Elder Jeffrey R. HollandBy Austin, Jaylene, Jeff, Jacelyn• Current age 72• Currently a member of the Quorumof the Twelve Apostles

Elder Holland was born in St. George, Utah on December 3, 1940 to Frank and Alice Holland. He has three siblingsDennis, Debbie and Scott. However Scottdied in infancy.

He was born into a family of pioneers. Hismother’s family descended from the pioneers that settled the south of Utah. He is a descendentof Richard Bentley, who was the first mayor ofSt. George, Utah.

His father was a pioneer in his own right. Being anIrish convert to the church his formal schooling ended at the 7th grade. He sought to educate himself and became a public accountant and civic leader in St. George.

His father took the time to ensure his son’s happinessand helped organize a baseball league when Elder Holland lamented that there were no baseball teams forboys his age.

His mother, Alice Holland, said that he was an obedient boyand recounts a time when he had gone to a party, with instructions from his mother to return home by ten pm. Having looked at the clock he realized he only had fifteen minutes to make it home. He ranfrom one end of St. George to the other, to make it home on time.

Elder Holland was friendly and little childrenliked him because he was good to them. When he Was a service station attendant people asked for himby name to service their cars.

Elder Holland has said of himself “I have always loved people,and I think while growing up, I knew everyone in St. George.

Elder Holland Graduated from Dixie High School in St. George. He played both basketballand football. He was part of teams that took state championships in both sports. He attended Dixie college before serving his mission. After returning from his mission he was a co-Captain on the Dixie Basketball team. As of 2011 the school broke ground for the Jeffrey R.Holland Centennial Commons Building.

Before leaving for his mission he believed that he would come home and study medicine. Upon his return home he knew that medicine was not for him. He tried to reject the prompting given to him that he should teach.

Elder Holland acknowledges that the urgings that had led him away from studying medicine were ones that he distrusted because every missionary, having spent two years of their lives teaching,Comes home with an enthusiasm for the teaching profession. He said “Perhaps because of that, I really came home resisting it—almost unwilling to acknowledge it—and as a result spent thenext three years working toward the completion of my baccalaureate degree without a clear understanding of what I wanted to do.”

Education ContinuedElder Holland Transferred from Dixie State to BYU where he earned his BA in English and his MA in Religious Studies while he taught religion classes part-time.

After a reprieve from his studies Elder Holland returned to school attending Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. There he earned a second Masters degree in American Studies, and Ph.D in the same area of study.

While at Yale he wrote his Doctoral dissertation on the Religious sense of Mark Twain.

Work ExperienceElder Holland has held many different jobs throughout his life. With parents that believed in hard work it is easy to see how their values transferred to him. Some of the jobs that he heldwere:• A service station attendant.• A grocery bagger• Worked as a salesman at Provo Sporting Goods. Although he soled thousands of dollars worthof skis he has never skied himself. His wife accredits this to his “Irish gift of blarney.”• Part time religion teacher during his education at BYU.• Institute teacher in Hayward California• Institute Director in Seattle, Washington.• Institute Director in Salt Lake City, Utah after receiving his Ph.D from Yale• Dean of Religious Education at BYU Provo. He received this appointment in 1974. He was the youngest Dean at BYU. • He was appointed as the eleventh Commissioner of the Church Education System in 1976 andheld the position until 1980.• He was appointed as the President of BYU in 1980 succeeding Dallin H. Oaks and became the9th President of BYU. He held the position until 1989. It was during his time as President at BYUthat he helped found the Jerusalem Center in Israel, and he led and organized a campaign that raised $100,000,000 dollars.

Family LifeElder Holland met his wife Patricia Terry in high school. Her family moved to St. George as she was just beginning high school. They were both involved in extracurricular activities. Playing sports allowed him to have a lot of interaction with one another because she was a cheerleader. They dated for two years before he served his mission. Elder Holland attributes his missionary service as a result of the influence of Patricia. He recounts: “No one in my family had ever gone on a mission. But when I met Pat and we became reasonably serious, I could see that she was very firm about the fact I should go.”

Family Life Cont.• Jeffrey and Patricia were married in the St. George Temple on June 7, 1963. • Elder Holland said of his wife “Her faith has always been as pure and as powerful

and as strong as any person’s I’ve ever known.”• They have been married for 50 years this June.• They have three children. They are Matthew, Mary and David.• Elder Holland has said that his wife’s spiritual sensitivity, her intelligence, her deep

faith, and her love have been blessings in his life. He has said “It’s been a joy to be married to her”

Missionary ServiceHe served his mission to England. He had three different mission presidents. Elder Holland served as companions with Quentin L. Cook who served in the same mission as he did. As he was leaving the mission his parents received a call to serve a mission in the same mission as he did. His mother recalls Jeffrey saying that he was the only missionary that said farewell to his parents at both ends of his mission.

Speaking about his mission Elder Holland has said: “As an experience outside of those I’ve had with my parents or my wife and children, my mission was unquestionably the single most important, most pivotal, most persuasive experience in my life. Now that’s a cliché, I now, but I think perhaps a mission matters more to some than others, and for me, it meant everything. If I had been hit by a Mack truck, I don’t think it could have been any more stunning or more permanent in its effect. It either substantiated or dramatically changed—in a good way—every goal, feeling, or aspiration I had ever had.”

Missionary Service Cont.Elder Holland shared an experience that caused him to examine himself. He recalls that there was an old man in his eighties—who was a member of the church and fixed bicycles for free and would fix the elder’s bike’s for free—came riding up to their door one night when it was storming rain to see if the elders would come and administer to his wife. Slowly dying, but in a pain that had not allowed her to sleep for 48 hours, Elder Holland and his companion administered to her. He said of this experience “That really touched me, I was very moved that this eighty-year-old man would venture through the heavy East Anglian rain to seek out the spiritual help of two young boys.” “It was the first time I had ever done that, being a new missionary of just two weeks, and I remember leaving the old fellow and his wife up in the room as we went downstairs in their tiny house to put on our raincoats and get ready to go out. And then he came down—this sweet little old man with his soiled, bike-repairing hands—and he dabbed at his eyes and managed to say, through his emotions, ‘She’s sleeping know.’ “I remember vividly going out into that rain and weeping, conscious of a spiritual revelation—a kind of ‘coming-to-realize-what-I-had’ feeling…There were many other considerably more miraculous things that happened throughout my mission, but none perhaps that touched me more deeply than this first manifestation which caused me, an average raised-in-the-church, seminary-attending boy from southern Utah who had never really been anywhere to examine my own values, and my own priesthood, and my own faith—and see that they worked.”

Church Service• Served as a counselor in 3 Stake Presidencies.• Bishop• Regional Representative• Called as a General Authority in the First Quorum of the Seventy on April 1, 1989.• As a member of the seventy he was a counselor in the general presidency of the church’s

Young Men’s Organization from 1989-1990• Ordained as an apostle on June 23, 1994 by Howard W. Hunter following the death of

President Ezra Taft Benson. He was sustained as an apostle on October 1, 1994. • Served as President of the church’s Chile Area from 2002-2004.• In 2012 Elder Holland began to have responsibility for the affairs of the church in Africa. • Elder Holland is known for is bold speech in his conference talks. He has given sermons

that directly answer the accusations made by some that Latter-day Saints should not be accepted as Christians.

• In 2009 he gave a conference talk that explained the importance of Christ’s statement “my God, my God why has thou forsaken me.” The talk was reformatted, put to music music and put on the Church’s website. It has over ½ a million views

• This is the video: http://youtu.be/EpFhS0dAduc

Personal ExperienceI have not had any personal experience with Elder Holland, but I would like to take this time to share a story about him during the time that he was the Area President of Chile. My trainer was from Chile and his mother worked in the church office with Elder Holland. During his time in Chile Elder Holland had been asked to help with retaining converts in the Chile area. Retention numbers were dismal and my trainer told me that for a time missionaries were told that they needed to focus on bringing back those converts that had been lost. Elder Holland worked a marvelous work in Chile.

My trainer told me about a time when Elder Holland spoke directly to his mother and gave her counsel. They were dividing wards and creating new stakes. However when all was said and done, my companions family was not a part of their old ward and had been added into a ward that had an area of struggling members. Like many places there was not very many priesthood holders. My companions mother asked Elder Holland if there was anyway that they could attend their old ward instead, and Elder Holland stern but loving told her, that if she and her husband were to ignore the Lord’s will her sons would not be able to receive the priesthood, nor would they be able to receive mission calls. He told her that it was because of their family’s righteousness that they were not included in their old ward, and that they were needed to set examples to those members who were struggling in the ward they had been joined to.

I have always loved Elder Holland and the way that he teaches. His talks are filled with a passion that only comes when one knows that it is true. When I hear him speak about anything, but in particular the atonement I know that he has experienced it and has applied it in his own life.

Personal Experience contI have never actually met Elder Holland as if I’ve met him through his talks. The talk he gave to the young women in 2010 is one of my favorites. He gives such amazing messages to the youth as well as the whole world, I am grateful for him and for his wonderful example.

What Have I learned?As I have read and studied the life of Elder Holland I found out that I have much more in common with an Apostle of the Lord than I Could have ever imagined. I didn’t know that he majored in English and struggled with his career choice. In some ways our lives are similar. When I came home from my mission, I was desperately seeking to receive the approval of my parents for my career choice. Not only that but I wanted to do something important. I had been impressed several times throughout my life through the spirit and through my professors, who tried to tell me I needed to study literature. I would not listen. I floundered as a business and engineering major, and finally when I was honest with myself I knew that if I wanted to get to where I wanted to go, to law school, I had to major in English studying literature. Since then I have been more successful in my studies than I have ever been. And although Elder Holland took a different direction, I feel comforted in knowing that a man like him has passed through the same worries and doubts that I have had.

I have had my testimony increase as I have studied Elder Holland’s life and his teachings. I know that he is a prophet, seer, and revelator called to bare testimony of the Lord’s teachings and atonement.

Works Cited

• http://www.gapages.com/hollajr1.htm• http://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/w

hat-are-prophets/bio/jeffrey-r-holland?lang=eng

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_R._Holland