Elder Teddy E. Brewerton and his wife, Dorothy Hall
Brewerton, were getting used to changing their plans.
Twice they planned trips abroad; twice they
independently decided that—for reasons they didn’t know at the time—they
shouldn’t go. The first time, in 1962, when the Brewertons would have been
attending a biochemistry conference in Austria, Elder Brewerton was called as bishop in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The next time the Brewertons cancelled a trip—planned for nearly two
decades—to Latin America. At the time, they were unaware that Elder Brewerton
would be called as a new member of the First Quorum of the Seventy at October, 1978
general conference.
At the time of his calling as a General Authority,
he had served over four years as a Regional Representative, with responsibility
first in Oregon and Alaska and later in Calgary and Edmonton. He and Sister
Brewerton are natives of Raymond, Alberta. He was born in 1925.
Between 1965 and 1968 he was the first president
of what is now the Costa Rica San Jose Mission. He presided over missionary
work in Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela.
“It seemed like we lived on an airplane most of
the time, because we had to be in every city and every country every six
weeks,” he said. Despite the hindrances, missionary work progressed. Sister
Brewerton improvised manuals and programs to
teach coastal Indians who had no written language. Although the challenges
were great, the couple was used to exercising their initiative.
“An individual has to do all that he can—use his
own agency—and try,” Elder Brewerton says. A self-employed pharmacist who
owns and operates a medical-center apothecary in Calgary, he learned years
ago the value of studying varied interests—including the gospel.
When President Marion
G. Romney set him apart for a mission to Uruguay in 1949, he instructed
him to study the gospel systematically by subject. “And so I literally
put it into practice, and I found it highly beneficial in preparing thoroughly
and getting an individual testimony of many Church subjects.”
He applied the method to an institute class he taught
at the University of Calgary, and it “opened our minds.” Scriptures the
students had read hundreds of times finally became meaningful. Elder Brewerton
applied the same learning concept to his
avocations—which include political theories, archaeology, and pharmaceutical
chemistry.
That instruction from President Romney was not the
only help they received from him. While the Brewertons were in Costa Rica,
Sister Brewerton became pregnant with their fifth child. Doctors told them
it was inadvisable to have more. However, after a priesthood blessing from
President Romney, Sister Brewerton gave birth to a fifth child. And four
years later, to a sixth.
Elder Brewerton served The First Quorum of the Seventy
with distinction for a period of seventeen years before being named an
Emeritus General Authority on September 30, 1995.
Bibliography
"News of the Church: Teddy E. Brewerton," The Ensign Nov. 1978 (principal source)
2005 Church Almanac, p. 82
