MAJ. RUSTICO P. LUGA

CAMP SAMAL

This is what we are going to expect at Camp Samal. It's a very nice place where you can stay overnight or even two nights. Feel the experience of praying inside Tumauini Church, when you go over there. Just sit, concentrate and feel the aura of a more than 400 years old Church. Afterward, you can inspect and look intensely the intricate details of the brick formations specially if you have a camera, it's so cool! Its a once in a lifetime shot you have there! We can also visit the San Pablo Church, it is also a unique structure.

From Manila you can take an aircon bus (P500.00 to Cauayan at Our Lady of the Pillar Church) your travel shall take 8 hours. You can leave Manila in Cubao via Dalin Transport or via Victory Lines across Kamuning GMA 7. You can leave at around 9:00 or 10:00 in the evening and have a good sleep while on travel. You'll arrive at around 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., it will not take two hours from Cauayan City to Tumauini.

We are still looking into the schedules, the costing and an ideal package tour within Isabela and around Tumauini, where you can enjoy while on travel. We shall have a travel documentary to document your travel on photo and video, which can be viewed by our relatives worldwide. What is unique in Isabela are its Barroque Churches, which were already declared as a heritage site by no less than the UNESCO, aside from its breath holding sceneries. The Barroque Churches in Isabela already earned worldwide reputation as among the most unique edifice that withstood the test of time. It's a lifetime experience.

THE HOMECOMING

Never have we imagined that it was almost two years ago on May 30, 2008 that we meet at Col. Mateo Luga's home in Fairview to talk about the Homecoming of Gen. Mateo Noriel Luga, in his place of birth in Tumauini, Isabela. Never have we encountered in our history books the life and times of a Great Leader, a hero at that, who lives by the principles of love, family, honor, country, and glory who lived a life of a leader, fighting his own war with men foreign to his culture to fight an honorable warfare against the navy of the greatest nation in this planet, the Naval Forces of the United States of America, in Cebu. He fought an honorable warfare despite rescuing his love ones made as hostage to weaken his resolve. His heroism was written by his fierciest enemy the Americans, out of respect and admiration because of his high degree of honor and candor to his enemies despite superiority in force and application of strategies uncommon to honorable warfare. He deserves our admiration and respect.

In honor of this Great Warrior, your attendance to this event as a gesture of honoring his legacy to live beyond generations shall be given life by experiencing and seeing for ourselves where this Great Leader started his own war in Tumauini, Isabela. Please contact Eng. Tony Luga of Malappo Nga Ibanag Cooperative at Mobile: 09159350421. Your advance reservations, pledges or sponsorship to this event shall surely help the organizers of this event. We shall firm up everything on the ground to firm-up everything.

This is for all of you:

NEW YORK FEATURES DONNA SAMONTE!

Jarvis John Luga Surriga

Jarvis graduated from University of Negros Occidental Recoletos with a BS in Medical Technology. He placed 15 when he took the Medical Board Examination in 1992. He worked for a few years in Bacolod as a Medical Tehnologist and also teached 3 semesters in UNO-R and thereafter decided to move to Manila.

While in Manila, he was accepted at UP-Manila for Post Graduate Training. After his training , he worked for UP-PGH as a Blood Bank Medical Technologist II and while working, he took spanish courses at Instituto Cervantes and german at Goethe Institut. He finished Nivel Intermedio ( Intermediate Spanish ) and Deutsch Mittelstuffe ( Intermediate German ).

In June 2000 he applied for a job in the United Statesand left for Colorado in Nov 2000.

He worked there for eight years as Med Tech and later as Lead Blood Bank Technologist. While in Colorado he enrolled in an online MA degree in Occupational and Public Health, which he almost finished pending thesis. He also finished his spanish studies online with Instituto Cervantes New Mexico and got my Diploma de Espanol Como Lengua Extranjera Nivel Superior. During his spare time, he volunteers for the Immigrant Resource Center as ESL ( English as a Second Language ) instructor. He teaches mexican and guatemalan immigrants english and in the process improved his spanish.

In June of 2008 his green card was approved, which made him decide to move to Florida where the weather is like the Philippines where he works for two hospitals, as evening and night shift supervisor for Charlotte Regional Medical Center ( Punta Gorda ) during the weekends and part time senior Technologist at Fawcett Memorial Hospital ( Port Charlotte ). He still do freelance translation whenever requested, the hospital often calls him to translate for patients.

General Mateo Noriel Luga is the father of his grandmother Pilar Luga Surriga. Pilar had three children, Eugenio, Juanito ( my father) and Luz. His father Juanito Luga Surriga, who died in August 1988, was married to Elvira Delano Arias and bore four children, Paul Juel, Maria Cecilia, Maria Penelope and Jarvis John, the youngest among the four.

The Book Launching

February 2010 shall be a grand reunion for all the clan members worldwide! We are also intending to launch the above book containing historical events participated into by the members of the Luga Clan, mostly consisting of ranking military officers and government officials, which can now be made public.

FAREWELL PRES. CORAZON C. AQUINO

The 1983 assassination of Benigno Aquino ignited the unification of the people's sentiment for a change of leadership in government. With the popularity of his leadership in question, and his failing health, President Ferdinand E. Marcos was forced to call a a snap election in 1986, which resulted to series of event until he was eventually sent to Hawaii by the Americans upon the request of the Revolutionary Government of Corazon C. Aquino to evit bloodshed between the faction loyal to President Marcos and the Revolutionary government. We witnessed a peaceful revolution. President Corazon C. Aquino, became an icon of change through peaceful means. She became the uniting figure of the opposition that gave courage for the people to express their discontent. She made a difference.

With the Marcoses was Jovencio "Ven Agul" Luga of the Presidential Security Command. Loyal to his oath to protect the Presidency, "Ven Agul Luga" served well President Ferdinand E. Marcos until he died. While those left continued to serve the national interest under the administration of President Corazon C. Aquino.

It was a privilege serving the officials of the government under President Corazon C. Aquino at its most dangerous time at the height of the bloodiest 1989 coup d' etat - THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE 1989 COUP D' ETAT (double click here to know) .