By Fr Michael Doohan SSC

I have long been invited by Misyon to write my vocation story but I always had many excuses to delay it until one day I was cornered. The Misyon staff visited me at my convento in Cauyan, a three-hour journey from Bacolod City, the capital of Negros Occidental. Obviously, I didn’t have much choice but to tell them my vocation story so their visit would not be in vain.

I grew up in County Clare, in the west of Ireland, with four brothers and five sisters. In a poor place like County Clare, farming was the basic livelihood of the people. Our parents taught us the meaning of hard work from an early age and saw to it that we all went to high school. There was only one bad word in our family and that was the word “lazy”. We all did our share – not while we were at school for we were expected to study then – but in the summer and during other holidays. All nine received a full secondary education with the exception of the eldest son, Patrick, who would run the farm.