Faithful Unto the End

Some time ago, my grandmother told me a story from when she was a young parent in Southern Utah. She said that each week she would play the piano for a group of young children at church. The adult in charge of the junior Sunday School was Alice Holland. Each week she would have to tell her son Jeff to "sit down and behave."

Thinking of this young Jeff, Grandma then said, "It does seem weird to have him as a big man in the church." And her lesson was to "always be nice to naughty little boys because they might grow up to be Apostles."

Elder Jeffrey R Holland passed away this weekend. Like so many others throughout the world, his discipleship and service has affected me personally. All day I've thought about some of the lessons I learned from him.

Just as I have with the passing of other great influences, I'd like to share just a few examples.

The Sunset Bookend

A few months into my mission, the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was held in October, 1999. We had no TV in our apartment and the conference was not yet broadcast online so we, along with many members, would go spend the two days in the Sunset church building of San Francisco.

On that Saturday afternoon, Elder Holland gave a talk about the need for patience while waiting for blessings within the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He promised happiness and help to those with "hope for a better world."

Right near the beginning of the talk, looking from the projector screen and directly into my soul, he said:

I think of newly called missionaries leaving family and friends to face, on occasion, some rejection and some discouragement and, at least in the beginning, a moment or two of homesickness and perhaps a little fear.

It felt so personal that I was embarrassed that everyone else in the room had to hear it. Then he spent the next ten minutes promising "all the good things to come."

It was right there, in that pew, in that chapel, where I promised patience forever in God's "goodness past, present, and future." It changed the missionary and the man that I would be.

The Stanford Bookend

Towards the end of my mission, I was serving in Palo Alto, California. It was announced that by invitation of the Provost of Stanford, Jeffrey R Holland would speak at a campus event. It was to be held in the beautiful Memorial Church on Stanford's sprawling campus.

I will never forget sitting in a pew as Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring thundered from the organ. I watched as Elder Holland shook hands and conversed with so many smart and capable people and then took his place on the stand.

A few speakers began the program, including the Stanford Provost, and then Elder Holland was the concluding speaker. Educationally accomplished in his own right, his speech was different. He spoke as a special witness of Jesus Christ. It wasn't the degrees, it was the discipleship.

With an overall great message, one line impressed me and changed me the most:

"God is God because of what He knows, and, inextricably, because of what He does with what He knows."

It was right there, in that pew, in that chapel, where I knew it wasn't enough to learn the Gospel. I needed to be better at speaking, teaching, and living it. As I finished up my mission, it was important to do more with what I know.

Finding a Purpose

Soon after I was called to lead a new stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I sat with Elder Holland at a church in central Las Vegas. I mentioned this meeting before and could fill multiple posts with what I learned there. But in light of his passing, let me just share one.

After a few hours of training, he told us about his call as an Apostle. He described the actual process and then made mention of his personal feelings:

“I’m not sure it’s supposed to be a personal hell when you receive this Apostolic calling but each of us went through that. I’m not sure why. We don’t talk about it much with each other. Elder Faust put his arm around me and said “My boy, I know what you’re going through and there is not a thing I can do for you.”

After spending some time in a daze, he said he went to his scriptures and read Doctrine and Covenants 81:5

Wherefore, be faithful; stand in the office which I have appointed unto you; succor the weak⁠, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.

He said it clicked for him, "If I can do anything, I know I can do that."

Read that scripture again.

How perfectly did Elder Holland spend the next 31 years lifting and strengthening and succoring. So many of his talks and his messages were exactly for this purpose including to a young missionary in San Francisco who now sat in front of him at the beginning of a new demanding church assignment.

It was right there, in that chair, in that chapel, where I recalled that God, as always, remembered me.

Right before he moved on to the next topic, he quipped, "Sometimes I cleave onto verse 6 as well."

Of all times, and of all men, I think this is a most appropriate time to visit that verse:

And if thou art faithful unto the end thou shalt have a crown of immortality⁠, and eternal life in the mansions which I have prepared in the house of my Father.

I will forever be thankful for Elder Holland and the many things he taught me personally, whether face to face or heart to heart. I'm happy to know that in death, he has been reunited with his wife Patricia. In one of my all-time favorite Elder Holland talks, he paraphrased Mark Twain about his wife, “Wherever she was, there was paradise.”

We will miss him. I will miss him. But I'm happy he's found that paradise again.