21 April 2024 Homecoming Talk: Mom

Thank you Mia for speaking about the temple because the temple has a really special place in my heart for the part that it played for Briant and I while we were on our mission. 

I'm gonna stick to the plan here. So I'm going to tell you first a little bit about our mission. For those of you who don't know, we were called to serve as Welfare Self Reliance Humanitarian Aid Missionaries. We were to be assigned in the Cebu Philippines Mission. So when that call came and that was a long title for an assignment we weren't really sure what we were going to do but humanitarian aid sounded kind of like helping people, maybe welfare self reliance makes me think about helping people grow food, gardens. Ok! That was up my alley. When we got there and found out what we were actually really assigned to do, it was very different. We were administrators which was not right up our alley. We had a lot to learn from the very very beginning. We were one of five couples that served as humanitarian aid missionaries in the Philippines. There are 23 missions in the Philippines, soon to be 26 in July, so the church is just exploding with growth in the Philippines. It was wonderful to be there and to see what happened in the 18 months that we were there as temples were announced and started. We got to go to the open house the week before we came home of the Urdaneta Temple and others are under construction and soon to be opened. So that was really exciting.

Our assignment in the Cebu area actually included 5 missions. Cebu was one of five missions. And so our assignment was to travel between these five missions and take in requests for humanitarian aid which the Church provides through LDS Charities. It was very interesting work, but it was very challenging work. When we arrived in Manila we went to the area offices there in manila where our "bosses" were, church employees over the humanitarian work in the Philippines. Briant took with him his apple computer because we knew we would be using a computer and they handed me a Dell, PC computer and I have never used a computer. I had never even turned a computer on and they wanted me to learn how to use Dell. So Dell and I had a very interesting relationship. Briant wasn't able to assist me with Dell. Nobody else offered to help me know what Dell could do or should do or what I needed to do with Dell. So it took us a long time before Dell and I could do something together which would assist Briant in the bulk of the work that had to be done on the computer. So I found a few things that I could do. I learned how to receive and send emails, I learned a lot about how to use an iPhone and messenger, which I didn't know a lot about that either. On our mission the people of the Philippines can't afford to have a phone plan. So they buy the phone but they don't have a phone number. You just figure out how to get ahold of them on facebook messenger and then you can message with them back and forth that way. Some of them have access to a computer so I could email with them, but some of them didn't have internet and so I couldn't communicate that way. Some of them would call me on the phone because they had a phone plan. Some of them would message me and some would email. Trying to keep straight all the different ways that people would communicate with us was a challenge for me but that's kind of what Briant had me do was the communications, so that was kind of my experience there. 

The people in the Philippines were wonderful. They were the most humble, kind, loving, accepting, resilient people that you could ever come across and we love them. We really love the people. 

Kind of what we were as administrators, we were project managers. That was the title on all of our paper work. Briant was the project manager and I was the secondary. Requests would come to us for assistance usually through a member of the Church. For example, if we were working with a school, there was a member of the Church at that school as a teacher or administrator who reached out to us. Then the process would be that we would go and visit the school and we would sit down with the principal or administrator of the school and discuss their needs and what their request was. Then we would take it home and with their assistance we would develop their project for humanitarian aid. It involved a lot of back and forth with the main office up in Manila: sending lot of emails, waiting for responses. Of course the Church took very good care of the financial funding through LDS Charities so there were a lot of hoops that had to be jumped through and it took a lot of time. Besides early on in our mission, understanding what we were supposed to be doing, and then learning all the different processes, it took us about 6 months before we got our first project approved and that was an exciting day! So that's the kind of work we were involved in throughout our mission. It was a good work. It was rewarding. We met some incredible people whom we will always remember. 

I want to thank all of you. We felt your prayers and your concern for us and we really appreciated that. I had one really special friend who never failed, every month, I would get a message from Ricki, and she was checking up on me and it seemed like she always knew when I was having the hardest day. I would get a message "How's it going? How's everything going? I hope everything's going good for you!" And it just lifted my spirits. So I'm grateful for that kind of support and know that we were having many prayers in our behalf from many of you and we want to thank you for that. 

Our topic for today was "How did the Lord strengthen us through the family issues we had while we were on our mission?" Well, yeah. We had a few family issues that were a little bit challenging. We knew when we left that we would probably have some grandchildren born and so we were really glad when we found out we had Jenna coming, from Tessa, and my mother heart wanted to be with her very very badly, but I was so grateful for how our family just rallied around her. Taffy has our oldest grandson on a mission, she could be a grandma in the next five years, so she did her grandma practice and went and did for Tessa what I would have done for her had I been here. So I loved how they just all worked together. Brought meals and took care of each other in that way when Tessa had little Jenna. 

It was shortly after Jenna was born, we found out that Sulli and Michelle were having a baby, and not jsut one baby, but twins! So that was a pretty exciting day. I was pretty worthless that day. I was just kind of floating around, just so excited for that. And then kind of the heavy settled in on the challenge it is to get twins here and get them here safely. We found a lot of peace by going to the temple. I found the peace I needed that everything was going to be okay. Michelle and the babies were going to be strong and healthy. 

We were fortunate where we lived. We lived right in the city of Cebu on a very busy street that was noisy 24/7. It is never quiet in the Philippines in the city. They work 24 hours a day. They work 12 hours shifts. So it was just on-going all the time and we were on a very busy street. But the temple was less than a 10 minute walk (through some pretty sketchy places). Once you got onto the sidewalk outside the temple grounds it was just a beeline until you went inside the walls of the temple grounds. Once inside there was just peace and relative quiet. So we were really grateful for the temple and we tried to get there every week when we were in town. Our work required a lot of travel, but if we were in town when the temple was open and there was space available in the one ordinance room, we tried to go every week. 

Then we had the challenge of Tyson having kidney failure while we were gone. We knew that was coming, but when finally his numbers fell to the point that he was in serious trouble, that was scary. I was hoping that he'd be okay until we got home. But he wasn't. As soon as it became apparent that a transplant had to happen and it couldn't take too much longer, our family just rallied. Livi, with her "everything's figure-out-able" attitude, just kind of got the family going and those who had Tyson's blood type "O" came right forward. Casey was the very first and very willing. He wished he could be the one, but we have three of Tyson's siblings who are also type "O" blood and they wanted them tested for compatibility first. I want to thank the kids who were willing to sacrifice for Tyson. When it came down to it, Tami was the best match of his three siblings. That was a difficult decision. Casey would have preferred that it was him, but he supported Tami in being the donor. Then it was just a few days before the transplant was to take place and they both went into their final blood test, just previous to the surgery and found out that Tyson had developed an antigen in his blood that would attack Tami's kidney and she was no longer able to do it. So the procedure was cancelled. We went to the temple and I knew everything was going to be okay. I found the peace that I needed so I didn't need to ransack wherever it was that Briant was hiding my passport and hop a plane home. Within the next month Tami and Tyson were able to join a kind of paired share exchange, where Tami could donate her kidney to somebody that she would be a really good match for in exchange for someone who would be a good match for Tyson, to donate to Tyson. That's what they ended up doing. Tami's kidney went to the East Coast and Tyson's kidney came from somewhere back east and was a good match. Tyson is feeling so much better and Tami recovered well. I think hers might have been a little bit harder. Throughout all of it, it was just awesome to see how our family pulled together, rallied around each other, and helped each other out so that we could continue to concentrate on what we were there to do in the Philippines. We just had to trust and we did. I felt that peace and was able to just trust that God was in control and everything was going to turn out for the very best. 

I want to share with you just a project we were able to do while we were over there to just kind of give you an idea of what we did and how the Lord was involved. When we first arrived in the Philippines, the first Sunday we attended church in Cebu, it was stake conference. The church hall was full all the way to the back. The people that we replaced, Randy and Julie Huskinson were still with us, they hadn't returned home yet, they were helping us get kind of acclimated and turning over projects that they had in process that we would take over. But while we were in church that day we met a lot of people. We were introduced to a lot of people with foreign names to us, they didn't come easy to us. We met this lady named Marilou Galarde and she was a program coordinator for a place called "My Bonita Home for Girls". It's a Catholic organization that built and ran this home for sexually abused young girls. She was the project coordinator and a counselor along with the Catholic Nuns that ran this home. At the time there were about 68 young ladies living in this home and getting counseling and help for the trauma they had been exposed to. Well, we met Marilou and she kind of told us what she wanted to do. She had this idea for her girls home that we might be able to help her with. We said, "yes! Get in touch with us. We'd love to come and see your facility."

Weeks had gone by and I hadn't heard from her. I didn't know how to contact her. She was on my mind. She was in our prayers. And then we went to the temple one Thursday. We often went on Friday. We had to be home on Friday because we had a meeting with Manila, a zoom meeting, every Friday morning, so we just kind of made Friday our temple day. But this week, I'm not really sure why, but hindsight tells me why, we decided to go on Thursday. There was an opening on Thursday afternoon and so we went to the temple on Thursday. After we had finished our session in the temple we went out to the locker rooms and pretty soon, before I had changed, a temple worker came in and asked if I could come help with some sealings. We have a young couple that wanted to do some sealings. Briant had said "yes" and "go get my wife", so they came and got me. We went in and spent about 45 minutes doing a sealing session with this couple, which was really awesome. Then we changed and were heading out of the temple and as I was headed out the door past the recommend desk, this sister came out from behind the desk and said, "Sister Teichert. I'm Marilou Galarde." That's the lady that I had been introduced to on that stake conference Sunday from "My Bonita Home for Girls" and I felt like Heavenly Father knew where I was and He put me where I needed to be. There were other circumstances that put Marilou there. It was her very first time serving in the temple. She was appointed to be there on Friday afternoon. She had gotten a call from another temple worker who said, I've got to be somewhere on my Thursday shift, could we switch? She said, I would be happy to do that. So she arranged her schedule and her work schedule so she could be there on Thursday and I was there on Thursday. We were able to assist her in the project she needed us to do. 

What the project entailed was helping with their home for young ladies. They have girls there that have been there for as many as 8 years. They'd come as teenagers and now they're 22-23 and they've helped them get through their schooling and their college education and they're ready to get out there in the real world but all they know is this dorm style living and eating in the cafeteria where there food is prepared for them. She wanted to have an independent living place for the older set of girls. They had about 12 girls at that time in this situation, and they had the space in the home to do it. They had 2 empty rooms that were being used for storage that they wanted to clear out and make a living space for those girls. So that's what we were able to assist them with: to be able to put a bathroom facility in there, a sleeping area, a living room area, a kitchen, and furnish all that for those girls. Then Marilou would be able to do that independent living program for those young ladies. The program involved them having a budget, deciding their meals, going out and buying their own groceries, cooking their own meals, cleaning up, and doing their own laundry. At the time we left our mission the first four girls had graduated the program, had jobs, and were living out on their own. Those are the kind of rewarding experiences we were able to be participants in. There were a lot and it was rewarding.

In the October General Conference, most of you probably haven't forgotten, it hasn't been that long ago, Ronald A. Rasband, an apostle of the Lord said these words, and they rang very much true for us. He said, "I promise that as you serve you will feel the love of the Lord in your life. You will know Him. He will know you. And how great will be your joy. Your dedicated service to Jesus Christ will inspire and bless your family, your grandchildren and your great grandchildren. Peace and love will be multiplied in their lives for years to come. I promise." 

I'm really grateful that we had the opportunity to serve THAT mission and for the things that we learned. It was hard. There were times when it was really hard, but there was a lot of joy in the work we were blessed to be involved in as well. 

I love my Heavenly Father. I love my Savior. And I know that He loves all of His children. And I say that in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.