Some of the Chinese, though very few, were Christians; and it was believed that many would be converted if there were someone to preach in their language. But this is so difficult that, although many desirous to undertake that conversion had endeavored to learn it, no one as yet had succeeded; and thus no religious order had taken up this ministry, being afraid of the difficulty of the language. When father Fray Miguel arrived, he instantly undertook this enterprise--for the Lord had created him for great things; and this ministry was given to our order, the bishop asking each and everyone of the religious orders who were there before to undertake it, and not one of them accepting it because of the reason given. Father Fray Miguel immediately began with all his energy to study this language, and succeeded with it. What is more, he learned many of the letters of it, which are much more difficult. Father Fray Juan Cobo joining him immediately, they began to teach the Chinese, amazing those people that anyone should have been able to succeed with their language and to preach to them in it. Much greater was their amazement, however, at the extraordinary virtue and charity which they beheld in these two religious. They did not content themselves with the labor of teaching them--which was not small, for soon many were converted and began to be baptized; but they proposed to build a hospital where the sick poor could be cared for. The number of these was great, because their sufferings were great in this foreign land, where they were neglected by all, and suffered the extremity of need, which is sickness and death. The fathers began their hospitals; and, poor religious as they were, they had no better house than that which they were able to make, almost without money, out of beams and old planks--the habits and cloaks of the religious often serving as beds, because they had no other bedclothes. The religious sometimes brought in the sick whom they found lying on the streets, without power to move themselves and with no one to pity them. In this way the fame of the virtue of father Fray Miguel and his companions was very widely spread, and there were many of the Chinese heathen who were converted and baptized. The fragrance of this great charity spread so far that it reached Great China and proclaimed in trumpet tones what was done for their sick in the Philippinas. There was one man who came from China to look upon so rare a thing as caring for the sick--poor, and cast out by their own nation and kinsmen; but admitted, sought for, and cared for by persons who were not known to them, and who were not only of another nation, but of a different law and faith, and who labored without any expectation of temporal profit, but merely for the salvation of souls. Hence the Lord was favorable to them, and this work was constantly growing better in all things. It is today one of the most glorious things in Christendom, not because of its income and its building (though in these respects it is very good), but because of the many who at the hour of death are baptized in it with many indications of going hence to glory, as being newly cleansed of their faults and their sins by baptism.