by Cristina Bautista Deyro, M.D.

Cristie, in the photo above with 3 local community coordinators in the Philippines, is a board member of the Bountiful Children’s Foundation and also serves as Bountiful’s regional coordinator for Asia.

Prepare in every way,
perform at every moment.
This is a divine pattern…

Prepare in every way, perform at every moment. This is a divine pattern of how we are to live our lives here on earth. I have seen it in the lives of my parents and other people. I have seen it in my own life and continue to witness its reality as I age.

As a young farm boy in pre-World War II Philippines, my father lay on a carabao’s back and watched the stars appear in the night sky. There and then, he resolved to get out of poverty and help his family and his people do the same. In those days, his mother would cut a single milkfish in many slices, cook it in plenty of sour broth, and add plenty of sweet potato leaves to make dinner for eight growing children.

After the war he skipped his high school graduation to work in an American military camp. This was the end of his formal education, but he never stopped studying. When his hands were not occupied with work or fixing things, he was always reading. He would proudly say he graduated college from the University of Experience. His English language and farming skills enabled him to work in war-torn Vietnam and help build resettlement areas for the displaced Vietnamese people. These and other community development jobs prepared him to hold a position in the US Agency for International Development in the Philippines, screening and recommending project proposals from non-profit organizations for funding. He did not get rich, but he certainly was able to send his 6 children to college and help his younger siblings finish their studies while helping so many poor communities in his employment. He did his best at every job he held and his performance prepared him for the next job, the next opportunity to serve even more people.

Looking back, I can see the same pattern in my spiritual and career development. Devout Catholic parents raised me in such a way that prayer and going to church was the norm and faith in God and Jesus Christ came naturally. When my sister left for college, she learned from evangelical friends to read the Bible every day, and she taught this to me too!

While I attended the University of the Philippines, I was exposed to the harsh realities of an oppressive and corrupt government and experienced immersing myself in communities where fellow Filipinos were languishing in poverty. Weekends and semester breaks were spent in far-flung farming villages to “Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have.” (Lao-Tzu). This strengthened my resolve to fulfill my own and my father’s dream to become a medical doctor who would serve the people, fighting for truth, freedom, justice and love.

“Live with them. Learn from them. Love them.
Start with what they know.
Build with what they have.”
– Lao-Tzu

Little did I imagine that my conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would drastically change my view of how to change society. Far from toppling dictatorships and calling for rallies and reforms, change had to come from individual hearts through Jesus Christ. But my father’s service orientation, my immersion in poor communities, my Catholic activism, my growing love for the holy scriptures and my medical training all blended together and prepared me to be a servant leader in the Lord’s kingdom. The two great commandments made it simple. We love God by serving our neighbor; and anywhere you go, spiritually and temporally poor neighbors will always be around you.

A little over a year after getting married and obtaining my physician’s license, my husband received his first assignment as a seminary coordinator. With a five-month old baby in tow, we relocated to the island province of Leyte in Southern Philippines. Without friends and family there, the church community welcomed us and became our foothold in those first few months….and our stronghold in the succeeding years.

Starting a family and a medical practice at the same time in a new place while learning a new language and serving in the Church was a challenging balancing act, to say the least. Impoverished saints and full-time missionaries became our primary clients. I would remove a missionary’s ingrown toenail while his companion watched my baby. Since the living room and clinic in our rented house were one and the same space, patients would be knocking on our door at all hours of the day, but most frequently at mealtimes and often at bedtime. Soon we thought of a name for our fledgling home-based health care facility: The SMALL Clinic, an acronym for Special Medical Assistance for the Lord’s Laborers. In lieu of consultation fees, patients would bring a live chicken, half a sack of sweet potatoes or a big ripe papaya from their garden. Those were days never to be forgotten. Days which prepared my husband and me for the leadership callings that lay ahead, including leading the Philippines Urdaneta mission.

President Nelson describes the preparation of a prophet in this way: “Each day of an Apostle’s service is a day of learning and preparing for more responsibility in the future. It takes decades of service for an Apostle to move from the junior chair to the senior chair in the circle. During that time, he gains firsthand experience in each facet of the work of the Church. He also becomes well acquainted with the peoples of the earth, including their histories, cultures, and languages as assignments take him repeatedly across the globe.”

In many ways our individual preparation for future responsibilities and callings is similar to that of a prophet. We were sent here to earth because we performed and chose correctly during our pre-mortal life. We “receive[d] our first lessons in the world of spirits and were prepared to come forth in the due time of the Lord to labor” here.

Truly this life is the time for men to prepare and this life is also the day to perform their labors. And from their performance comes the preparation for the succeeding stage in their life. On a monumental and universal scale, Columbus, Gutenberg, William Tyndale, Martin Luther and many others were all prepared by God and performed their specific labors to pave the way for the restoration of the Gospel.

The inescapable unity of preparation and performance came to me more forcefully when I got engaged in the work of eliminating childhood malnutrition. The first 1000 days in a child’s life, referring to the beginning of life in the mother’s womb and the first 2 years after birth are most critical preparation days. These are vulnerable days where connections in the brain are made so that good and adequate nutrition and appropriate cognitive stimulation are essential so that the child can perform well. His brain and body organs develop. He learns to hold his head up and sit so that he can eat. He learns to stand up so he can walk. He learns to see and listen so he can speak and read. A well-nourished child will do better in school than the undernourished child. A better student will likely get better jobs and be more productive and self-reliant as an adult. What better way to prepare for the future than to nourish a child’s potential at that critical period of his life? What better way to help a people out of poverty than give them a well-developed brain so they can get a good education?

We saw first-hand the serious consequence of the lack of this timely preparation when, as mission leaders, we observed that missionaries coming from resource-poor families who suffered some nutritional deprivation and less than optimum cognitive stimulation in early life absorbed new learning more slowly than other missionaries.

Whatever state of preparation they were in when they arrived in the mission, we regularly encouraged our missionaries to prepare in every way each day. They were to prepare physically by sleeping and waking up early, getting regular physical exercise, eating healthy food and addressing hygiene and grooming. They were to prepare mentally by learning the language and planning lessons. They were to prepare spiritually through prayer and scripture study. They were to prepare socially and emotionally by being united with their companion and keeping mission rules. We promised them that as they accomplished the needed preparations, they would be able to perform well at every moment they are out of their apartment meeting and teaching people. Later they would happily report to us the fruits of their preparation.

In whatever area of life we need to perform,
there comes a moment when we think we are prepared.

In whatever area of life we need to perform, there comes a moment when we think we are prepared. I thought I was prepared when heavy rains started pouring in our flood-prone city one New Year’s Eve. We had experienced having our house flooded the year before so we took care not to leave anything on the floor that would get damaged if water comes in. To my chagrin, flood waters came in again, and this time reached more than a foot high, instead of the 4 inches deep that happened before. And so, we still had some stuff that got wet and damaged.

Even after all the extensive preparations that Captain Moroni made to protect the Nephites, he “did not stop making preparations…” (Alma50:1). I don’t think we can ever stop preparing… or performing. I am deeply grateful that my father found other means to nourish himself aside from eating his mother’s sour broth and rice. He found guava trees to climb, mudfish and escargot to catch in the rice paddies, and his grandfather’s carabao to milk. I am grateful he never stopped reading and learning, helping and thinking of more ways to help…. until he died at the ripe age of 95.

To quote Richard Bach, “Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.” Even death holds unimagined possibilities… if we prepare for it today.

“Here is the test to find whether your
mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.”
– Richard Bach