DAVAO CITY, Philippines — Virginia Cuyong remembers hearing the missionaries climb the stairs to her top floor apartment when she was a young girl in the early 1960s on the southernmost Philippines island of Mindanao.
“The missionaries kept on coming. I can hear the sound of their shoes — they were tall and big. Very big shoes, very big feet,” she laughed.
Cuyong’s mother, Daniela dela Victoria, had received a copy of the Book of Mormon in 1958 after one of her children visited Manila. Victoria then shared the book with a minister named Cipriano Mumar, who gained a testimony of it and wrote to Church leaders requesting that missionaries come to Davao City.
After about two years, missionaries were assigned here. Cuyong remembered that they would come into her apartment building around 11:30 or noon every day. Her mother thought the missionaries were coming by because they were hungry.
“My mom would say, ‘I’m through with you, I have been to many religions already. You’re only coming here because your business is to eat,” Cuyong said. But she never forgot that the missionaries “would never give up.”
Her family and the Mumar family became pioneers for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Davao, telling their friends and neighbors about the gospel and then having generations follow.
Their descendants attended the dedication of the Davao Philippines Temple on Sunday, May 3. Cuyong’s oldest daughter — Victoria’s granddaughter — Revena Brandley, spoke to the Church News on the temple grounds with her mother.
“Filipinos are so devoted,” Brandley said. “When they find the truth or learn and know about the truth, then they would want to share it. ‘Hey, come join us, ... this is wonderful news, and this is a wonderful gospel.’”
Another woman Brandley knows found the gospel in the United States, and when she returned to the Philippines, she invited many relatives and neighbors to learn from the missionaries, which helped the Church grow in her city as well.
“I can relate that to the story of my grandma,” Brandley said. “Filipinos are sharing — we love feasts, we love food — what we have, we share.”
‘A very spiritual people’
After 65 years since the Church was established in the Philippines, there are now more than 905,000 members of the Church on its islands. The Davao temple is the fifth dedicated temple, with the Bacolod Philippines Temple becoming the sixth at the end of May.
When Church President Dallin H. Oaks was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he served as president of the Philippines Area from 2002 to 2004. Returning in April 2024, he dedicated the Urdaneta Philippines Temple and told the Church News about the great faith of the people in this nation.
“The Filipinos are a very spiritual people. They naturally love the Lord, they naturally want to serve Him, and they are naturally a family culture,” he said.
The family of Elder Carlos G. Revillo Jr., General Authority Seventy and president of the Philippines Area, joined the Church on the island of Mindanao in 1971.
The Revillos would travel several hours from General Santos City to Davao City over rough roads for district conferences. Later, Carlos C. Revillo Sr. and Amparo G. Revillo served as president and matron of the Manila Philippines Temple.
Amparo Revillo, now widowed, attended the Davao temple dedication.
“It is worth all the sacrifice,” she said on Sunday. “I love my family so much. I know that the family is central to the Creator’s plan.”
‘Old friends and new friends’
Purita Bernales was baptized in 1970 after picking up a pamphlet that fell out of the bag of a college classmate. The pamphlet was about Joseph Smith.
“I said, ‘Who is this man?’” Bernales remembered. Her classmate invited her to Church on Sunday “without a second thought.”
Almost 56 years later, the two women attended the Davao temple dedication temple together.
“This is my converter,” Bernales said, linking arms with Sin Diana Gadiane on the temple grounds.
Gadiane said early members of the Church in Davao were told to bring something about the Church with them wherever they went, so that is why she had something about Joseph Smith in her school bag. Bernales said at first she was just curious about the Church, but now she knows she was seeking the truth.
The first thing that she noticed was the Church’s teachings to love everyone. “This is a daily motivation for me,” she said.
The branch was small and new back then. “you had to be a chorister at the same time as a teacher,” Bernales said. “We had to do everything on our own.”
Now multiple stakes are in the Davao temple district. Nearly 30,000 people attended the open house as Church members eagerly invited their friends and neighbors to see.
The temple grounds on Sunday were filled with smiles and greetings. As they spoke to the Church News, Bernales and Gadiane were often interrupted to hug others.
It was a day, as Gadiane put it, with “old friends and new friends” in the gospel.
