the eternity of the torments
with great vehemence of language; but he answered that he certainly
ought to go, after this life, there, where his parents and the rest
of his ancestors had departed, rather than anywhere else. Then I
responded that he had better just try the force of fire; but he, with
hands as hard as his heart, did not hesitate to snatch up some burning
coals from the hearth. However, a few days later, his mind divinely
changed, he ran out into the fields and meadows, and, calling all his
tribesmen together, he urged them to accept the Christian sacraments,
with such zeal that he had no equal among the Visaians."

In another letter sent to the father-visitor from the same place,
the same Father Valerio writes that another father had written to
him that in the islands Lobo and Dita he had sprinkled four hundred
persons, chiefly infants, with the most holy waters. Thus within the
interval of three months more than a thousand had been initiated by
the same sacraments, and numberless others are left burning with the
same desire. Therefore the members of our Order declare that the time
is come for the salvation of that island, and eagerly wait for workers.

But your Paternity will learn of a more glorious fruit from these
missions in Bohol from the letters of Father Gabriel Sanchez and Father
Cristofero Ximenez, [40] who have been assigned to that mission. [41]
In letters written in the month of October, Father Gabriel writes as
follows: "Our Lord has singularly blessed our attempts and labors. For