Ryan King Ogden was preparing to return home from an LDS mission in 2008 when a question changed his life forever:
Would he come back?
It was a question asked by a member who wanted to know if he would help fix up a local school. Intrigued, Ogden followed the member to inspect the structure.
A ripped, soiled curtain—that’s all that separated a toilet in the back of a school from the rest of the class.
“It just hit me really hard to know that the students, that if they ever need to go to the bathroom, they go in the back corner where everyone can see them and hear them,” Ogden said.
So he did come back. Ogden and his friends had the school fixed within a year of completing his mission.
But little did the 21-year-old from Richfield, Utah, know that fixing this member’s school in the Philippines was the start of humanitarian work that would bring happiness to thousands all over the world.
To the Philippines and Beyond
After Ogden graduated from Utah Valley University with a bachelor’s degree in communications, he knew humanitarian work was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
“I just didn’t know how feasible that was; I didn’t know much about it other than just my connection in the Philippines,” he says.
But he continued to visit the Philippines two or three times a year for humanitarian work. Then in 2012, Ogden met Dr. Clark Anderson, a retired seminary teacher. Together, the two founded the non-profit humanitarian group Revive Humanity.
Now, at age 29, Ogden has organized service tours for hundreds of Americans to 13 countries all over the world.
The groups assist communities in need with education, health clinics, building projects, and more.
Read the rest of this amazing story at LDS Living.
