AAn hour with Latter-day Saints Elder

The Philippines has the fourth largest number of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints followers in the world. The other three are the United States, Mexico and Brazil.

The Church was founded 200 years ago by Joseph Smith. There are 16 million members found in nearly every country and territory, and organized church units in 188 of the world’s 224 countries and territories.

In 1961, first Latter-day Saints missionaries came to the Philippines. By 1996, church members were 366,000. That year, 56-year-old Elder Quentin L. Cook arrived in the Philippines to serve as a counsellor to the Area presidency. When he left the country two years later, the figure had risen to 408,000. Now, there are more than 800,000 Church members which is five percent of the 16 million global followers. He attributes the increase to the work of church missionaries over the years, not just his.

The Church in the Philippines is the fastest growing church, said Elder Cook. “No other country can match that record.” Elder Cook told this columnist that in 2021, “It will be 60 years since the church came to the Philippines. It has grown faster in the 60-year-period than any other country in the same period.”

How explain that amazing growth in a country majority of whose population are Roman Catholics followed by many Protestant denominations?

The Elder said, “I felt that the Filipino people loved Jesus Christ. They loved the Savior. And that meant that they were spiritually inclined, that they were willing to pray, and to read scriptures. And people who will pray and read scriptures are people who will join, who’ll become members, and who will be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“We’re not trying to baptize people from one faith or another. Wherever they come from, we want to give them the opportunity to come into the Church. Maybe more of them have been Catholics, I don’t know. But most of them have been people who love the Savior and were willing to read the scriptures and pray about it.”

Elder Cook continued: “We talk mostly to people more on one-on-one. We invite them to come to our church meetings. They would be going to a branch or a diocese (which consists of 5,000 members) and usually there’d be a hundred to 150 people in that branch they would go to. The missionaries teach them about the Savior, about the revelation that the Prophet Joseph Smith received with respect to founding a new church. They teach them about the plan of salvation. And the plan of salvation is why we are here. Where are we going when we die? And so they teach them that. And so it’s a combination of things. And then having them read the scriptures.”

You can easily believe what the 79-year- old elder tells you. He is friendly, his face easily breaking into smiles as he tries, not to convert (though without a doubt that would be a good thing if you are converted), but to make media people simply understand what the Church is all about. (A future issue of this column will dwell with the doctrinal differences and similarities between the Church and other Christian churches.)

Elder Cook is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church. The Quorum is the second highest presiding body in the government of the church. Its members serve under the direction of the First Presidency, a governing unit of three men – the president and two counsellors.

Cook was a business lawyer and managing partner of a San Francisco Bay Area law firm and CEO of a California healthcare system when he received a call to be a General Authority of the Church. He gave up a high-paying law career for a calling that paid little “just to serve the Lord. And that’s a special feeling.”

The Philippines was his first assignment. His later appointments included serving as a full-time missionary in the British Mission and as a bishop, a president in the San Francisco stake, and regional representative and area authority in the North America West Area.

The first Church building in the Philippines was built in 1964 in Buendia, Makati, with help from Elder Cook’s brother, Joseph Vernon Cook Jr., a medical doctor who was assigned with the US Navy in Sangley Point, Cavite.

Elder Cook is currently in the Philippines to visit with the members of the church, and religious leaders coming from different faith traditions and partners of humanitarian services, government, and the media.    

He has visited with church members and missionaries in Baliwag and Mandaluyong, Quezon City and Antipolo. 

On the second purpose, the Elder Cook met with members of different religious organizations “to build faith and to assist the leaders and answer questions that they might have about how they can do a better job administering the church and to share with them things that the president or prophet of the church, President Russell M. Nelson, is teaching and to lift up the members.” The preaching style is not hell and brimstone, Cook said, “If you went to our meetings, you wouldn’t find that. Our missionaries teach love, they teach Christian attributes

While the Church membership has been steadily increasing, bias against the church remains. Dialogues will help break down the hostile feelings against something people know little if at all, about.

Cook said, “All of us who have served missions, have had a lot of rejection. But that rejection we don’t internalize that. We recognize that people have a lot of challenges and that sometimes they have very great difficulties in their lives. But there always are some who really want to know more about the Savior and who want to improve their lives and are open to the message that the gospel of Jesus Christ, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been restored. And when we meet them, it’s all worthwhile, and the meetings are very spiritual.”

The Church puts premium on inter-faith relations. In last Monday’s high level inter-faith luncheon meeting, guests included the Most Rev. Pablo S. David, bishop of Kalookan; Rev. Fr. Carlos Reyes of the Archdiocese of Manila; Pastor Aldrin Penamora of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches; the Philippine National Police; Federation of Asian Bishop’s Council; the Focolare Movement, Imam Council of the Philippines, and the Buddha’s Light Internal Association.

Elder Cook said a reason for the meeting was, “We were paying respect to the Catholics. They’re having 500 years of Catholicism in the country, and this year, recommending that there be an ecumenical dialogue among the faiths. And so we think that’s a good thing. But for us, this year is the 200th year of Joseph Smith having the revelation of God the Father and Jesus Christ restoring His church. So their 500 years for them, 200 years for us. A very significant period for us as well.”

“Not everything we do is trying to have converts. We want to have more love, and we want to have more unity, and we do want to build faith and have religious freedom. And we always get along well with people of other faiths. People who feel accountable to God are very special as far as we are concerned.”

I asked about the church’s response to acts of terrorism. Cook’s answer: “We’re not political. We don’t support one party or a different party. That’s not our purpose. Our purpose is to take the gospel of Jesus Christ across the earth. But anything that adversely affects people, and again not talking about politics, but anything that hurts people, whether it’s terrible things like the eruption of Taal volcano, or anything that’s devastating, then we try and help. We can’t take on all the problems of the world but we try to help. And so the terrorist kind of thing, we won’t probably get involved with that, but we want to help refugees.”

Is global peace possible?

“We didn’t have peace in the Savior’s lifetime. We think that that’s probably with the Second Coming of the Savior that there will be peace. But we believe that people can have individual peace even when there’s no peace in the world. And we pray for peace . . . We’re grateful that families are doing more in their homes to build sanctuaries of faith that will bless them in their families, and allow them to have the kind of peace in their homes. And when there’s peace individually and in homes, then there’s peace in the world.”

The Church’s remarkable humanitarian projects in my next column.