Early on Friday morning, Jan. 9, Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the chair of the Missionary Executive Council spoke at a devotional for more than 100 sister missionaries and all the leaders of the Utah Area missions.
During the devotional, the missionaries learned about adjustments that will be made in coming months to the Utah Salt Lake City Temple Square Mission. Some of them reacted with visible emotion.
As the devotional’s concluding speaker, Elder Rasband finished his remarks and had turned to sit down when he stopped and returned to the pulpit.
In that moment after turning to sit down, he felt a prompting.
“One more thing,” he said into the microphone. “I felt to offer you a blessing.”
Then he proceeded to give them an apostolic blessing. He blessed them that Heavenly Father would bless every one of them; that they would deepen their love for the Savior, Jesus Christ, and receive answers to their prayers.
“May God bless you, each one, your families, your loved ones, those you are concerned about — I pray the Lord will bless them too,” he said.
He told the sisters and the mission leaders that the prompting to offer that blessing had come from heaven.
“I had not planned on it, but Heavenly Father wanted you to have a blessing,” he said. “And I pray that that blessing will seep deep into your heart and you will know that it is from heaven.”
While I was on a previous assignment, I saw another moment when Elder Rasband acted upon a prompting. Six months after deadly and destructive wildfires in Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui, Elder Rasband spoke in a Kahului Hawaii West Stake conference.
Among his remarks to them was the counsel to seek priesthood blessings and ask for them more often. He called upon men holding the priesthood to use that power to bless others.
Later, he told me he hadn’t planned on that invitation until the moment he gave it. It came to him from the Spirit to give to the people who needed to hear it.
Before he was the President of the Church or even an Apostle, President Dallin H. Oaks — then a Utah Supreme Court justice — gave a talk at Brigham Young University in 1981 titled “Revelation,” where he explained that one of the purposes the Spirit communicates is to inform.
“This may consist of inspiration giving a person the words to speak on a particular occasion, such as in the blessings pronounced by a patriarch or in sermons or other words spoken under the influence of the Holy Ghost,” President Oaks said. “The Lord commanded Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon to lift up their voices and speak the thoughts that he would put in their hearts, ‘For it shall be given you in the very hour, yea, in the very moment, what ye shall say (Doctrine and Covenants 100:6).’”
During Church News assignments around the world, I have witnessed times when apostles have paused and then continued to speak, sometimes explaining that they felt impressed to say what they were then going to share.
Meanwhile, apostles often conclude their remarks with an apostolic blessing upon those in the congregation. Apostles also always testify. I have felt myself sit up straighter, lean forward and listen more closely when I hear the words “I pray,” “I invite,” “I bless,” “I testify,” “I know.”
As apostles and prophets speak to us through the power of the Holy Ghost, we can listen through the power of the Holy Ghost as well. President Oaks also taught in that same 1981 BYU address that the Spirit communicates for such purposes as to testify, to prophesy, to comfort, to uplift, to restrain, to confirm and to impel.
“Communication from God to men and women is a reality,” President Oaks said.
For the sister missionaries at the devotional on Temple Square, the Latter-day Saints on Maui and all of us when apostles and prophets speak, the Lord tells us to “give heed” and receive this word “as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith” (Doctrine and Covenants 21:4-5).
The promise that follows in Doctrine and Covenants 21:6 is beautiful and powerful:
“For by doing these things the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory.”
— Mary Richards is a reporter for the Church News.
