"What do you know about Ireland?" I asked the third grade class that was excited to have just learnt that I was from there. "St. Patrick was from there" responded a girl in the front row. "So did that mean that he was Irish?" I inquired, my tone betraying an element of doubt. "Yes!" came back a chorus of voices, filled with disbelief that I would even pose such a question.

"So what did St. Patrick do in Ireland?" I asked. "He told the people about God. He was a missionary" responded a boy in the third row. "And how was it that St. Patrick knew about God, while the Irish people around him knew nothing?" I inquired.

Now that I'm home, I realized I do not have a room to call my own. My room is the bag I carry on my back every time I move from one mission to another. Right after high school I left home to pursue a childhood dream– to become a priest.

In the history of human life suffering is what every person will encounter in their lifetime. Not even Jesus, the Son of God, was spared from pain as He too had to suffer to fulfill the plan of the Father for His people.

I started to write these two poems last year during a workshop training on poetry writing in my ministry with asylum seekers.

I remember how I silently uttered a prayer to bless me in my desire to become a missionary when Pope John Paul II visited the Philippines in 1985. Years later when I watched a movie about Mother Theresa's life I started to feel remiss about something.