A Stirring Missionary Story

Elder Sanchez Story

November 2011

 

This is Elder Sanchez (on your left) and Elder Willlie.  They have both been out about a year and are zone leaders together in Mangaldan.  Elder Sanchez has been a member for two years.  His parents were very against him being baptized.  It caused him great sorrow to disappoint them, but he knew the Church was true.  The day after he was baptized, his Bishop told him he should prepare to serve a mission in a year when he could go to the temple.  He said to the Bishop that it was impossible for him—he had no money and no support and his parents would never agree to it.  But his Bishop said the Lord would help him, so Elder Sanchez began to do everything he could to prepare.  He studied and worked and in a year he was ready to go.  Missionaries have to have at least one parents’ signature on their missionary papers to complete them.  Elder Sanchez said miraculously his mother’s heart was softened enough for her to sign the papers so he could go.  His father still is very angry.  He never gets any mail from home.  There are no addresses for many homes in the Philippines and Elder Sanchez doesn’t know how to reach them to email them like the other missionaries do on P-day.  His parents refuse to do what is necessary to set that up.

Elder Sanchez has a very good command of the English language and is a wonderful missionary.  I assumed he came from a family that was able to pay for him to go to an excellent school.  When I asked him about his education he told us that he lives in Mindanao.  This is an island south of Luzon where we are and where Manila is located.  Mindanao is an island known for being a place where life can be very hard.  He and his siblings moved to the mountains to live with their grandparents.  Every day Elder Sanchez would get up at 4:30 a.m. to eat breakfast and then leave at 5:00 a.m. to walk down the mountain to school which began at 8:00 a.m.  When school was over he went to work and then walked three hours up the mountain to get home. 

When I asked him when he did his homework, he said he did it when he got home, late in the evening.  He said they had one gas lantern to light the house, but they would also catch fireflies and use the light from the firefly-filled jars to study by.  He said without any tinge of self-pity that it is why his eyes are bad now, but he wanted to get a good education.

When I asked him to identify something special he had learned on his mission that he would take home with him, he thought about it carefully and said one thing was to have an understanding heart with others, but “even with myself”.  He said he had come know the Savior and that is one thing he had come to know about Him.  He wants to be like the Savior.