s vote for the province in the
general chapter. The authority and money for the conduction of a
mission were long delayed, but at last he received them both at the
end of 1674, whereupon he displayed so good zeal that he took passage
with twenty-six religious in June 1675. He reached Mexico with his
gospel militia, where he was ordered by the province to return to
Espana to conduct certain matters that could only be entrusted to his
person. Thereupon, sending his accounts to Philipinas, the mission
went to the islands in the year 1676 in charge of another prelate,
and father Fray Juan bent his steps toward his new destiny.

911. Another father, Fray Juan de la Madre de Dios, a native of Cuenca,
had gone to Philipinas in the mission of father Fray Christoval
de Santa Monica; in the year 1680, that definitory appointed him
commissioner to Espana. He sailed the same year from the port of Cavite
in the galleon named "San Telmo." [After a voyage tempered with the
mercy obtained by St. Nicholas of Tolentino, in several dangerous
situations, the father arrived at Acapulco, January 22, 1681, and
was detained some time in Nueva Espana by the fever. Reaching Spain
in November of the same year, he hastened to lay his supplications
at the royal feet, and was given a decree calling for a mission of
forty religious fathers and five lay brothers. "He also obtained a
royal decree dated April 16 of the abovesaid year [1682] in which his
Majesty continued the annual alms of one hundred and fifty pesos for
the medicines which are used in our infirmary of Manila; and another
of the thirtieth of the same month, in which he also continued the
alms of two hundred and fifty pesos and a like number of fanegas of
rice per year for the maintenance of the four religious of Ours who
were in charge of the Indians in Manila."]

914. In view of this, the edict for the mission was published by our
father vicar-general. An excellent mission was collected at Sevilla for
the purpose of taking passage in the fleet which was about to sail to
Nueva Espana in charge of General Don Diego de Saldivar. Thereupon the
mission sailed from Cadiz on the fourth of March, 1683, and consisted
of the following religious.

1. The father commissary, Fray Juan de la Madre de Dios, native
of Cuenca.

2. The father vice-commissary, Fray Fernando Antonio de la Concepcion,
native of Aldea del Cardo, of the bishopric of Calahorra.

3. The pensioned father reader, Fray Juan