INDONESIA IS THE FOURTH most populous country in the world. Over 230 million people live there. Most of them are Muslim, and only 3 percent of them are Roman Catholic.

My name is Gina Escandon and, along with my family, I was an expatriate in Indonesia for almost eight years. My parents wanted me and my brother to grow up going to Mass every Sunday. But living in Indonesia made it kind of hard to do so. Thanks to Father Yan Mangun, it was made possible.

Excuse me. I think I should introduce Father Yan to you. Father Yan Mangun is part of the Dayak people. The Dayaks are a native group of Borneo. Prior to their conversion to Christianity, they were headhunters and believers of animism.

Father Yan was very proud to be the first Dayak ordained as a Catholic priest. Being Christian in a majority Muslim country is difficult and at times dangerous. It was a struggle for Father Yan and other Indonesians to live as proud Catholics. Father Yan set an example to the Indonesian Catholics as well as the international community of Catholics of what living our faith as followers of Christ truly means.

For many years before he retired, Father served as a chaplain in the Indonesian Navy, where he learned English. Once he retired, he came to live and work among the very poor in a parish in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, Indonesia.

We expats used to attend his Masses in a nice open-air church building. But during that time, there were bombings going on in Indonesia. Some of the extreme Muslims who believe that Indonesia should be 100 percent Muslim were bombing Catholic churches. Many innocent Indonesian Catholics were killed, some even on Christmas Day. It was because of this that we started holding our Masses on the secure compound in which we lived.

It was thanks to Father Yan that we had our own little parish so far from our home countries. Our new parish being made up of Catholics from around the world was really a "catholic" church. We had members from the United States, Australia, Ireland, Nigeria, Malaysia, Holland, Colombia, Canada, New Zealand and many more countries than you can imagine.

The weekly offering that was collected from his international parish was more than his local parish collected in a year. Father Yan would use all the money to help his Indonesian parishioners.

Father Yan, or Pak Yan, as he was called in Indonesian, was a very humble man. He had holes in his shoes, but if you gave him money to get new ones, he would just give the money to someone who needed it more.

I am so blessed that I have had Father Yan in my life. If it weren't for him, I would not have made my First Communion until I moved back to America when I was in fifth grade. I would not have been able to go to church every Sunday and understand what was being said.

He heard God calling him above everything, and he answered. That's why Father Yan Mangun is a witness to Christ.

Gina Escandon is a a seventh-grader at Holy Rosary Catholic School in Rosenberg, Texas. Her essay about Father Yan Mangun earned the Bishop Francis X. Ford Award, a $1000 award named in honor of the Maryknoll missioner who died in a prison in China in 1952.