URDANETA, Philippines — Twenty years after working to “establish the Church” in the Philippines as part of a special two-year assignment in the Southeast Asian nation, President Dallin H. Oaks has returned to dedicate the Urdaneta Philippines Temple on Sunday, April 28.
The Church’s third house of the Lord in the Philippines, the Urdaneta temple stands on the Latter-day Saint foundation President Oaks — first counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — strengthened while serving as the Church’s Philippines Area president from 2002 to 2004.
With his wife, Sister Kristen Oaks, President Oaks received the “unusual commission” from Church President Gordon B. Hinckley to serve in the Philippines as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. President Jeffrey R. Holland, now acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and his late wife, Sister Patricia T. Holland, received a similar commission to live and serve in Chile during the same time period.
A member of the Quorum had not supervised the Church in the field since the 1940s, when Elder Ezra Taft Benson helped reestablish the Church in Europe in the months after the end of World War II.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Philippines is young.
On April 28, 1961, President Hinckley, gathered with a small group at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, offered a prayer on the land and people of the Philippines.
“This is an occasion you will never forget,” he told the small group. “What we will begin here will affect the lives of thousands and thousands of people in this island republic, and its effect will go on from generation to generation for great and everlasting good.”
In fulfillment of President Hinckley’s prophetic vision, the Church grew rapidly in the Philippines. Just four decades later, the Church had almost 600,000 members.
Still, President Hinckley — then president of the Church — was very concerned about the nation, where Latter-day Saint missionaries were continuing to baptize large numbers of people but not seeing significant increases in the number of priesthood ordinations or first-time temple attendance. Both are important indicators in the establishment of the Church in a nation.
President Oaks was charged to address those and other issues while establishing the Church in the Philippines.
Soon after arriving in Southeast Area, President Oaks met with local leaders and articulated the gravity of the situation. “The Church in the Philippines is in liquidation,” he said. “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.”
Local leaders were most responsive. “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,” said President Oaks.
The time was significant not only for the Church in the Philippines but also for President Oaks personally.
“I often tell people that the greatest period of my growth as an Apostle was the two years in the Philippines,” he said. “Although that occurred about 18 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.”
In the Philippines, President Oaks experienced the challenges of and need for translation of languages and learned the importance of incorporating local cultures into the gospel culture.
“I had never served outside the United States,” he said. “In the Philippines 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.”
Growth
President Oaks first visited the Philippines in 1986 — two years after he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. During that first visit, he recorded a few impressions in his journal. “About a third of the homes we visited were crude shelters with dirt floors, outdoor toilets and lean-to kitchens…,” he wrote. “The people are kind, beautiful and intelligent. The children coming home from school were clean and well groomed in beautiful school uniforms.”
He also wrote that he had learned that 70% of the heads of households in a stake he visited had no full-time job, and only one family in the stake had a vehicle. Long before cellular phones, only one percent of the families in the stake had telephones. “They subsist on part-time or occasional work and what they can grow.”
Then-Elder Oaks — 16 years before he was assigned to serve in the country — worried about training future Church leaders. “We are very effective at constructing buildings to house our members but not so effective at training leaders to lead them,” he wrote. “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.”
When the Oaks arrived in the Philippines in 2002, the Church had 600,000 members and one temple. Other countries with similar numbers had multiple temples, but President Oaks could not recommend the Philippines for a second temple because of the low number of members qualifying for a temple recommend.
They “were wonderful people” who had a local culture that sometimes worked against the Church culture. “It became our responsibility to define what the Church culture is,” said President Oaks.
They quickly learned that the members responded to in-person training as opposed to written instructions. “There were many things that changed,” recalled Sister Oaks. “You talked about the culture, you talked about tithing, you talked about Church attendance, you made a huge difference. And they did it.”
It was really rather simple, she said. When the faithful Filipino Latter-day Saints learn what the Lord expects of them, “they do it.”
Today the Church has 867,271 members, 128 stakes, and 23 missions in the Philippines.
Temples
One reason for the success of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Philippines was the work of Christian missionaries who, for 400 years prior to the Restored Church’s establishment in the nation, preached in the Philippines — the only Christian nation in Asia. “We had to find a way to build effectively on the foundation of a Christian nation to preach the restored gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said. “And the people are naturally spiritual.”
While the Church experienced early, rapid growth, “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,” President Oaks said.
Building on the work of earlier Latter-day Saint leaders and other area presidents, including his brother Elder Merrill C. Oaks, President Oaks saw immediate results. For example, after learning the importance of sending Church reports to headquarters, the Philippines became the first area in the Church to submit all the requested information on time.
Sister Oaks said Latter-day Saints in the nation could not have been “more receptive or more warm. … I get teary-eyed because the people were just so good to us,” she said.
President Oaks added, “They naturally love the Lord, they naturally want to serve Him, and they are naturally a family culture.”
The Church’s first temple in the Philippines was dedicated in Manila in 1984. “But 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,” recalled President Oaks. The second temple in the Philippines was dedicated in 2010 in Cebu, which is the second most populous city in the Philippines.
The third temple in Urdaneta will also serve members in the “extremely populous area of northern Luzon, the largest island.” Other temples have been announced or under construction in Alabang, Bacolod, Cagayan de Oro, Davao, Iloilo, Laoag, Naga, Santiago, Tacloban City and Tuguegarao City.
“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,” said President Oaks. “And this motivates them to keep the commandments, and it gives purpose to the ordinances and the commandments of the gospel.”
President and Sister Oaks were invited by President Thomas S. Monson to participate in the dedication of the Cebu Temple and say they are thrilled to return again for the Urdaneta dedication.
“Getting more temples in the Philippines was a major concentration of our service there,” said President Oaks.
In recent years, President Oaks has also received a personal witness that President Nelson is “hearing and heeding the inspiration of the Lord to build all the temples that are being built.”
But, he added, “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.”
Sister Oaks said her time in the Philippines “reminds us of what is really important in this life — and it is our relationship with Jesus Christ.”
President Oaks said the work will continue to grow, mature and progress in the Philippines — where members have a “natural spirituality” and a “desire to love the Lord and serve the Lord.”
