If homegrown lad, Xavier Tilos Villagonzalo, could have it, he would want to re-live every single moment of his life, including those that have brought him so much pain and suffering. “Life is a myriad of explorations. I guess to define it would be to say that we are a conduit for an easy way out to every problem,” he wrote in an e-mail sent to this columnist straight from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia where he is pursuing a second degree in information technology.
Villagonzalo finished high school at St. Louis School-Don Bosco, Dumaguete and graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Mass Communication at Silliman University. While in college, he was active in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, including being president of the Corps of Campus Ambassadors.
Looking back today, it must have been Villagonzalo’s stint as a campus ambassador that paved the way for his having been appointed as an official Brisbane International Student Ambassador together with 28 students from 23 different nationalities. A year-long program managed by Brisbane Marketing’s Study Brisbane, it is dedicated to advance the development of Brisbane’s international student sector, thereby, spreading the word that Brisbane is a new world city offering world-class education opportunities. The appointment of Villagonzalo was announced by Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman.
Considering himself as a “survivor of life’s twists and turns,” Villagonzalo is the youngest of five siblings of an average couple, Dionisio Villagonzalo and Segundina Tilos who were both religiously inclined and, thus, named all their children after patron saints. The young Villagonzalo was named after St. Francis Xavier, a Catholic missionary with his older siblings named Salvador, Michael, Francis, and Catherine.
However, life’s challenge came quite early to the young Villagonzalo. On the fateful day of April 13, 1994, his mother, a public school teacher in the municipality of Siaton, Negros Oriental, happened to be one of the passengers of an RD jeepney bound for Dumaguete. Unfortunately, the said jeepney fell off a mini-cliff in the winding roads of Bondo, Siaton, and while about 20 passengers were critically injured, Xavier’s mother was the only one who died.
He was 9 years old then and being the youngest, was his Mama’s little boy. “It was the lowest point in my life and I felt my dreams shatter to pieces. It took me two long and arduous years to recover from my grief,” he confesses. He said what kept him to hold on was what his mother told him: “Life has lots of twists and turns. If you stumble and fall, don’t ever give up. Hold on to your dreams and believe in yourself. What matters most is your faith that you can always do it no matter how hard it is.”
When he was just starting to pick up the pieces, another blow came to the young lad. In 2000, only six years after their mother passed away, his only sister Cathy, who he looked up to as a second mother, had to leave for Australia. “I really didn’t know the reason, but one thing was for certain, I believe it was to look for greener pastures. Again, it was really hard for me to cope with life’s new challenges without my sister. It took me another two months to adjust,” he muses. And, if you think that is enough for a young boy to handle, the latest of Xavier’s woes and anguish came in June 2007 when their father died of diabetes complications.
It was at this time that the young Villagonzalo discerned God’s wisdom and guiding hand when an opportunity came for him to join his sister in Brisbane, Australia. Traveling out of the country is not exactly new for him, though, because through the Lord’s intercession, he was also among the student delegates to the World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany a few years ago, basking in the rare experience of being in the immediate vicinity of then Pope John Paul XXIII.
Then, came the latest twist in his life in March 2011 when he was appointed as a Brisbane International Student Ambassador for his home country. “I tried to look back on what has been and figured how I could best position myself to even fit this title. Well, I told myself, in order for me to be an ambassador, I need to know the person I am representing. To help fine-tune my adjustment to this new title, I convinced myself to go back to the story of my childhood, how I was orphaned at an early age. Only then that I have come to realize one thing I ought to do, and that is to bring out my innate passion for me to be able to share the child I was – I now reckon – is the ambassador I want to be,” he articulates.
Certainly, the future holds a lot of promise for Xavier. Despite his experiences as a young boy, he regards them as lessons learned which have all made him a better person.
“As for me, while I say hello to Brisbane, for so long a time I have understood those challenges were not the end of everything, but rather a beginning of a bright new life,” he intones, while telling people to allow the story of his life to serve as a lesson or instrument to “wake the hearts and minds of the youth of today not to take for granted their loved ones, especially their parents.” – NWI
