Area Leadership Message
The Power of Making Temple Covenants
I converted to the Church as a young boy of 13. One summer day in 1971, my father took me to town for our haircut. While the barber was cutting my hair, suddenly two American ladies arrived at the barbershop. They were introduced by the barber to my father as missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He told Father that they have a good doctrine that he can try investigating. At first, Father was hesitant to accept the invitation but he was finally persuaded to accept an appointment at home.
So we were taught the true gospel of Jesus Christ and were given a copy of the Book of Mormon. My parents read and pondered the sacred book. As they studied its contents, and they felt its power. They decided to be baptized with us their children.
Before becoming members of the true church, our mortal path seemed dark and hopeless, we had no knowledge of God’s plan, and we didn’t know about eternal life. Our motto was “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die,” but when we found the true church, our path became brighter with all the ordinances and the covenants we made with God.
Our baptism into the Church allowed us to enter the covenant path which will bring us back to God’s presence. If we continue pressing forward, keeping the commandments, and enduring to the end, we will have eternal life. We can achieve this by making, keeping, and honoring our covenants at baptism and at the temple.
As the newly called President of the Church, President Nelson counseled the saints: “Now, to each member of the Church I say: Keep on the covenant path. Your commitment to follow the Savior by making covenants with Him and then keeping those covenants will open the door to every spiritual blessing and privilege available to men, women, and children everywhere.” Russell M. Nelson, “As We Go Forward Together”, Liahona, April 2018.
For those who strayed from the path, he extended this invitation during the April 2019 General Conference: “I plead with you to repent. Experience the strengthening power of daily repentance — of doing and being a little better each day.”
What President Nelson was saying is, if we have slipped away from our covenant path, if we have some failures that are causing us to be away from the path, his prophetic and loving counsel to us all who are failing or falling is plain and simple, “repent and change course,” get up, “magsisi, magbago at bumalik sa ating covenant path.”
If we were not full tithe payers yesterday, become one today without delay so blessings can come flowing. By doing so we can qualify for a temple recommend so we can enter the temple again. That promise is sure, blessings will come into our lives.
When we were baptized into the church in 1971, there were no temples in the Philippines, the nearest temple was in Tokyo, Japan. Upon learning about the ordinances of the temple and the sealing power that binds families to the eternities, we were so eager for the temple in the Philippines. It was a long wait until 1984 when the Manila Temple was dedicated by President Gordon B. Hinckley.
We were one of the many Filipino saints who rushed to the Manila Temple to be sealed as a family. Our joy was full when we received the ordinances and were sealed as a family. From that time on we never neglected our covenants with God, we regularly went to the temple despite the distance from Pangasinan to Manila. Like most Filipinos, we faced economic difficulties but we saved money to be able to enter the temple regularly. It was a joy to renew our covenants with God and perform ordinances for our dead.
Fast forward to 50 years later, the Filipino Saints have been blessed with 13 temples and maybe even more to come. We are delighted that in each General Conference President Nelson will announce the building of temples all over the world.
The Lord has instructed the prophet to build more temples so they can be easily accessible to the members. I believe that with the many temples in our midst, the saints in the Philippines will be lifted temporally and spiritually.
With the increasing number of temples in the Philippines, there is now an urgent need for us to better prepare ourselves to be temple ready, to be a temple-attending and temple-loving people. Now that more temples are made accessible to us, we need to prove that we are worthy to enter the temple and perform the ordinances necessary for the dead and the living.
We need to understand the significance of regularly returning to the temple. President Nelson emphasized this at a General Conference Leadership Meeting in April 2024: “Making covenants with God is one of the greatest privileges our Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ give to us in this mortal life. We need to prepare our people much better for the transcendent blessings of the temple by helping them to understand the covenants or promises to God that they make there and the potential blessings associated with those covenants.”
What a great blessing it is for us to live in a time where temple buildings are continually dotting the whole world to make sacred ordinances available for the saints, and to have loving prophets and apostles guiding us to the temple so we can receive tremendous blessings promised to those who are worthy to enter.