New Beginnings

Today is July 1, the day that thirty-six new church missions are being created worldwide, with three of those missions here in the Philippines, including the new Philippines Dumaguete Mission where Sister Cutler and I have been reassigned. I decided to rename the blog "Cutler Mission to Dumaguete" to reflect this change, although the URL will remain the same.

We arrived in Dumaguete on Sunday afternoon, June 23, after having spent the night in San Carlos and then attending the creation of the new La Libertad Branch (located about ninety minutes south of San Carlos) for our Sunday church services.

However, before we left Cebu we had a wonderful reunion with someone I met during my first mission to the Philippines in 1976. Judith Delos Santos was only four years old when her family joined the church, and like so many of those early converts she remained faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ. She and her husband, along with several other members of their stake, had come to Cebu to attend the temple. Below are pictures of her family taken while we were teaching them the missionary discussions. Judith is the little girl to the right of her father in the first picture. In her own words she told me:

"I’ve been praying for many years to get an address for you. The desire of my heart is to give my thanks and appreciation for choosing to serve your mission here in the Philippines.

I am Judith Delos Santos Pampliega, the youngest among the 11 children whom you and Elder Fuller baptized in 1976.

My parents, President and Sister Delos Santos, died already, but we are still active in the church. I served in the Cebu Mission. My eldest son is also a returned missionary. My husband is the Stake President covering six wards and one group. We are still progressing and we have so many potential young men preparing to serve missions.

Thank you for being good to nanay and papang. I cannot imagine how they raised us; we were so very poor in those times, but my parents tried their best at sending us to school until we graduated. Now we have good jobs; Joy is a midwife, Alex is a seaman, and I am a teacher.

Thank you for serving in our place and for teaching us the true gospel of Jesus Christ."

There are so many stories like hers, stories of the thousands and tens of thousands who joined the church here in the Philippines. There were approximately 12,000 church members when I served here forty-nine years ago and today there are almost 900,000. Only the United States, Mexico, and Brazil have more members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints than does the Philippines!

Since our new mission is being created by the division of the existing Philippines Cebu and Philippines Bacolod missions, our Cebu mission leaders planned a celebration last Thursday to say goodbye to everyone who was leaving. We called the special zone conference "New Beginnings" to honor the creation of the new mission, and everyone prepared a song, a dance, a skit, or something fun by way of celebration. We wore traditional Philippines clothing and had a nice lunch, and the other senior missionary couple in our new mission, Elder and Sister Beard, joined us in singing a well-known Philippines folk song called Dandansoy. Everyone had a great time and the missionaries were so enthusiastic and supportive of each other! We love being around the junior missionaries and feeling of their spirit, and they love having us around as surrogate grandparents!

The evening of the zone conference, the group of senior missionaries who travelled to Dumaguete to say goodbye went to dinner at a nice beach resort called Pura Vida. It's amazing  how quickly you become friends, and I mean real friends, with the other senior missionaries. They are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet, regardless of which mission or which part of the world you're in, and we really enjoy being around one another.

I'll close by adding a few pictures of our three-bedroom apartment in Dumaguete. I took these pictures when we signed the contract a few weeks ago and they don't reflect our actual apartment, but there are very few differences from one apartment to the next. I also included a picture of the stake center and new mission office (under construction at the time, but finished now), which is about 80 yards away. We don't have far to walk between the mission office and our apartment!

Stake Center and mission office behind construction fence.

Street view of the UNWND Residences, our mission apartment.

Our unit is on the left, number 401.

First floor kitchen.

Second floor living room and master bedroom (not pictured).

One of the two additional bedrooms on the third floor.