Just Sharing A Bit Of My Friend's Story

One of my oldest and closest friends got a paragraph in today's Philippine Star column by Fr. Ruben Tanseco, S.J. Here's the link to the column, and here's the paragraph:

Take John Ong, one of our Jesuit alumni from Xavier School and Ateneo de Manila University, and a holder of a master's degree in hydro-geology from the University of the Philippines. During a research project that he did among the indigenous Mangyans in Mindoro, John was deeply affected by the poverty of the people. Moreover, one of the village elders requested him to stay and teach them the skills that they needed so badly. The invitation haunted him that night. And against the advice of his parents and friends, John committed himself to the challenge. The tribe needed to identify the boundaries of their land in order to file their claim to their ancestral land. But they were educationally ignorant. John had to start teaching them the basic skills in writing, reading, and arithmetic, for which he himself had to learn the Mangyan language. He helped them find water sources and lived among them - without toilets, electricity, vehicles, and roads. According to John, what he has learned from the Mangyans is "to love and to serve." (From Edi Sian, Profiles Encourage).

I've been wanting to tell his story for the longest time, but he's a private person, and has asked me not to for just as long. But this couldn't be hidden forever, and so, a lot of other people have beaten me to the telling for years. I hope he doesn't mind my blogging about it now, for the first time, with Fr. Tanseco's column as the impetus, and really just using an excerpt from someone else's writing, which is all my respect for his privacy will allow (cat's out of the bag anyway, right John? Been out, running about, and making a lot of noise for some time, really. Be safe where you are, and dress warmly. I miss our long talks. See you again in a couple of years).