TALISAY, Philippines — On the eve of the Bacolod Philippines Temple dedication, Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles testified of the Savior, Jesus Christ, and of the power of making covenants in the temple.
“It’s an amazing time for the Philippines,” Elder Andersen told missionaries in the Philippines Bacolod Mission gathered May 30 in a meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Talisay, just north of Bacolod on the island of Negros.
The Bacolod temple is the sixth dedicated house of the Lord and the third dedicated this year in the country comprising more than 7,500 islands. There are eight more temples in construction or planning stages.
While the temple, which was dedicated on May 31, was being built long before any of the missionaries began their service, “what you are doing is what made this temple happen,” Elder Andersen told the missionaries, who are from across the Philippines, the United States, islands in the Pacific Ocean, and African and Asian countries.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a worldwide Church, and missionary work is going forward around the world, he said.
Elder Andersen said: “It’s amazing that [the Spirit] can be felt in every language and every race in every culture and on every continent. That’s an amazing thing, and it’s a testimony to the fact that we are each sons and daughters of God.”
That relationship with God is one of the things members can learn more about in the temple. It’s in the temple where Church members of make covenants through ordinances, including the endowment instruction, eternal marriages and baptisms for the dead.
The temple has a way of bringing “power into their lives to feel something they didn’t feel otherwise,” Elder Andersen said of those who participate in temple ordinances.
He asked several missionaries to share their experiences of the changes they’ve seen in their families and their own lives as they’ve participated in temple ordinances.
Going to the temple and participating in ordinances, including new members doing proxy baptisms, will “bring into them a powerful, powerful Spirit of truth,” Elder Andersen said.
During the devotional he invited his wife, Sister Kathy Andersen, to share her testimony. He did the same with Elder Carlos G. Revillo Jr., a General Authority Seventy and the Church’s Philippines Area president, and his wife, Sister Marites Revillo; Elder Chi Hong (Sam) Wong, General Authority Seventy and first counselor in the Philippines Area presidency, and his wife, Sister Carol Wong; and mission leaders President Federico de Dios and Sister Joy Mirasol de Dios.
Elder and Sister Revillo both served as young missionaries in the Philippines Bacolod Mission.
Later in the meeting, Elder Andersen invited the missionaries “to embrace what you’re learning and what you’re learning spiritually so it stays with you through your life.”
Missionary work in Bacolod, Philippines
Elder Andersen pointed to the history of missionary work in the Philippines, specifically in Bacolod, and how the Church has grown from a few members in Metro Manilla to the more than 905,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today.
Sixty-five years ago, then-Elder Gordon B. Hinckley, an assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who would later be Church President, blessed the Philippines on the grounds of the American War Memorial Cemetery in Manila. It was then, in 1961, when missionary work began in earnest.
In 1964, the first members from Bacolod were taught and baptized in the Metro Manila area.
Carlos Flores Barredo Sr. and Rosario Barredo were staying with family while he recovered from an illness. Rufino Alvarez Villanueva Jr. and his wife, Josefina Piedad Sacro, were baptized in October 1964 and eventually moved back to Bacolod to help with the fish farm owned by Rufino Villanueva’s family.
When missionaries came to Bacolod several years later, they had the names of both families to find them. When Rufino Villanueva saw the missionaries, he went to get his tithing that he had saved for the past two years, Elder Andersen said.
Both pioneer couples and members of their families have served as leaders in the Philippines, Elder Andersen said.
He noted the saying: “You can count the seeds in an apple. But you cannot count the apples in the seed.”
Elder Revillo said he was assigned to Bacolod in 1988 when the Philippines Bacolod Mission was organized. “The members were so wonderful, and the people were very receptive to us,” he recalled.
Serving a “mission blessed me, my mission changed me, my mission transformed me. The greatest convert that I brought home from my mission was myself,” he said.
