Hoat Bui will be thirty years old next April. financial aid He is currently studying the licentiate degree in Theology at the University of Navarra and is one of the first two students of Vietnamese origin to study in Pamplona with the financial support of the benefactors of the CARF Foundation. Something for which he feels very grateful.

He came to the University five years ago. He dreams of becoming a priest, but he still has to finish the two courses of licentiate degree and do a year of pastoral work before receiving the diaconate ordination. Although he is fully available to take on the pastoral work that his bishop entrusts to him upon his return, when he is ordained a priest he would like to live in a parish and be able to give witness to Christ. "How important it is to dedicate time to sacramental confession and to live close to each person!" he assures.

He is the third of five brothers, including another seminarian and a Dominican sister. An unusual fact, considering that issue of Christians in Vietnam does not reach 10% of the population.

He recalls that when he was a child he only went to mass once a month and it was not even in his own town. They had to go to a neighboring village. At school he shared a desk with friends of other religions, most of them Buddhists, and others of no faith at all. On the contrary, he always had the desire to become a priest, as did some of his uncles, his father's brothers.

They served as a reference point for him, as did Vietnamese Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, who was imprisoned for 13 years. "My parents were very devoted to him because with his life he showed a testimony of hope," he says.

After high school, Hoat entered Dong Do International University in Hanoi to study Philology English. During his time at the university, he lived with five other classmates and a priest in a parish in the province while doing a period of discernment.

Once he had finished the degree program, he took the entrance exam at the seminar. It was then that the bishop of his diocese offered him the opportunity to study at the University of Navarra. He has been there ever since: "At the Bidasoa Internationalseminar , under the spiritual direction of Fr. Juan Antonio Gil Tamayo, I learned to lead a life of prayer," he says, and it was there that he saw snow for the first time, something that caught his attention.

He is accustomed to the city, its people, the climate, the language and even the food, although he recognizes that it took him some time to get used to "ham and cheese". He claims to have felt very welcome, both in Bidasoa, where he lives, and at the University, and that the first years the Spanish missionary martyrs in Vietnam, especially St. Valentin de Berriochoa, often came to his mind at report . "I think a lot of the patience they had in the face of difficulties and they have been a great help to me financial aid", he says.