Cutler Mission to Dumaguete

Today's post is pretty short, but it provides more detail about our primary focus, which is providing safe and secure housing for the young missionaries. We currently have 140 young missionaries living in 53 homes or apartments. We try to visit each apartment (I'll use the term apartment for the rest of this post, even though most missionaries live in standalone houses) once every six weeks, and we've mostly been successful with that cadence. As you've seen from previous posts, we fill the truck each morning with the supplies needed for each stop, although sometimes we leave more things than we planned to at an apartment in the morning, which shortchanges an apartment in the afternoon. We shop again at night (or early the next morning) to replenish our supplies and do it all over again the next day. Here are two collages showing a nice apartment in Bayawan, which is home to four sister missionaries. This apartment is on the nicer end of a wide spectrum. Notice the couch...

Today is a pretty cool anniversary for me. It was 50 years ago today that I entered the Salt Lake Mission Home as a nineteen-year-old missionary bound for the Philippines. Now I'm serving here again, this time with my eternal companion, and life couldn't be any better or any sweeter. Here is a picture of our anniversary celebration lunch, with Sisters Abellaneda and Su'a, at one of the very good Chinese fast-food restaurants here in Dumaguete. Yesterday was a pretty good day, too, as Sister Cutler and I finished our first round of apartment inspections. We visited fifty-five apartments in just over six weeks, with each visit comprising an inspection, an inventory, the delivery of furniture and supplies, making repairs where needed (and within our capabilities), and a few minutes to visit with the missionaries. It's a ten-hour drive from one end of the mission to the other, so we visit apartments by geographic zone, staying three to five days at local hotels while we cov...

I'm going to add a few photos from a recent trip to San Carlos, which is about four hours north of Dumaguete, into the narrative of this blog post. The pictures won't always match the narrative, but since we drove into the mountains to see the Kanlaon volcano on the way home, I thought you might find the pictures interesting. Now, on to the recent changes! In November, a new senior missionary couple arrived from Bataan (a city on the northern island of Luzon) and the office assignments were shuffled around. Sister Cutler and I are now responsible for missionary housing, and I retain responsibility for technology and travel. It's an exciting change because it means we will be in charge of all fifty-four missionary apartments, making sure they are safe, comfortable, clean, adequately equipped, and located within the assigned teaching areas. We will also open new apartments as the mission grows, and close old apartments that no longer meet our needs. Most apartments house two ...

I will start with a photo of the new counselor in the Philippines Area Presidency, Michael B. Strong. He and Brett Nattress (my nephew) were assigned adjoining offices in the Salt Lake City church headquarters building last summer when Elder Strong was first called as a General Authority. Like Brett, who was assigned to the South Pacific when he was called as a General Authority, Elder Strong's first assignment was to a remote part of the world. This photo is a selfie of Elder and Sister Beard, along with Sister Cutler and I, standing on the beach in Sipalay at sunset. (It's blurry because the exposure was about three seconds long.) Sipalay is a remote area in the southwest corner of the island of Negros and the Beards have been there for about three months now. Their calling is as Member and Leader Support missionaries and they work with newly-baptized members and new church leaders to provide support, counsel, and leadership experience. Elder Beard was also called as the firs...

The following are words and pictures from our good friends, Nelson and Terri Beard, who are a senior missionary couple serving in the southwest corner of our mission. We had lots of wind and rain a few weeks ago and their area of the mission probably received the most. Here is their story: September 16, 1:29 PM The Sipalay Zone has been under the gun over the last week. We have had many rain and landslide warnings. Many of the chapels have been opened to accommodate those who had to evacuate. Right now, the rain has let up a bit to give us a reprieve. We are all, however, without a signal for cell phones and we are using our Starlink to send this. Because of the frequent electrical outages and lack of a signal, the missionaries have been unable to access any of the ATMs. [Accessing an ATM is essential because the Philippines is a cash-based society and the missionaries withdraw cash from their Mission Support Fund every two weeks to pay for food, groceries, transportation, rent, and ot...

We just returned from Bacolod, where we spent the weekend shopping, having the oil changed in the mission van, and joining in with the National Family Week activities hosted by the Bago Stake. (National Family Week is a yearly event in the Philippines that started thirty-two years ago through the efforts of then-President Fidel Ramos, and the Church sponsors stake-level events all over the country.) Bago is the city I lived in for nine months during 1976 and many of the families we baptized are still in the area. Sister Cutler and I were asked to speak at the stake devotional (actually, I was, but she wound up on the program and you can see her accepting a certificate of appreciation in the photo on the left) and then we spent the afternoon driving around my old teaching areas, which were the three small towns south of Bago: Mabini, Pulupandan, and Valladolid. I can't say that nothing's changed in the forty-nine years since I left, because it has changed, and dramatically so. H...