"Work. Then when you're finished, work on something else. Work, and work some more."
That's how family and friends describe Elder Val R. Christensen, who was sustained April 4 as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy.Elder Christensen, 62, and his wife, Ruth Ann Wood Christensen, spoke with the Church News about a characteristic they share. "We're workaholics," he said. "But we're that in the right way. We think that working is one way to contribute back to the Lord what He has so generously given to us."
Currently president of the Arizona Phoenix Mission, Elder Christensen said his penchant for work began early in life, more out of necessity than desire.
"My father passed away when I was a small boy, about 6," he said. "My mother wanted to keep the farm going. I had two older brothers, an older sister and a younger brother. My older brothers were in their teens when our father died. They weren't old enough to have too much experience with farm work, but in some way or another we kept the farm. Early on I began to take care of the animals, help run the farm and took on a lot of responsibility. About the only thing I ever learned how to do was to work. Probably one of the big detriments in my life is that I didn't learn how to participate in recreation. I didn't have anyone to teach me how to fish or hunt.
"I don't remember going on any vacations as such, or taking trips with the family. Most of the time we were tied to the farm because of the cows, which had to be milked every day. I think the missionaries
over whom he presidesT can't quite understand the fact that all I want to do is work, and why I keep telling them to just work.
"I had responsibility in helping provide some of the resources for the family, through the little money that we got from the milk check and some of the crops that we raised. As I grew up, I farmed myself out to some of the other farmers. I maintained my own needs almost entirely just by working on other people's farms. Some of these were very fine examples to me in industry, work and organization."
But no matter how fine an example neighboring farmers set, Elder Christensen said his greatest role model was his mother. "She had gone to college for two years, right after she got out of high school. After my father died, she taught at the elementary school I attended. (At that time, it was not unusual for teachers to have had only two years of college.) She took one class at a time until, at age 57, she graduated from college - at about the same time I graduated. It was a fun thing to watch her go forward for her degree, even though it took her so many years to do it."
Work brought Elder and Sister Christensen together as young adults. Sister Christensen grew up in Clearfield, Utah, where her grandfather, Albert T. Smith, owned a canning factory. "My father (Melvin Wood) was the manager of the factory and Val's uncle (Ivan Christensen) was the field man," Sister Christensen said. "One summer, Ivan brought him to work at the canning factory."
Elder Christensen continued the account of how they met: "She was the boss's daughter. It was a `she lived in the big house and I was a poor farm boy' story. I didn't bother her for well over a year. She dated other young men I knew. I wouldn't even think of asking her out until six weeks before my mission. I was still working there just to get a little extra money. I asked her to go out.
"She didn't know me that well but, thank goodness, during those six weeks she saw something in me. She kind of pledged to stay in touch. For two years we wrote back and forth. After I came home from the Western Canadian Mission, we continued to date for almost a year before we were married in the Salt Lake Temple, Aug. 15, 1958."
At the time they married, he was a student at Utah State University. "Neither one of us had a job. Neither one of us knew what we were going to do," Sister Christensen said. "He knew that he was going to go to school. My grandfather had a canning factory in Brigham City. We got a place to live in Logan. While I was trying to find a job to help us through school, he worked at the canning factory in Brigham City at night. He would drive back and forth (a distance of 35 miles each way), work at the factory and then come home and sleep some during the day. I was hunting all over trying to find a job so he could go to school, because we couldn't both go then. One of us had to work. Then my mother passed away, about nine months after we married. I was the youngest in a family of six girls. We moved home to be with my father, so Val drove from Logan to Clearfield (about 65 miles) every day after school. I stayed with my father until Val finished his master's degree. Then six weeks later, he went into the service. By that time we had our second child."
Elder and Sister Christensen have reared two sons and three daughters. He worked about 30 years for Utah State University, retiring as vice president for student services before he was called in 1996 as a mission president.
He was comfortable assuming leadership of missionaries. Most of his career had been spent working with college-age young men and women - young people of missionary age. "I've always had a lot of trust for that age of young people," he said. "I have a lot of empathy for them. I just think if you trust people and tell them that you have confidence in them, they tend to perform at whatever level you expect."
Countless young people have been influenced by and made an impression upon Elder Christensen. "I knew a couple of young men who are now members of the Seventy when they were students at Utah State, Elder Neil L. Andersen and Elder Lynn G. Robbins. I recruited Craig Jessop, now associate director of the Tabernacle Choir, to join a group of students entertaining U.S. troops in Asia in 1968. He hadn't even enrolled in college at that point. Doug Brenchley, who directed the choir of returned missionaries at the last general conference, was also in that same group of students that I helped early on in their college career."
Because of the successes he has seen in other groups of young adults, Elder Christensen professes confidence in those of today. "I can stand in a zone conference, or sit in interviews with missionaries, and feel overcome by the Spirit and have the thought that I know that these young people are far ahead of where my peers and I were at their age. Indeed, they are going to carry such a major role in the Church. I constantly have a focus on what I can do to encourage each one of them individually to catch a vision for their life, what they can be, and how important it is for their mission to be a defining moment, and to be very successful, to not waste away any time they might have for studying the gospel and preaching it to the people.
"I think of all the things we have learned in our mission is this great appreciation for who we have coming behind us. We also have a vision for the problems they are going to face, which frightens us, but we know they are equal to the task. The Lord has really provided a great new generation of leaders who will carry this Church further than we ever thought it could go."
Additional Information
Elder Val R. Christensen
Family: Born Sept. 27, 1935, in Hooper, Utah, to Leonard and Jennie Lowe Rigby Christensen. Married Ruth Ann Wood Aug. 15, 1958, in the Salt Lake Temple. Two sons and three daughters - Kent W., L. Bruce, Valerie C. Olsen, Koralie C. Smith and Sheryln C. Doyle; 16 grandchildren.
Education: Bachelor's and master's degrees from Utah State University in English and secondary school administration; doctorate in higher education administration from Michigan State University.
Military service: U.S. Army, 1960-64, captain.
Employment: Retired vice president for student services, Utah State University, 1980-1996; formerly administrator at USU; employed by BYU continuing education program; and high school English teacher.
Church service: President of Arizona Phoenix Mission, July 1996-present; former regional representative, stake president, counselor to stake president, bishop, counselor in two bishoprics, member of two stake high councils, and missionary in Western Canada from 1955-1957.
