Autobiography the Philippines to Steubenville

Our family arrived in the Philippines at Christmas time and we stayed in Manila during that time period. We stayed with the daughter of Claudio Tee Han Kee who was then the Chief Justice of the Philippines Supreme Court. She was married to an entrepreneur who had studied in the United States. We took a vessel through the Visayas Sea to Cagayan de Oro and there we caught a bus fro a nervewracking twelve hour bus ride into the mountains to Malaybalay, Bukidnon on the Island of Mindanao. www.BukidnonOnline.com  By the time I left there years later for the last time (as of this writing) it was about a one and a half hour ride.

In the Philippines I worked in college ministry in various places, jail ministry across the street from my house and studied Visayan. I also went through a full research anlalysis of the Alagad Program of lay leadership training for the prefecture of Malaybalay. I read all of Henri Danile Rops multivolume History of the Church of Christ. I took my sisters back and forth from Malaybalay to the Nancy Knobloch School at Nazuli nearby to study in English with Americans. I organized and ran a Youth Conference and  Completed the Basic Scripture Ventures Course at the East Asian Pastoral Institute at the Ateneo de Manila.

My brother Simon Peter was born. He was diagnosed with Prader-Wili Syndrome. We returned to the United States where he received therapy and diagnosis. I founded a group called the Brotherhood of the Cross and worked with it till a conflict in the late summer. I did a semester of study at the University of  Southwestern Louisiana from which I would graduate and which is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. http://www.louisiana.edu/   There I did well and my good performance locked in advanced credits so that I was a sophomore after my first semester was completed.

I returned to the Philippines with my family. There my brother Joseph was born and as my visa was expiring I made a choice to come home shortly afterwards. I lived with mypaternal grandparents for the summer and went up to Steubenville.  My Uncle Jim and Aunt Kathy went with me to Franciscan University of Steubenville http://www.franciscan.edu/ .  I would visit them at home on  short holiday breaks in Virginia. I was (and am) a member of Ahim Adonai Household and won the Sophomore Class Award for 1985. One was awarded to a male and one to a female student. I returned to the Philippines to visit my family over the summer and then returned to Steubenville but dropped out in the next year and returned to work in Louisiana.