By Veronica Ugates

The author is one of Misyon’s regular contributors. She has recently come up with her own magazine, HEROES – a magazine dedicated to our overseas Filipino workers. It has an online version, www.heroesmag.com. She is currently working on her book Questions Women Ask About Their Men.

Lufthansa flights from the Philippines to Tripoli have two stopovers, one in Bangkok and the other 
in Dusseldorf. Returning to Tripoli on the second leg of my trip, I was seated beside a Malaysian lady.

Apparently, she had been observing what I was doing and after I had prayed the rosary she asked me, ‘You’re Catholic, right? What makes you different from others?’ I replied, ‘Hello! Oh, there would be a number of things but I’d venture to say our faith is the most difficult to follow yet it is most practical’.

By Mitzi Ramos

Who knew that a letter of appreciation would be the beginning of eighteen years ' heavenly humor from the mission front to the lap of urban readers? This is exactly how the experiences of an isloated Ghanaian missionary found their way into the pages of Misyon. It is my pleasure to introduce the real Father Joeker. From Joseph Panabang SVD.

Father Joe hails from Gaang,which according to him is a small village. Found in the mountains of Kalinga, the native culture is still quite alive and has been preserved. Father Joe proudly declares that his ancestry is that of the original settlers of the region, with no foreign bloodline mixed in. He is the youngest of a brood of twelve and the only one who has gone beyond elementary studies. He attributes his vocation to the presence of the CICM missionaries in Kalinga who were welcomed by his father into their home even in the absence of being able to offer food, which other locals thought was what the missionaries required. He remembers vividly walking behind the CICM missionary who would go around the playground praying the rosary.

By Fr Bobby Gilmore SSC

Fr Bobby Gilmore, a Columban from Ireland and a regular contributor to these pages, spent many years in Mindanao and later in Jamaica. He then worked with Irish migrants in Britain where, with others, he helped secure the release of a group of Irishmen wrongly jailed for a bombing. He is the Chairperson of the Migrant Rights Centre in Dublin (www.mrci.ie). Here he reflects on the heartbreak involved in emigration, drawing on an experience while in Jamaica. For Jamaicans the ‘Barrel’ symbolizes everything that the Balikbayan Box does for Filipinos.

A crisis of papers unfixed,
two three jobs as a domestic
and weathering the cold,
the barrel
in her kitchen-corner

a ship’s hold, constantly
waiting to be filled –
This time bargain clothes,
employers’ cast-offs
for the children back home

(Grace Nichols, Jamaican poet)

‘Your Word is the Lamp Unto My Feet and a Light Unto My Path’

By Gracebelle Montecillo

The author graduated in March
from the high school department
of Kabankalan Catholic College
Negros Occidental

When I was 10, I dreamed of one day joining the youth camp that was held annually in our Diocese, Kabankalan. Luckily, the following year, I was allowed to join the parish youth camp and later the diocesan camps. That was the beginning of my desire to reach more than that. When I reached high school, my longing to join youth camps grew deeper. I wanted to learn more about Christian values and share these with my fellow youth.