Since the Dec. 27 death of President Jeffrey R. Holland, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, I’ve listened to family, friends and fellow Latter-day Saints speak fondly of his impactful messages.
My eldest son texted a memory of crowding with other missionaries around a small screen in the Ukraine Donetsk Mission office watching then-Elder Holland’s “Grandeur of God” address in October 2003 general conference — “and then everyone cheering and giving high fives after he said ‘amen.’”
The youngest son recalled the “Remember Lot’s Wife: Faith Is for the Future” address at a Jan. 13, 2009, devotional at Brigham Young University — where President Holland was president from 1980 to 1989 — as “a favorite and one I return to often, especially ahead of each new year.”
Others have mentioned the statement made of President Holland by President James E. Faust, the late First Presidency counselor: “He has the marvelous capacity to make people feel like they are his very best friends.”
My interactions with President Holland date back more than four decades — first as an editor at BYU’s student newspaper, then as a Deseret News reporter covering university events and issues and regularly conducting interviews in his office. His first-of-semester devotionals with his wife, Sister Patricia Holland, ranged from humorous, self-described “Pat and Jeff Show” dialogues to powerful discourses like “Chastity: Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments,” delivered in January 1988.
The professional assignments continued with the Deseret News and Church News, such as covering President Holland speaking to 2,000-plus young men in a hillside sacrament meeting at the 2017 National Scout Jamboree or in his beloved hometown of St. George, Utah, as he rededicated the St. George Tabernacle, broke ground with Sister Holland for the Red Cliffs Utah Temple and returned for the internment of his dear wife after her July 2023 passing.
Other ecclesiastical and personal interactions came with my service as a stake president and mission president. President Holland came to reorganize our stake presidency in 2008 and gave stake conference messages that I’ve heard stake members refer to and quote, even up to this year.
President Holland’s discourse “Missionary Work and the Atonement” at the 2000 Seminar for New Mission Leaders was a powerful, pivotal message for my wife and I — and our missionaries — as we presided over the Arizona Phoenix Mission (2011-2014). It has been moving and meaningful for missionaries worldwide in the quarter century since it was given, with the entire discourse as well as text, audio and video excerpts available online. Here is a selection of his message:
“I am convinced that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation never was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him? It seems to me that missionaries and mission leaders have to spend at least a few moments in Gethsemane. Missionaries and mission leaders have to take at least a step or two toward the summit of Calvary.
“Now, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about anything anywhere near what Christ experienced. That would be presumptuous and sacrilegious. But I believe that missionaries and investigators, to come to the truth, to come to salvation, to know something of this price that has been paid, will have to pay a token of that same price.
“For that reason, I don’t believe missionary work has ever been easy, nor that conversion is, nor that retention is, nor that continued faithfulness is. I believe it is supposed to require some effort, something from the depths of our soul.
“If He could come forward in the night, kneel down, fall on His face, bleed from every pore, and cry, ‘Abba, Father (Papa), if this cup can pass, let it pass,’ then little wonder that salvation is not a whimsical or easy thing for us. If you wonder if there isn’t an easier way, you should remember you are not the first one to ask that. Someone a lot greater and a lot grander asked a long time ago if there wasn’t an easier way.
“The Atonement will carry the missionaries perhaps even more importantly than it will carry the investigators. When you struggle, when you are rejected, when you are spit upon and cast out and made a hiss and a byword, you are standing with the best life this world has ever known, the only pure and perfect life ever lived. You have reason to stand tall and be grateful that the Living Son of the Living God knows all about your sorrows and afflictions.
“The only way to salvation is through Gethsemane and on to Calvary. The only way to eternity is through Him — the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
What is your favorite, memorable, motivational, inspirational message from President Holland?
— Scott Taylor is managing editor of the Church News
