Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and his wife, Sister Patricia T. Holland, have dedicated their lives to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In this final episode of a two-part series, they continue their conversation with guest host Sister Sheri Dew. The interview was recorded just before the world celebrated Easter, prompting them to talk about what it means to be disciples of Jesus Christ and remember the miracle of Easter every day.
Listen to Part 1 — Episode 84: Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and Sister Patricia Holland discuss service, health, faith and devotion to Jesus Christ
Elder Holland has served as a general authority since April 1989 and is a former president of BYU. Sister Holland served as a counselor in the Young Women general presidency. Sister Dew is a former member of the Relief Society general presidency and the executive vice president of Deseret Management Corp.
This interview offers a glimpse into the Hollands’ testimony, leadership and service — during the Easter season and every day of the year.
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Transcript
Elder Jeffery R. Holland: Did you ever braid a maypole when you were a little kid? We always braided a maypole. If the maypole is the gospel, then everything else weaves around and becomes part of that configuration. But if the maypole is something else — if it’s wealth, if it’s social standing, think of all the things that can be the most important thing you write, if that’s what you are braiding to, however honorable that is, we are going to end up in trouble because some of our colors are not going to work. I can only braid the gospel maypole. We’re going to love each other and keep the commandments and then we’ll make everything else fit. And then the strands of that little beautiful little pole can work.
Sarah Jane Weaver: I’m Sarah Jane Weaver, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. We are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and his wife, Sister Patricia Terry Holland, have dedicated their lives to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In this special episode of the Church News podcast, part two of a special two-part series, they continue their conversation with Sister Sheri Dew. The interview was taped just before the world celebrated Easter. They teach us what it means to be disciples of Jesus Christ and remember the miracle of Easter every day of the year.
Elder Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has served as a general authority since April 1989 and is the former president of BYU. Sister Holland served as a counselor in the Young Women general presidency. They are joined today by guest host Sister Sheri Dew, a former member of the Relief Society general presidency and the executive vice president of Deseret Management Corporation.
Through this incredible interview, we all get to glimpse the Hollands’ testimony, their leadership, their service and how they have made a difference for Latter-day Saints and others across the globe.
2:25
Sheri Dew: Let’s switch notes here for just a second or switch topics, if we could. I want to go back, maybe exercise of personal privilege here for a moment and say: in some ways, I feel like I’ve grown up following both of you, your teachings. And as a young stake Relief Society president, latched on to a statement from Sister Patricia Holland. And the statement was, if I can do justice to it: “If I were Satan and wanted to destroy a society, I would stage a full-blown blitz on women.” That caught my attention several decades ago when I first heard it, and it’s run through my mind hundreds and hundreds of times because of what I think is profoundly true about that statement. Now, since you gave that statement in what I think was the early ’80s, a lot of things have changed for women. I think we see those challenges manifest among us. I would just love for you to comment — both of you, if you would, about sisters in the Church, the importance of sisters in the Church, and the reality of why would the adversary be interested in targeting women?
Sister Patricia T. Holland: Well, the reality to me is that if you can target a woman and get her thrown off being centered in Christ, someone who’s just hatched to the world, or the children come last and the children know that, and it’s just that, primarily. And then, we have the same challenges now that we always had. They’re just deeper, they’re darker. They’re more inflamed, so to speak. I remember with young women, we worried about the same things: that they would be tempted to stay out of the home, that they would be more interested in clothing, hair, makeup, and all the things of the world, tangible things like new cars, new house, whatever. But I believe that it’s time with children, time to listen and hear and feel, and a mother can do that in a way nobody else can do. And I felt that deeply, deeply, truly, and the same goes for women today. Those are the, still, basically the same challenges. Certainly, women want to do as well as men, and that’s great. That’s wonderful. And I think they do that in the Church, they have an opportunity. It’s just when you’re enticed to have it be part of your pride, part of position, part of place. If women could just see in terms of what the Lord sees, the role of women is incredible. Whatever she’s doing, she’s going to be a mother. Wherever she is in life. She’s a woman, and she’ll always feel like a mother and she can mother, and so if they’re focused on what they can give, rather than what they can get, those who have more time can spend their time mothering. It’s a nurturing kind of thing, teaching the gospel, and that’s basically the most powerful thing you can do. If you spent five minutes in prayer in the morning, it paid such big dividends in the day, because it changes the way you seek. God has the ability to do that. He gives us intuition when we invite Him. He just does. There’s a vibration that goes on, that’s just real, and you’re blessed beyond what you can imagine if you believe; and the more time you spend with God, the more you believe, the deeper you believe, the more you know Him as a God of love. He’s a God of happiness, he’s a God of, “I’ll do anything to help you, I’m a God of forgiveness. I’m a God of patience. As you develop, My arm will be around you all the time.”
4:06
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: When I was a junior member of the Quorum of the Twelve in an auditorium setting, some training setting we were in — must have been around general conference — but I think it was nearly my first first or second year or conference in the Twelve. And President [Boyd K.] Packer, who was the president of the Quorum, said, “I want the Twelve to stand up.” We were in the Joseph Smith Memorial [Building] in a training setting, and so we stood up, not exactly sure what he wanted from senior to junior as we do all things. And he got emotional and said, “Behold the Twelve.” And then some of us got emotional, too. I certainly was feeling out of my element, in the wrong company: “One of these things is not like the other 11.” But then he said something I’ve never forgotten: he said, “They had the most widely varied, different, even difficult set of fathers; but in every case, they had an angelic mother.” And actually, that was all true. We had everybody from [Elder L.] Tom Perry’s dad, who was his bishop and stake president all of his life, down to some of our other dads who weren’t either active or even members. You had that spread of fathers — I’m not minimizing fathers, I’ve given lots of speeches about what fathers are supposed to be — but in this case, it was a lesson about mothers and he said, “Regardless of whatever else was unusual, man for man, all the way down that line, they had angelic mothers,” is the phrase that he used. And so, that’s still true. And as Pat said, mothering, both of you have taught, mothering with a capital ‘M’ isn’t limited to your own children. It’s something instinctive, it’s something about what a woman is, it’s something about what Eve was. And the crowning virtue, the crowning achievement of the Creation sequence is the creation of a woman. It was nice to divide the land from the sea, it was nice to divide the fish and the fowl, but even when we get to Adam, the next thing we hear is he’s trying to name some animals. And so, they weren’t his best friend, dogs or otherwise, he needed a real companion, a help meet for him, two different words. And so, Eve is this ultimate creation: a woman. And that’s still true in homes. It’s still true in society. It’s just an eternal principle, and that’s not to be sexist, even in an unintended way, even in a cultural way, it’s doctrine, it’s theology.
Sheri Dew: So you’ve been around the world a zillion times, and been in — is it hundreds or thousands of meetings? What impact have you seen women have in the Church?
Sister Patricia T. Holland: I think it’s the very thing that my husband’s talking about. I’ve said that it’s not a headcount of our children. We don’t measure ourselves by that. But Eve’s, it’s a statement about our nature, and if I could do anything, I’d have all women girdle the world with their mothering natures. And I think we’d be, actually, when we’re all finished, we’re going to say, the most important thing, really, that we need to do, learn, know, teach, is love. A woman that could do that so beautifully, the Spirit comes so quickly.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: And that mothering doesn’t mean googoo with Junior, and here in swaddling clothes — it can mean that, it does mean that, but it is this other, it’s how they teach. It’s what they feel, it’s how they testify, and that can be for whole congregations. I’ve seen her mother, as it were, a whole congregation. And if I could have my way — I’ve done this for 33 and a half years now — if I could have my way, after a teaching session, stake conference, leadership training meeting, Saturday night meeting for adults, you name it — if I could have my way, every time, every time after I am through speaking and the meeting is to close, I would wish that a woman was giving the prayer. That doesn’t mean that men can’t pray. I’ve heard wonderful male prayers. I don’t want to keep qualifying these things and I don’t want somebody to run away with this culturally or in society. I’m just talking doctrine and spirit and theology, and what I feel, and a woman closing a meeting will tell me, every time, every single solitary time, whether it’s worked or not, whether it’s come across the way I had hoped that it would. And I may or may not be able to tell that from a man’s prayer, but I can always tell it, always tell it from a woman.
12:29
Sheri Dew: You’ve both had periods of time in the last decade when you’ve had some real health challenges. What have you learned from those?
Sister Patricia T. Holland: Well, I don’t think faith is faith until that’s all you have to hang on to. And we were both in our different kinds of illnesses, we were both driven to the point where it was life and death, and so faith was the only thing we had to hold on to — not just your faith, but the faith of your children, your husband, your friends, everybody can join in their faith and everybody gets to have these miraculous things. They have the privilege of seeing them and they have the grand intuition to add to that in every way. I have felt like everything I’ve done that’s been a challenge has driven me closer and closer to the Lord, everything. And I don’t think you could have dark days without having light, or light without having dark. We need both of them so they can inspire each other, or light can’t be light if it’s too dark, if there’s nothing there to lean on to. God always provides another day. It’s always going to be another day and that kind of hope carries you in every way. That was just a refined microcosm with a magnifying glass.
Sheri Dew: In a short period of time, relatively.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: I’m a living witness. I’m exhibit A of what it means for the members of the Church to pray for the Brethren. Now, kids grow up in homes, homes are built around family prayer. Senior citizens, from day one, have all prayed for the Brethren. They may use a slightly different language. I’m sure they always pray for the President of the Church; but pretty often, if they’ll pray for the President of the Church, they’ll throw the Quorum of the Twelve in with that, and I’m a witness that her miracle is every bit as great as mine or more. So actually, hers is more so, but I don’t know that the Church knew that she was as ill as she was. They knew I was because they could see it, I was on the stage, so they could pray for me and whether that was a collective prayer for the brethren, or whether it was for Elder Holland who’s somehow got a problem up there we can see. I’ve come back from being told I might never walk again, to a wheelchair, to a walker with legs, to a walker with wheels, to a cane, to nothing. And that involved a lot of physical therapy too, and hard work, but only hard work and therapy that matter because it was in the context of people praying and blessings received, and a family, a wife and children and others praying. That was true for me, and it was true a little bit earlier for her. One more private, the other more public, but same principle: that prayer really works. Priesthood blessings really do count. The Lord is in charge, we all have problems. Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity, just goes on and on. We learned those lessons. And Elder Maxwell said about his illness, that it had given him empathy. I think his phrase was “earned empathy” in a Maxwellian phrase. And I think that’s probably what ours have done for us, to know that real people out there have real problems, and real fears, and they put a smile on and put one foot ahead of the other and get up every day to go face it, but they do so with burdens.
Sister Patricia T. Holland: And you don’t know how it’s going to end. You don’t know what you’ll have to face. It was hard for me to work myself back out of pneumonia. I was so sick. I just said, “Let me go.” So I hardly knew what was going on there. But the hard, arduous work, and the hope and faith you have that because your children have prayed for you and they’ve fasted, and your husband’s prayed for you and fasted, and they all have faith, that gives you the determination to do therapy, to climb stairs. I couldn’t walk up stairs, those stairs when I first got out of the hospital, and it just took a long time to build my lungs up. And I think we learn to appreciate each other.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Yeah.
Sister Patricia T. Holland: Well, we’ve always appreciated each other, but if you get to the point where you think you’re gonna lose something of value, and this is so valuable.
Sheri Dew: The other part of you.
17:36
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Sure, yeah. That’s where you really pray. That’s where there’s no holds barred. Very, very personal experiences where you just put it all on the line for somebody you love, and those are lessons that you learn and realize that other people are out there needing to offer those prayers almost every day to keep going, and just a lot of empathy, a lot of understanding. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been wanting to be fairly public about mine. I haven’t hidden anything. The use of the cane, or the inability to get back and forth to a pulpit. I’ve wanted people to understand that if they’re struggling out there a little bit, we know how you’re doing.
Sheri Dew: Our leaders have struggles too.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Yeah, our leaders have struggles too. And if we knew all of the hurdles that President Nelson had to overcome, or President Oaks or Eyring or go on down the list or any age any time. We’ve watched the Brethren grow old, we’ve watched them face issues, and their wives and their families, so we’ve been able to teach about that. I sometimes get a little exercise, my pulpit style, I breathe fire on occasion, and I talk about the fact that people when they have a bad day, if the first reaction is, “Well, God doesn’t love me.” I said, “Boy, then you’ve eliminated a lot of people. You’ve just taken a lot of people out of the equation, starting with the people in the scriptures, and maybe most of all, the living Son of the living God.” If He has a bad day, if He has trouble, does that mean God doesn’t love Him? And because that is a tendency, we all say, “Well, where’s God when I need Him?” Or, “Why did I pay all that tithing if it isn’t gonna work out for me?” Well, it’s been a challenge for the best people I’ve ever known, and certainly the best people I’ve ever read about. You learn those, and there’s no easy way to do that. There’s no cheap way to do that.
Sheri Dew: Elder Holland, you have had a, you have amazing gifts of expression. And you’ve had a gift for when you speak and teach with energy and with emotion, we can feel it. That’s part of what we love, we can feel it. But you’ve also had a gift for reaching out and touching so many of us because maybe our life hasn’t turned out exactly like we hoped it would, or there’s mental illness, or you just touched in conference on suicide. You’ve taken on some tough things. And it has seemed clear that you want to touch the soul, touch the heart, help everybody feel that they have a place; and yet on the other side of the equation, a prophet, seer and revelator can’t always say what some people would want them to say.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Sure.
Sheri Dew: Because sometimes you’ve got to teach something that’s just hard to hear. How do you deal with that as a prophet, seer and revelator, charged with teaching truth, and you want to touch every human soul in the most tender way possible?
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Well, you’ve put your finger on among the most difficult things that we do and face, and that is — Paul said, teach the truth with love, and that’s the standard we all carry. We want to teach the truth, but we want to do it right. We want to do it carefully and not give offense where we shouldn’t. But on the other hand, sometimes the truth offends, and that’s no excuse for insensitivity. It’s no excuse for bluntness. And so I — and I guess everybody else, but certainly I need to work hard as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve — at just saying it the best possible way that I could that would not hurt anybody needlessly or intentionally.
But my first obligation is to love God. That’s the first commandment. I have to be honorable with Him and in my relationship with God. And then when I do that, I’m entitled, I’m enabled, I’m magnified in order to love my neighbor and help my neighborhood, but it’s got to be in that order, that the two should go together. They’re not incompatible, but it is in that order.
Let me read a verse. I hadn’t been in the Quorum of the Twelve very long until I read this verse, and thought, “Well, that’s sobering.” “These things I command you that ye love one another.” That’s what we’re saying here. “If the world hate you” — that doesn’t quite seem like the right word to follow that, what we just read. Let me get this straight: I’m gonna love everybody and they’re gonna hate me. “If the world hate you, know that it hated me before it hated you.” This is the Savior. And if we were — it was this night. It was Thursday night of this week, that this is said. He is at the Last Supper.
Sheri Dew: Because tomorrow’s Good Friday.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Yeah, it was this very hour, excuse the emotion. “If the world hate you, know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you. But because you’re not of the world, and I’ve chosen you out of the world, the world hateth you. They shall put you out of the synagogue. Yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think he doeth God’s service.” Well, we’re not going to be killed, at least haven’t yet. But that’s sobering to say, “I’m gonna try my hardest to love you and to say what God wants me to say, who’s love Himself, who is love personified.” And we’re going to try to make people happy because happiness is in the commandments. “If you love me, keep my commandments.” We’re going to try to give everybody everything we’ve got as this key to happiness and success and warmth, and the response is, “I hate you, and if I kill you, I’m doing God’s service.” Now that may sound extreme, but those aren’t my words. I didn’t cook that up. I just read that in this book here. And you know the Sermon on the Mount, that “Blessed are ye if you’re persecuted for my namesake,” and those are the peacemakers. Those are the ones who inherit eternal life. But it doesn’t sound fun to be persecuted for anybody’s sake, but we do it for His sake and do it for His name because that’s what we’re called to do.
25:26
Here’s a very poor analogy. Did you ever braid a maypole when you were a little kid? We always braided the maypole every May 1 in the elementary school, we braided the maypole. And if the maypole is the gospel, then everything else weaves around and becomes part of that configuration. But if the maypole is something else, then prophets, seers, and revelators have trouble. If it’s gender, if that’s the maypole, then everything has to fit that; or if it’s ethnic identity, if that’s the maypole, and that’s first identity; or if it’s material wealth, if it’s social standing — think of all the things that can be the most important thing you write. If that’s what you’re braiding to, then we have trouble because some of our colors aren’t going to work. Some of them aren’t going to fit with what you want. I can only braid the gospel maypole, and then gender and ethnicity and wealth and social standing and politics and whatever have to have to fit there. That’s what I’m called to do. I don’t have any choice. And, even politics, something we’ve seen in recent years: wards divided, fist-fighting over — figuratively or literally — over political matters. Elders quorums unwilling to speak to each other.
Sheri Dew: Over masks and vaccines.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Yeah, over vaccines, over — pick a topic. But if the maypole is my political loyalty, or my health code, however honorable that is, we’re going to end up in trouble. It can only be the gospel. We’re going to love each other and keep the commandments, and then we’ll make politics and society and ethnicity and everything else fit. And God’s designed it that that’s going to be the perfect pole. But our job is to convince people that, have them understand that. And everybody wants to be liked, everybody wants to be popular, popular in the sense of the nice fellow, the neighborly sort. But if a choice has to be made, for me and my house, we’ll have to stand by the coal. It’s been given to us to speak the truth and stay with what’s my first identity: my first identity is love of God and love of the Savior of the world, and love of neighbor in that order. And then the strands of that little beautiful little pole can work. It’s hard.
Sheri Dew: So let’s take that — and we could talk to you forever — let’s build off what you just said, Elder Holland. And we are having this conversation on the Thursday before Good Friday, which means Easter is on Sunday; and in this season of the year, this time of year, I’d love to have both of you conclude, if you would, by commenting on something I think goes hand in hand. And the first is: it seems to be harder and harder in the world today for people to know where to turn for truth because there are so many voices, and yet we do believe that we know where to turn for truth. And I’d love to have you comment on that if you would, and bear your testimonies about what you know is true. Sister Holland, do you want to begin?
Sister Patricia T. Holland: It is true, the challenges of the world are greater than they’ve ever been, and they look like they’re going to be challenging evermore. And so just to be able to know that this is not our home, this is only temporary. We’re trying to live so that we can live in the presence of God, and perhaps the only way we get the Garden of Eden on this earth is when everybody loves each other, loves God, and then it will be a Garden of Eden. And I have such a testimony that there isn’t any person closer to you than your Father in Heaven, and He sent His Son so that we could see what He’s like. “If you know me, you know your Father,” is what the Savior said, and so He is our mediator with the Father and the Father with Him. There are so many scriptures about, “If you’ll be in me, I’ll be in you and we can be all one together.” It’s the only way we know possibly to live. And the older we get, the longer I live, the more I experiment on things, like something in the scriptures that I haven’t really thought about too much. The more I think about things like that, if I have lived with in the past, it’s always, always come back that people — that blessings that come from that gospel principle, from the Savior of the world, if we’re in New Testament, the Old Testament, God is through it all. We’re the most blessed people on the earth. It’s amazing to me how blessed we are, and people can’t see that. They just want to be part of it. And they will, someday. Someday, the world will be dark enough that they will flock.
31:18
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Well, you mentioned Easter. We’re on the Eve of Passover. As it were, reading the very hour the Savior would be introducing the sacrament to the Twelve. And one of the miracles for me — sort of in the context of all that we’ve been talking about here — is with all that lay ahead of Him, and He, I’m convinced that He knew that intellectually (I am not sure He knew emotionally, I don’t think, that mortal part still had to come along) the suffering that lay ahead, whatever it means to have blood from every pore, and to cry out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? I knew everybody else would run.” But to be absolutely alone, or to think He was alone. He was allowed to think He was alone. With all of that coming, and all of that just ahead, He can say, “Peace, I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. These things I have spoken unto you: that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. Be of good cheer,” I mean — be of good cheer with all of that. It makes our little problems seem pretty, pretty little, pretty insignificant, when you think of that call to be cheerful, to be peaceful, to see it through, to face whatever is going to be faced and to have a happy ending.
Sheri and Sarah, this is the Church of the happy endings. This is peace and cheer and good tidings. This is the good news, and that has been our privilege. We’ve had the chance to spend our lives doing the most important thing in life. Now, not many people get to say that, and a lot of honorable, wonderful people have had to do a lot of difficult challenges. Sometimes kind of menial work, sometimes just kind of everyday work, whatever, and it’s all honorable, but we’ve had the chance to do the most important thing in the world, with the most important and the most bountiful blessings, as Pat has just mentioned, that come from it, and that is to teach that Jesus is the Christ. And in this, in our case, that those truths, that peace, that cheer, that promise, that hope has all been restored. Starting with a 14-year-old boy who comes out of a grove of trees just realizing that soon enough, he’s got to save all the living and all the dead who ever walked the earth. Not bad for a teenage boy. And all of that now to this, and at Easter, and I hope we do a little bit more with Easter. I hope we’re a little more conscious of Easter as a result of that doctrine, that truth.
People ask — I’ll close with this. People ask why we don’t do more with the cross, and we do a lot with the cross. We don’t do as much as some Protestant groups do and others, but we talk about the cross and Christ speaks of being lifted up in 3 Nephi, and lifting men and women and children up to be with Him. So we have the doctrine of the cross, but there’s another aspect where we really are in the forefront, I think, or ought to be and want to be, and that is the cross that He said we would take up, to “take up your cross and follow me.” Whether that’s illness, we’ve talked about health here; whether it’s poverty, I hope we could get everybody out of poverty; whether it’s mental illness, we’ve talked about that; whether it’s social, and ethnic, and racial tensions, we have plenty of that in the world. Whatever these things are, if we’ll — burdens that they are and heavy as they may be — if we’ll take up that cross in Christ and follow Him, we can solve those, we can resolve those. We can resolve poverty, we can resolve racial tension, we can find the answers to mental illness and at least alleviate it greatly and on and on and on. If we will just take that cross that we’re so burdened by and wish it weren’t there, if we just hoist that onto our backs, on our shoulders, and march toward the sunlight, we can solve all these problems. The gospel, whatever the question, whatever the question, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer. And that’s what we’ve had the chance to try to say and declare and represent, and we want to do it better than we have. But we’d love the chance to try.
36:57
Sheri Dew: Elder and Sister Holland, thank you. I don’t even know how to thank you. You’ve blessed us. You’ve blessed us with this. Thank you.
Sarah Jane Weaver: You have been listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News Editor Sarah Jane Weaver. I hope you have learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by peering with me through the Church News window. Please remember to subscribe to this podcast. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please make sure you share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests, to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen, and others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channel or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com.