Cebu City Philippines Temple: 'It was a long wait'
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CEBU CITY, PHILIPPINES
From the time ground was broken to begin construction of the Cebu City Philippines Temple on Nov. 14, 2007, Cesar A. Perez Jr. has looked forward to the events of this week, which will culminate with the temple's dedication on Sunday, June 13.
Elder Perez is the Area Seventy who coordinates the Cebu temple committee. An institute director, he has deep feelings for the temple and how its presence will affect the lives of not only the young adults with whom he works in the Church Educational System, but also for all members in the temple district.
"I feel deeply for the temple," Elder Perez said.
Having a temple close by blesses members spiritually, and now that it costs less for members to travel to the temple they will be able to attend more often.
"Depending on the speed of the boat, it took us 24 to 30 hours to go to the temple in Manila," he said. "It was expensive, especially for the members in Mindanao; it took them two days to go to the temple in Manila." Members from Mindanao will now travel 11 hours by boat to the temple in Cebu City.
"From our house, it is about 40 minutes of travel," Elder Perez said. That short distance, he declared, is a tremendous blessing.
"I taught my children and now students enrolled in institute that the direction to the kingdom of God is through the temple. We cannot gain exaltation without it.
Elder Perez and his wife, Fe, are parents of grown son and daughter.
He said that as plans were made for the temple's open house, committee members anticipated "a conservative number of visitors, perhaps 1,000 a day." As it turned out, an average of 3,000 a day visited the temple. On the final two days of the open house, the numbers rose to 4,000 on Friday, June 4, and 7,215 on Saturday, June 5. The total count for the open house was 45,103.
"We had around 3,000 every day, which was a happy problem. We had to make adjustments in our preparations, and it gave us some thought about our role in helping 'bring the Church out of obscurity.' The temple is a major force in letting people know about the Church and the gospel of Jesus Christ."
His own family learned of the Church through missionary work. "My father was baptized in 1975; he had been looking for the right Church. He was a Bible-reading man. He lots of questions that the minister in the church he attended could not answer.
One day, as he was moving with his company to another office, he found a pamphlet, "Which Church Is Right?"
"He read the pamphlet, came home and told us to study it. He wanted to join the Church right away, but my mother was in the choir at our church and didn't want to leave.
"I was 21. My father told me, 'Ask God if this is true.'
"There was a change in my father. There was a certain force in his message. I thought that there must be something here. I will do as he suggested. I prayed and read the pamphlet.
"My father was no longer the lone voice. One by one, we became interested."
Elder Perez said that his father decided to attend an LDS meeting. He did not know that the meeting block lasted three hours.
"It came to be 12:30, and my father said, 'I'm hungry. Let's go home.'"
As the Perez family left the chapel, two missionaries saw them but were unable to get their address.
"The missionaries knocked on doors and did not stop until they found us," Elder Perez said.
When Cesar A. Perez Sr. expressed an interest in being baptized, the missionaries explained that he had to be taught first."
The Perez family became stalwarts of the Church. "My father was a stake patriarch," Elder Perez said. "He was somebody special. After he retired, he wrote his life history in three volumes.
His parents are deceased, but Elder Perez has no doubt that they know of the Cebu City Philippines Temple.
Elder Perez met his wife at Church as she was investigating the gospel. They were married in 1979 in an LDS meetinghouse; the marriage was solemnized shortly after the Manila Philippines Temple was dedicated in 1984. "It was a long wait," Elder Perez said.
He hopes that now there is a temple in Cebu City, others will not have to wait so long.
