In an inspired effort to shepherd the growth and future of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Philippines, then-Elder Dallin H. Oaks was assigned by President Gordon B. Hinckley to serve as area president in the nation from 2002 to 2004. With his wife, Sister Kristen M. Oaks, President Oaks — now first counselor in the First Presidency — served in the country when there were 600,000 Latter-day Saints and one temple.
President and Sister Oaks will now return to the Philippines, where President Oaks will dedicate the Urdaneta Philippines Temple on April 28, 2024. The Urdaneta temple is the third temple in the Philippines, where there are now 900,000 Latter-day Saints and 10 additional temples in planning or construction. They share their feelings for the Philippines and discuss the blessings of the Church’s growing number of temples worldwide.
Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
President Dallin H. Oaks: I often tell people that the greatest period of my growth as an Apostle was the two years in the Philippines. Although that occurred about 14 years after I was called to the Quorum of the Twelve, I was still on a steep learning curve in the performance of my duties as an Apostle, because I had never served as a bishop or a stake president or a mission president or a full-time missionary — I could go on with that list. But in the Philippines, I had an opportunity, for those reasons and many others, it was a period of greatest learning that I had in my calling in the Quorum of the Twelve.
1:03
Sarah Jane Weaver: This is Sarah Jane Weaver, executive editor of the Church News, welcoming you to the Church News podcast. We are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In an inspired effort to shepherd the growth and future of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Philippines, then-Elder Dallin H. Oaks was assigned by President Gordon B. Hinckley to serve as area president in the nation from 2002 to 2004. With his wife, Sister Kristen Oaks, President Oaks — now first counselor in the First Presidency — served in the country when there were just more than 600,000 Latter-day Saints and one temple.
President and Sister Oaks will now return to the Philippines, where President Oaks will dedicate the Urdaneta Philippines Temple on April 28, 2024. The Urdaneta temple is the third temple in the Philippines, where there are now more than 900,000 Latter-day Saints and 10 additional temples in planning or construction.
President and Sister Oaks join this episode of the Church News podcast to share their feelings for the Philippines and talk about the blessings of the Church’s growing number of temples across the globe.
So, as we start today, you’re preparing to go to the Philippines and dedicate the Urdaneta temple. Share some of your thoughts and feelings, each of you, with us as you return to the Philippines.
2:34
President Dallin H. Oaks: When we got to the Philippines in the summer of 2002, there was one temple in the Philippines, nearly 600,000 members. Other areas of the Church that had that many members had many more temples than one. And so, the people were very anxious to get an additional temple, or more. And so now we’re going to the Philippines to dedicate the third temple in the Philippines, and about a dozen others have been announced. So, very much on our mind is the wonderful things that have happened in the activity of the people in the Philippines that has enabled them, when they’ve increased from approximately 600,000 to over 900,000 in membership, they have more than quadrupled the number of temples underway.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: We’re so excited to go back. We love the Filipinos. They have to be the most warm. They were so welcoming, and they did so much good for us. Weren’t they the best?
3:47
President Dallin H. Oaks: They were wonderful people. They had a culture in the Philippines that worked against and sometimes strongly supported the Church culture. So it became our responsibility to define what the Church culture is, so Filipinos and Americans both had to change their local culture to get in line with the Church culture. And that was a major source of our teaching during the two years we spent in the Philippines.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: And the Philippines is a Christian nation. That’s because it was occupied by the Spanish for 400 years. So they had a knowledge of Jesus Christ, but we brought them the Jesus Christ that Joseph Smith knew. And we followed in the footsteps of a lot of wonderful missionaries and presidents, including my husband’s brother.
4:40
President Dallin H. Oaks: The area president that I replaced in 2002 was my own brother, [Elder Merrill C. Oaks], a general authority who had served with counselors for a three-year period. And so, that was especially sweet for us and made us anxious to see what was being done and what additional things should be done with the much-added authority that President Hinckley gave us when we went to the Philippines.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: The wonderful leaders before us had brought hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, actually about 580,000, to the Church. But President Hinckley, I remember when he called you and we went into his office, and it was his desire that we establish the Church more strongly in the Philippines.
President Dallin H. Oaks: That was his word: “You are being sent to establish the Church, and you have authority to do whatever you need to do to establish the Church in the Philippines, and you will report to me only, not to the Quorum of the Twelve,” of which I was a member. A very unusual commission. It was the same commission he gave Elder Jeffrey Holland, who was being sent to Chile at the same time to work the same improvements in Chile that we needed in the Philippines.
6:10
Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, and you were called directly to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from when you entered full-time Church service, so this had to be a unique opportunity for you because maybe you didn’t expect to have the opportunity to be an area president.
President Dallin H. Oaks: Exactly. It had been since World War II when a member of the Quorum of the Twelve was called to go into the field and supervise the Church in the field. That was Elder Ezra Taft Benson, just after World War II, helping the Church get reestablished in Europe. And so, President Hinckley was very concerned that we were baptizing a large number of people in the Philippines and in Chile, but that we were not seeing significant increases in the number of priesthood ordinations or first-time temple attendance. And by other measures, the Church was not established.
And I had a meeting soon after I arrived in the Philippines in which I said to the Area Authorities and stake presidents and mission presidents, “The Church in the Philippines is in liquidation. Unless we change and get real growth with increases in priesthood ordinations and temple attendance matching the increases in baptisms, your children and your grandchildren will not enjoy the blessings of an established Church in the Philippines.” That was a shock to them. But it laid the foundation for many changes that we felt to make in the Philippines after consulting with the local priesthood authorities, notably the Area Seventies.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: Well, one thing, we went with an incredible team. My husband’s counselors were so gifted in finance and in business and setting expectations. But when you started developing a new culture, the Filipinos caught on in a minute. With paperwork, it greatly improved, because all the DTAs went throughout the nation, and they met with the leaders. And so, you can talk about what happened.
8:29
President Dallin H. Oaks: Well, we were anxious to teach local leaders how to do what we had asked them to do. Because in the Philippine culture, they do not adapt well to written instructions; they adapt instantly when they are shown what to do. And that is because of the nature of their education and the language situation, which I will refer to later. But we had the DTA and people who worked for him go throughout the Philippines and show people how to fill out the reports that they had to fill out. And we told them that they could lead the whole Church if they just learned how to do it. And they did. Before we left, after two years, the Philippines was the first entire nation to submit all of its reports on time.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: In the entire world. So, they were so proud. There were many things that changed. You talked about the culture, you talked about tithing, you talked about church attendance, you made a huge difference. And they did it. They were so eager. You tell them what the Lord wants, and they do it.
9:51
Sarah Jane Weaver: When you visited the Philippines for the first time, what were some of your impressions?
President Dallin H. Oaks: I visited the Philippines for the first time in 1986, two years after I was called to the Quorum of the Twelve. When I knew that I would be having this interview, I looked back at my journal to find out what I said about the Philippines when I made my first visit. I’ll just read a few excerpts: “About a third of the homes we visited were crude shelters with dirt floors, outdoor toilets and lean-to kitchens. All in all, they were worse than the poorest home June [Dixon Oaks] and I saw in Ecuador. The people are kind, beautiful and intelligent. The children coming home from school were clean and well groomed in beautiful school uniforms.”
I will read a couple of more excerpts. And these are from journals that I wrote in my first visit to the Philippines. “They reported that 70% of the heads of households in their stake had no full-time job. They subsist on part-time or occasional work and what they can grow. Only one family in the stake has a vehicle, and only 1% have telephones in their homes.” That is a wake-up call when you come from — remember, this was written in 1986.
“We are very effective at constructing buildings to house our members, but not so effective at training leaders to lead them. We depend on ecclesiastical leaders for training, but the buildings are built by salaried professionals. This system tends to get out of balance in an area growing as rapidly as this one. I am worried about whether the numerous wonderfully trained returned missionaries from the Philippines are assimilated into Church organizations and leadership. We should have more intensive training down to the bishop level.” Well, those are some impressions that I harvested some 12 years later, when I was assigned to be area president.
12:22
Sarah Jane Weaver: And Sister Oaks, had you been to the Philippines before you went with him in 2002?
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: Well, surprisingly, one time we were in Hong Kong, and my husband just had a feeling. He said, “Let’s go visit the Philippines.” And I went, and I saw my apartment. I saw where I’d live, I saw where I’d shop, I met people. But at that time, I had no idea that we’d be serving there.
12:47
Sarah Jane Weaver: And what were your impressions when he came home and said, “We’ve been called, I’ve been called to be the area president”?
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: I was absolutely thrilled, and I’ll tell you why. We had prayed about it, and we wanted to go to a nation that needed us, a nation that wanted to hear the gospel and a nation that was ready to hear it. And weren’t we excited?
President Dallin H. Oaks: We were.
13:10
Sarah Jane Weaver: And President Oaks, can you tell us about receiving the call from President Hinckley to go to the Philippines?
President Dallin H. Oaks: Well, President Hinckley told the Twelve, about two months earlier, that he was thinking of sending two members of the Twelve out to be area presidents, but he did not say who or where. And I looked around at those who would be able to take an assignment, and I figured the chances were about 50-50 that I would be one. And I had visited the Philippines about 12 or 14 times in my 14 years in the Quorum of the Twelve up to that point, so I knew the conditions there. And it seemed to me that an assignment to the Philippines would be pretty likely if I was one who is assigned to go.
And about two months later, President Hinckley called me into his office and said, “Is there anything about your health and that of Kristen that would keep you from having an assignment overseas?” is the way he said it. I said, “Well, no. I have been recently diagnosed as having celiac disease.” And he looked like I had slapped him in the face with a wet towel. He did not know what that meant or whether it would upset his plans.
And I said, “Don’t worry, President. That just means that you are allergic to gluten foods. It would mean that I cannot have bread anymore. I would have to live on rice.” And he tipped back in his chair and laughed uproariously. And he leaned forward and got very serious. And he said, “Dallin, let me tell you — there is no shortage of rice where you are going.” And then I knew it would be the Philippines. That is how I learned that I was called and would be going to the Philippines.
There is one more story you might find interesting. We were called to go to the Philippines as area president and companion for one year. And after I had been there with Kristen for four months, we got a letter from the First Presidency.
15:22
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: And in this time, there was not a lot of email. There was not even email.
President Dallin H. Oaks: So, it was a letter that came by snail mail. And I opened the letter, and it said, “The First Presidency has decided you should stay for a second year.” And I read it to Kristen, and she said, “You’ve got to be kidding.” And I showed her the letter signed by the First Presidency, and I said, “Kristen, these people don’t kid.”
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: And we were so excited to stay.
President Dallin H. Oaks: It was a wonderful thing to be there for two years, because many of the things that we initiated did not come to fruition until the second year or even later, but much of our learning was not complete after one year, so we were delighted to stay a second year.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: And I would have been happy to stay many more years. I love Philippines.
16:11
Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, and I want to go back, because President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the Philippines for the preaching of the gospel in 1961. And so, you were there 40 years later, and such substantial growth had already taken place. Talk about what President Hinckley did to lay the foundation for the work there.
President Dallin H. Oaks: Well, one of the most important things in laying the foundation was to recognize that this was the only Christian nation in Asia. You don’t lay a foundation on a predominantly Christian nation the same way you do with a nation that is not Christian. And so, we pay tribute to the Spanish culture and the Spanish teachings of the Catholic missionaries and leaders in the Philippines. For 400 years, they had taught about Jesus Christ. And what we had to do was quite different from what you do in a secular nation. We had to find a way to build effectively on the foundation of a Christian nation to preach the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. And the people are naturally spiritual.
And the Church had grown rapidly from a handful of members in the early 1960s to when we went in 40 years later; we had almost 600,000 members. But the number of members who had joined the Church was far more than those that really understood the gospel and continued their baptism covenants onto the temple or onto serving in the Church, the entire culture of the Church. So, we were responsible to bring up to date the things that had not occurred the way we hoped they would occur in the Philippines.
18:22
Sarah Jane Weaver: Now, employment is an issue in the Philippines, and so many members struggle financially. How did you approach tithing?
President Dallin H. Oaks: I was shocked when I found that not as many as 50% were employed. In some areas in the country, it was considerably less than 50% who had full employment. That means that people had to support themselves with self-employment.
And so it was a nation of rice farmers and fishermen and people who sold things on the street to make a small income, and how you calculate what your income is when you are a fisherman and you have expenses, and some of the fish you catch go to feed your family, and some are sold. And we had to teach how to compute the amount of tithing you owed. If a person was a jeepney driver, we had to teach them that they did not pay tithing on everything they received from their driving services; they could deduct certain things, expenses. They paid rent on their jeepneys — they rarely owned them — and it was what was left over they paid tithing on.
And so, I was challenged, as a former accounting major, to try to teach how to compute tithing without turning the Philippines into a nation of accountants. And that’s when I began to talk about, “You’ve got to pay a full tithing so that we get enough full-tithe payers to be temple workers and temple patrons before we can recommend additional temples in the Philippines.”
20:21
Sarah Jane Weaver: Sister Oaks, tell me other impressions that you had of the Philippines after you arrived.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: Well, one great blessing to the women that work in the Philippines or the wives that go is they get to travel with their husbands. I think at that time, wives in Africa and wives in the Philippines went every Sunday to teach the women. The women I was with were great teachers. We did a lot with the Primary. We ended up having videos made. We discovered that if they could see how a Primary was conducted, they could model it easily. And I remember coming home and being sent letters from the other leaders there saying, “I just saw a perfect Primary.” So, they needed to see that.
One thing about teaching the women, it is a matriarchal society in many ways. The mother is very important, and so it’s important that the women were taught, because they’re such a big influence in the home, don’t you think, President Oaks?
President Dallin H. Oaks: Indeed. We soon learned that unless we taught the full Church program to the mothers, that we had a hard time having fathers and husbands who understood the program and what their responsibilities were. So we — by “we,” I mean the area presidency and our wives — always went together to stake conferences. And in the Saturday afternoon, while the members of the area presidency were teaching the priesthood leaders, our wives were teaching the women, wives and officers in the stakes, because that was the only way to get the work to go forward.
22:05
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: The Philippine people couldn’t be more receptive or more warm or more ready for change. I know we talked to the young women about getting their medallions. And many of the leaders at that time, the Young Women leaders, didn’t have medallions, so we challenged them to do that. And they — one thing, if you challenge a Filipino, they really rise to the occasion, because they love Jesus Christ so much, don’t you think so?
President Dallin H. Oaks: Yes. As a people, they have been educated by a system that shows people how to do things but does not give them written material on how to do it. And so we found that sending a letter out, as is our custom in North America and other places in the Church, was not an effective way. If we held a meeting and showed them how to conduct a meeting or how to divide the Aaronic Priesthood into several different classes for deacons, teachers and priests, it began to happen immediately. But if you sent out a letter, tried to explain it, you did not make much progress.
23:20
Sarah Jane Weaver: Why do you think the Filipino people have such great faith, that they’re willing to do whatever they’re asked as soon as they understand it?
President Dallin H. Oaks: In different parts of the world, we have a different level of spirituality. The spirituality in Country X is significantly higher than the spirituality in Country Y. I deliberately don’t name names, but 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. With a strong family culture, the mother is more a leader than she is in other countries, but they love the Lord, they want to serve Him. I am not sure why, but they are ahead of us in North America in their natural spirituality and in their natural desire to love the Lord and serve the Lord. And you hardly ever get a secular person that you encounter in the Philippines.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: And there’s one other thing. They’re a humble people, and life is very hard. But they’re so grateful. And they would say all the time, “I’m very much grateful.” It was constant. They always looked for the best.
President Dallin H. Oaks: They never say they are very grateful. They always say they are “very much grateful.” And it shows.
24:56
Sarah Jane Weaver: So, as you come in and you can see the potential for great growth with a people of faith, and a foundation that was laid by President Hinckley, and rapid growth up to that point, you’re going to strengthen the foundation, and you know you have to do certain things. And so you focused on tithing. What other things did you focus on?
President Dallin H. Oaks: Well, to begin with, we adjusted what the missionaries taught and what they required before people could be baptized. For instance, we taught the 13 mission presidents to adjust who they taught. For example, we did not want them to teach children unless they had adult family members who are also being taught who would see to the further activity of the children. We asked them to adjust where they taught. We said, “We don’t want you to teach anyone more than one jeepney ride from a chapel.” They were teaching people all over, and the people could not get to church later. And so we said, “No teaching farther away than a nickel,” which is the equivalent fare for a jeepney ride to the chapel.
And we adjusted when they would baptize. We set up requirements for baptism. For example, a person had to keep the Word of Wisdom consistently for a month, and if they slipped back to have another drink of alcohol, they would have to start all over in their computation. And we taught them that they could only baptize a convert who had paid a fast offering, teaching them that they are coming into a Church where you had to make financial contributions. We did not say pay tithing, because there is a rule against paying tithing when you are not a member, but there was no rule against paying fast offerings. When we created that requirement, the missionaries had to show them the donation slip. They would fill out a fast offering, a few pesos, whatever they chose to pay.
So, people who are being taught the gospel were taught that you’re expected to make financial contributions, you’re expected to keep the requirements, the Word of Wisdom. They had to go to church for a whole month, every Sunday for a whole month, before they were baptized, and the missionaries couldn’t call for them and bring them to church. Half that time, they had to find their own way to the chapel. That was quite a number of requirements that we put on. And it resulted in diminishing the yearly number of baptisms from about 20,000 to about 8,000 in one year. But with 8,000 baptisms, we found we were getting more priesthood ordinations and, after a suitable period, a great number greater people going to the temple. That’s how we were establishing the Church.
28:35
Sarah Jane Weaver: And you had to have seen this take place as well.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: In fact, do you remember you even — there was a stipulation, they asked them to teach a Church lesson before they were baptized?
President Dallin H. Oaks: Yeah. Another requirement is that we wanted them to know this was a church where you served. And so the other requirement — I think we had five that we proposed — another requirement is that they serve in a Church capacity under priesthood authority at least once before they were baptized. They could assist in teaching a class, they could join what we would call a welfare service project, but they had to be taught what Church membership meant.
And that winnowed out a lot of people that would have been baptized under less-stringent requirements. But it helped establish the Church and establish standards in the Philippines, which continued to bless the Church. And as Kristen mentioned earlier, these were not Churchwide requirements. We had authority to do what needed to be done in the Philippines.
29:49
Sarah Jane Weaver: And from this very strong foundation, we’re now seeing a third temple. So, we had the Manila temple, and then Cebu and now Urdaneta. And you had to be delighted to receive the assignment from President Nelson to go back to the Urdaneta temple dedication.
President Dallin H. Oaks: I was thrilled. Before that time, I received an assignment from the First Presidency to go to the dedication of the Cebu temple. So this is the second Philippine temple that I have been to, but Urdaneta was especially sweet. Yes, I think we have three or four others under construction, and six or eight have been announced and are in the design phase.
30:36
Sarah Jane Weaver: How have you seen temples bless the lives of the Filipino members?
President Dallin H. Oaks: Well, the temple is the destination in the covenant path that we talk about. And we are destined for exaltation in the celestial kingdom. Along the covenant path, we have baptism and endowment and ordinations to the priesthood and the covenant of marriage in the temple. And so, when you have a specific route marked out, people tend to say, “Well, I am this far, but I need to go farther.” And the way President Nelson is teaching the covenant path today is something that we taught under a different label. I don’t think we spoke a lot about covenants, but we spoke about Latter-day Saint culture.
As Latter-day Saints, we do these things, and we contrasted different cultures — the culture of intellectual points or the culture of the Spanish culture, architecture and naming and so on. And there are different cultures. But what we are there to do is not to create Americans out of Filipinos, but to create Latter-day Saint culture in Filipinos; and in America, we are there to create Latter-day Saint culture in Americans.
32:27
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: And don’t you think with the more temples, the missionaries can actually talk about taking families to the temple? Because it’s so hard for them to travel across that nation, and the more temples, the more the missionaries talk about it. That’s what I think, don’t you think?
President Dallin H. Oaks: Sure. And to qualify — well, for instance, the first temple was Manila. People in outlying islands could not afford to come to Manila, or they had to come in a 24-hour ship or ferry ride, which is expensive and impractical. And so, when they want more temples, they want a temple close by so they can be influenced by it. The second temple in the Philippines was Cebu, which is the second most populous city in the Philippines.
And Urdaneta, which we will be dedicating, is the third temple. And it is in an extremely populous area in northern Luzon, the largest island, and others have been announced in different island centers, including Mindanao, the popular southern island in the Philippines. And what you do when you get a temple close to the people is give the people experience with the covenants of the temple, with the beauty and the wonderful promises of the temple. And this motivates them to keep the commandments, and it gives purpose to the ordinances and the commandments of the gospel.
It is important to bring up the unique circumstance in languages in the Philippines. It makes the teaching exquisitely complicated.
34:27
Sarah Jane Weaver: And that also has to make training of leaders and new members hard.
President Dallin H. Oaks: Of course. A bottom line in all of the translation complication is that the area presidency that preceded us wisely specified that in every stake conference, they would have side-by-side translation. So the general authority could teach in English, but you did not depend on people understanding spoken English. You have a translator by your side, who translates into whatever the local dialect is. And that will be true in our temple dedication in Urdaneta.
35:09
Sarah Jane Weaver: They’ve also had great challenges, because it feels like a lot of disasters hit this nation. Can you talk about the resilience of these members?
President Dallin H. Oaks: Well, the Philippines is literally unique, because every natural disaster that occurs on the earth occurs in that little island. They have volcanic outbreaks, they have tornadoes, they have floods — whatever you name it that has occurred anyplace else on earth, all of those occur in the Philippines, and the Filipinos are survivors. They just shrug their shoulders and rebuild and get on with it. And it just makes you admire and love them, because one disaster could be disabling in another part of the world, and four or five disasters all concentrated in the Philippines don’t do more than just slow them down and concentrate their efforts to rebuild and get on with life.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: Many times, I would see Filipinos gather around my husband, and he is 6 feet tall, and they would be holding him and hugging him. And they would all come up to his chest. And it would be like 20 people would be hugging him. We love the Philippines.
President Dallin H. Oaks: We surely do. They are a loyal, wonderful, obedient, faithful, Christian people.
36:46
Sarah Jane Weaver: And so, as you prepare to return, what are some of the feelings you each have now?
President Dallin H. Oaks: Well, I am thrilled to be returning to dedicate a temple. Getting more temples in the Philippines was a major concentration of our service there. And though the service concluded 20 years ago, we have only had one additional temple dedicated in the Philippines. And this is the second additional temple in the Philippines. But we see many more in the planning stage. And so, returning to dedicate a temple is a wonderful thing.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: I get teary eyed because the people were just so good to us. And I’ve had some friends call me from Manila and say they’d go all the way to Urdaneta. And I said that it’s too — don’t do that for us. We love the Philippines, don’t we?
37:49
President Dallin H. Oaks: Yes. It is worth noting, at some point, that I often tell people that the greatest period of my growth as an Apostle was the two years in the Philippines. Although that occurred about 14 years after I was called to the Quorum of the Twelve, I was still on a steep learning curve in the performance of my duties as an Apostle, because I had never served as a bishop or a stake president or a mission president or a full-time missionary — I could go on with that list.
But in the Philippines, I had an opportunity to encounter firsthand the problem of different gospel cultures, the problem of language — which, I had never served outside the United States, and I had never encountered that — I encountered how to encourage people to serve missions, how to finance mission service, how to get people to pay tithing, how to look at standards for establishing a temple. And for me, it was for those reasons and many others, it was a period of greatest learning that I had in my calling in the Quorum of the Twelve.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: And I think when we were in the Philippines, you really taught from the heart. You taught very simply. He spoke to the Filipinos in a way they could truly understand. You were a great, great teacher.
President Dallin H. Oaks: Thank you.
39:35
Sarah Jane Weaver: Now, I’d love it if you could also comment on temple building around the globe. You’ve been a part of this First Presidency, President Nelson as Prophet has announced more temples than any other Church President in the history of the Church. Can you comment on this great era of temple building that we’re now witnessing?
President Dallin H. Oaks: It is obviously in the Lord’s timetable to have many, many more temples; temples in areas of the Church to strengthen the people in that area, even though the number of members in that nation or on that island is insufficient to qualify for a temple under earlier standards. And I have felt a witness of the Spirit that President Nelson is hearing and heeding the inspiration of the Lord to build all the temples that are being built, but I think President Nelson is very conscious — and I have heard him voice this idea — that it is a lot easier to build temples than it is to fill temples.
And so, by building a lot of temples, we are writing for ourself a requirement that we be more diligent in teaching the doctrine of the Church, temple covenants and worthiness, so that we will be able to fill temples in all these places where we are building them, instead of just building them.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: And we talk about what a great protection that temples are to the world. As the members go, they’ll be strengthened and they’ll strengthen. And also, strength flows out of that temple into the nation where it is, don’t you think?
President Dallin H. Oaks: Yes.
41:31
Sarah Jane Weaver: And President Nelson has promised us — and you reiterated that promise in your conference talk — that time in the temple and adherence to covenants can bless our lives as nothing else can. Can you comment on the focus that we heard in general conference on covenants?
President Dallin H. Oaks: I was very pleased that in the last general conference, there were quite a number of talks about covenants, and specifically about temple covenants and other covenants that we make. None of that was directed by the First Presidency. We don’t assign subjects for conference. And so, we had a preponderance of talks about covenants with mentions of the importance of temple garments and the covenants that we make in the waters of baptism and the relationship of keys to covenants.
All of that was because the Spirit of the Lord made known to different general authorities what they should speak about in this conference. And being one who felt the impression to speak about covenants, I was very pleased to find that a lot of other people were speaking about covenants.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: And our covenants bind us to Jesus Christ. I saw in the Philippines two things. People love to be connected with their relatives on both sides of the veil, but the temple serves as a great strength to people when things are very hard, and it draws them closer to Christ. And I would say in a nation that needs them so badly, it’s a place to go for solace and help.
43:19
Sarah Jane Weaver: And as we wrap up, is there something that you have learned or that when you think about your time in the Philippines, that you say, “That’s something I learned from Filipino members”?
President Dallin H. Oaks: There are a lot of things that I do every day that depend on learning in other settings, and the Philippines is a major setting for me to advance my knowledge of how the gospel works in the lives of people who make and keep covenants. So I remember the Philippines like I remember key times in my other education, partly in the Church, partly in my profession. It was a major place to learn things I needed to learn to go on with my life.
Sister Kristen M. Oaks: And the Philippines taught us that material things are not that important. I remember, one of the first visits we ever made, the stake president had woven a little pencil case for my husband, because that was a gift personally that he made, and that was what he was able to give at that time. And we still have that pencil case. And it reminds us of what’s really important in this life, and it’s our relationship with Jesus Christ.
44:52
Sarah Jane Weaver: You have been listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News executive editor Sarah Jane Weaver. I hope you have learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by peering with me through the Church News window. Please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please make sure you share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates on the Church on TheChurchNews.com.
