By Ed Locsin

Ed Locsin is a well –known evangelizer in Bacolod, Negros. He is much love for his gentle and modest approach. Here he shares with us, at the invitation of the Editor, his life’s journey.

Our father had always encouraged us four boys to be independent and self-sufficient. He did not have an hacienda for us to inherit so he pushed us to work hard for a college education. My three brothers all earned their college degrees and Dad expected me to have one, too. However, unlike my brothers and sisters, I did not have the inclination or drive for study. I was impatient to get on with life. Besides, I knew that I was not cut out to be an employee. I wanted to be an entrepreneur and the sooner I got started, the sooner I could realize my goal. After high school, my father allowed me to go to Honolulu and enroll at the University of Hawaii and take up Agricultural engineering, this because of my love for machines. The plan was for me to get my bachelor’ degree in Hawaii and proceed to the Mainland for my master’s. But I had other plans.

Starting the Steps

After one year of college in Bacolod, I left fro Hawaii by freighter reaching Honolulu after twenty-one days. I chose a freighter not only because it was cheap but I thought I could get some experience on the ship and on visits to the different ports of call. Besides, I loved the sea. What my father did not know was that I planned to stay at the University for only a year or so, come back, start a business and get married. The problem was I had to go through the sophomore and junior years taking up courses that did not have anything to do with actual hands-on engineering. I talked to the college dean about my hurry to get back to the Philippines to help in the rehabilitation of the Sugar Industry and so, if he would please enroll me in the senior year so I could take course dealing with actual machinery work, especially in their research shop. Of course, this was all bull. To my surprise, agreed, on a special visiting colleagues status. I even got invited to tour the Hawaiian Research Station in the island of Maui at their expense. This experience added to what I thought was my ability to b e able to get what I wanted if only I used my head-self-reliance.

On My Own

In Honolulu I had to work for my personal needs since after the war Dad did not have the resources sufficient to sustain my stay in Honolulu. At first resented the idea that I had to work, not realizing at the time that God allows such experiences for His plan for us in the future. Of course, God was very far from my thought at that time. I was focused only on myself and my future.

After one year and a half I came home. I had already written to Dad that I was coming home without a degree. He did not want to receive me at home. Thanks to a mother’s love, Mom convinced him into taking me back.

Top of the World

With my mother’s help, I bought a tract of second growth forest, got married to Jeannette R. de Luzuriaga of Ilog and settled down to make my future of my own to design in my own way, with my own strength, not being aware that God not being aware of God had already started working in my life through many events. We wanted to have several children but God allowed us only one. My wife and I develop the second growth forest into a very diversified farm, not dependent on sugarcane alone, as was the dream of my father, to free us from the bondage of sugar. We put up a meat processing plant serving the needs of local animal growers, especially the poor brickyard hog raisers. The farm and the business prospered. Our son Chito grew to be a hardworking, mature and diligent student, making the dean’s list at La Salle, Taft. He was, at the early age, already helping us out in the business as our company’s representative in Manila and supervising the farm’s machine shop during vacations. I had prepared the future for Chito. We were on the top of the world, giving myself the credit for our success. The God allowed tragedy to invade our lives.

When He Took Everything

Midnight, September 23, 1972, I was asleep alone in the farm. Jeannette was in Manila to visit Chito to make up four our absence at his birthday on September 9 because we were too busy making money. I woke up with a start and sat up. I heard myself saying as if in prayer. (I had not prayed for many years), “Lord, if it is your will to take our most precious, your will be done.” I looked at the clock and it was 12:20 am, September 24. it was the exact time that Chito expired. He died in his sleep, while sleeping next to his mother, of the hemorrhagic pancreatitis or bangungot. This experience, perhaps, is the real turning point of our lives. Jeannette and I, needless to say, were devastated. Our lives, our work, vision and purpose were lost in our grief and self-pity. How could you, God? You’re supposed to be good, loving and merciful. How could you?

Nothing Else but Grief

The farm deteriorated, and with it, our lives. I went deeper into my alcoholism. The next nine years were years of decline, financially, emotionally, and worst, in our marital relationship. I had become a very difficult person to live with. Three times my wife threatened to leave me. Perhaps, it was her own unfailing faith in God that made her go through these very trying times. She was alone in the farm, without anyone or community to support her in her loss and grief. Her strength came from her daily reading of Thomas A’ Kempis’ Imitation of Christ. The year 1981 was a significant year. I was at my lowest. My mother died in May and the business was closed in October.

Matthew 11:28

However, in February of that year I happened to join a Christian community called the Bacolod Prayer Breakfast & Fellowship. I met a Baptist pastor with whom I shared my situation. He led me to the Bible, especially to Matthew 12:28, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” This verse changed my life. He showed me how to read through the Bible and led me to surrender all to Jesus. My hunger for the Word of Good develop rapidly and on September 25, 1981, at 4: 00 o’clock in the morning I made my surrender – all, including the life or my wife, which of course, I found most difficult to do but God said all, total, complete, and so I did with much fear that God might really take my wife’s life as He did with our son.

Freedom at Last!

At that moment the Holy Spirit filled me with God’s peace, an experience that I cannot put into words. All of the sudden everything looked so bright, so full of hope. In fact, I felt the freedom of not being shackled to the business and farm anymore, or to anything else. God is so good that at about the same time, Jeannette also experienced the same freedom, the freedom from the past, and the resentments of Chito’s death. God could use me now the way He wanted me to, ready to obey whatever He wanted me to do, and I told Him so. However, I did not expect that what He wanted from me was something completely out of my character, something that brought a very drastic change to our lives.

I left Everything and Followed Him

In February of 1982, God impressed upon me to leave everything, including the farm and come to Bacolod, after which He would reveal what I was supposed to do. We did exactly that. We looked for a house in the city and moved to live here in July on the same year. Then He led me to teach scriptures to people in remote places. Although I continued to study under the Baptist pastor, I was able led to study more deeply my catholic faith. I found out that everything that attracted me to the Evangelical churches could also be found in Catholic Church, and more – the Eucharist, devotion to Mary and the Magisterium of the Church. In 1986 the P.E.A.C.E. Fellowship, Inc. ( People’s Ecumenical Action for Christians Evangelization) was founded and it is here that I now serve God through its Bible classes, lectures, weekly TV program and weekly fellowship meetings.

Wealthy in God’s Love

We are no longer financially rich but extremely wealthy in God’s love, the peace of Jesus and the joy of the Holy Spirit. For one thing, now I know that I can never be self-sufficien, but can be all-sufficient in Jesus Christ, my Savior. To God be all praise, honor and glory. Alleluia!

Negros is sometimes called a Social Volcano. In fact Negros is the emotional heart of the armed revolution precisely because of the social inequality. When Ed Locsin found is new vocation he determined to face the social problem squarely. During a long period of years, he and his wife quietly and persistently started a land reform program through their Chito Foundation. First they started with their own farm – never an easy task. Now after many ups and downs it has been in its own way a model of Land Reform with the people running it themselves – a sign that it can actually be done. The Chito Foundation helps and encourages other groups to take the same road. In this way, through the grace of Christ, we pray that the wounds of Negros can be healed.