March 2012 Ensign - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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LEFT: PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF LDS CHURCH ARCHIVES; RIGHT: PHOTOGRAPHS BY TOM SMART, STUART JOHNSON, AND GERRY AVANT, COURTESY OF DESERET NEWS; GENERAL CONFERENCE PHOTOGRAPH BY CRAIG DIMOND
Have I Done Any Good in the World Today? LIFE EXPERIENCES OF PRESIDENT THOMAS S. MONSON By Heidi S. Swinton I was serving with my husband, then the president of the England London South Mission, when the phone rang on June 18, 2008. It was President Thomas S. Monson. He began in his usual friendly fashion, one of the trademarks of his ministry: “How is the mission? How is your family? How is jolly old England?” And then he paused and said, “I have been talking with Frances, I have prayed about it, and I would like you to write my biography.” Needless to say, I was honored and immediately overwhelmed. He then suggested that if I got started the next morning, I could be halfway done by the time we came home. We had one year left of our three-year call. President Monson teaches, “Whom the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies.” 1 I have come to appreciate that promise. How do you write about the life of a prophet? You begin not at the keyboard but on your knees. I recognized early that this would not be a typical biography outlining dates, times, places, and travels. It was the account of a man prepared before the world was and called of God “to guide us in these latter days.” 2 Humbling is the best description. Daunting, challenging, and consuming follow close behind. The Lord has said, “Whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same” (D&C 1:38). Hearing the Lord speak through His prophet since Thomas S. Monson’s call to the holy apostleship in 1963 is where I began. I spent months reading the hundreds of messages President Monson has given in myriads of settings. I read biographies of all the Presidents of the Church and of many noted religious leaders. I studied the early Church in Scotland, Sweden, and England, where President Monson’s ancestors hail from; the Depression that so influenced his youth; and World War II and its aftermath with a divided Germany. (President Monson spent 20 years supervising this area of the Left: President Monson— then Elder Monson—on the steps of the Church Administration Building in 1967. Above, from top: In his office in 2011; with Elder M. Russell Ballard at the groundbreaking of the Joseph F. Smith Building at Brigham Young University in 2002; at the Laie Hawaii Temple rededication in 2010; with his wife, Frances, following the April 2008 general conference. March 2012 35
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March 2012 Ensign - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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