History will be made in the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, as President Russell M. Nelson turns 100 years old. He will be the first prophet of the Church’s restored era to become a centenarian.
President Nelson was set apart as the 17th President of the Church on Jan. 14, 2018, after serving 34 years in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Before 1984, when he entered full-time Church service, President Nelson was a world-renowned heart surgeon, medical researcher and, most importantly, a husband and father.
On this episode of the Church News podcast, learn more about President Nelson’s century of service with those who have known him personally. They offer perspective on his life, his career, his ministry and his family.
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Transcript:
President Camille N. Johnson: I’ve had the opportunity to look into the eyes of our Prophet, who I know to be the Lord’s mouthpiece on the earth today, and feel the love of my Savior through him. All of us have an opportunity to have that experience as we listen to and study his words. It sets my resolve more firmly on the covenant path. I think celestial. I think I’m a better peacemaker. When I listen to President Nelson’s words each morning, it stills me for the challenges of the day. And so I invite my brothers and sisters and friends of all faiths to listen to President Nelson, to study his words. I trust that as you do, you will feel the love of our Savior, Jesus Christ. It is clearly one of his primary roles as our Prophet to invite the Savior, Jesus Christ, into our lives as he witnesses of His reality.
1:11
Jon Ryan Jensen: This is Jon Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, 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.
History will be made in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in September 2024 as President Russell M. Nelson turns 100 years old on Sept. 9. He will be the first prophet of the modern Church to become a centenarian.
President Nelson has already made his mark on history when he was set apart as the 17th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Jan. 14, 2018, after serving 34 years in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Before 1984, when he entered full-time Church service, President Nelson was already a world-renowned heart surgeon, medical researcher and, most importantly, a husband and father.
On this episode of the Church News podcast, with help of KSL TV’s Carole Mikita, learn more about President Nelson’s century of service with those who have known him personally. They offer perspective on his life, his career, his ministry and his family.
We start with historian Richard E. Turley Jr., who has worked with and observed President Nelson’s service for decades. While he has already spoken about President Nelson’s life on a previous episode of the Church News podcast, which is linked in this show’s copy, Turley shares about the Prophet’s expansive experience and hopeful vision for the future.
2:36
Richard E. Turley Jr.: President Nelson in his 100 years has seen so much that he’s able to give us perspective. Sometimes, people whose lives are short see an event occur and feel like the sky is falling. And he’s always there to assure us that it’s not, that he’s seen it before, and in fact, he has. He was born in 1924, not long after the flu pandemic, not long after the First World War. And he’s seen the stock market crash in the United States, the Great Depression that affected not only the United States but the world. He’s seen World War II. He’s had a role as a medical doctor in the military. He’s seen the Korean War. And so, yes, he does, his life does give us a considerable amount of perspective.
That’s just, you know, who he is. He has a long vision from the past because of his long life and because of his study of the past. And that gives him a vision of the future, both from his own experience and from his prophetic role. President Nelson has a background that makes him respected by people outside the Church in a way that perhaps they would not if he didn’t have that background, and that has allowed him to extend his reach beyond the membership of the Church. There are people who have known him, who still remember him and who listen to his messages who are not members of the Church.
3:58
Jon Ryan Jensen: President Nelson is not only respected as a world leader but as a family man. As of this recording, he has 10 children, 57 grandchildren, 167 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. President Nelson’s oldest grandchild, Nathan McKellar, and his wife, Emily, talked about President Nelson’s welcoming nature and some of their observed lessons on how he balances his career, family and gospel life.
4:25
Nathan McKellar: There are a lot of lessons. I’m in a little bit of a unique situation in that I’m the oldest grandchild, and I’m the same age as his youngest child. And we grew up about a mile away, so there were many days when I was under his watchful eye, almost as a son, in some regards. But I think if I have to think of something that’s going to stay with me forever, it’s that family comes first. He and my grandmother have always been able to make me feel like I was the most important person in the world. And I have a hunch if you asked every one of my cousins, they’d tell you they’re his favorite, just like I’m his favorite. Whether it was when we lived far away during our training, establishing life, he was always, always reaching out. I would sometimes get an email with a picture of the monthly family birthday cake, saying, “We noticed your name on the cake and that you weren’t here. I hope you’re having a happy birthday month,” or something like that. And just those little details that meant so much to me, that the family is first in his mind.
5:25
Emily McKellar: Yeah, the first time that I met President Nelson, it was at their family home in Midway. And, of course, I was kind of nervous and kind of scared, thinking, “Oh, I’m going to meet this person that I’ve only seen on TV.” And I remember the first moment I saw him. He was in the kitchen, swatting flies, and he was wearing a plaid shirt and just, you know, trying to keep the place nice and welcoming everyone. And I just thought, “He’s not wearing a suit.” But just to see his interaction and his ease with his family and the love, I mean, he was just so happy to be gathering with everybody in the family. And, you know, as each person would come in, he would greet them with a hug and a kiss and by name. Absolutely amazing how he can remember all of those names, not just of family members, but people that he’s met just once or twice in his life, just to make them each feel so seen and so important, I think, is such a gift. And he just welcomed me right into the family. I was just part of the family right away, and I just really loved that.
6:26
Nathan McKellar: Yeah. I remember as a teenager having the opportunity to have little firesides with our group of friends with him. We’d just go over to the Nelson home, and he would just sit down with our friends and give us little life lessons. And that was one of those. He always envisioned life as, balance in life, as kind of like an airplane, where you have one wing, and that is your family and your responsibilities there; and the other wing might be your professional life; but that it’s the gospel of Jesus Christ is the fuselage that keeps things in balance on both ends. And I think his whole life is a sermon on how the gospel of Jesus Christ has helped him find that balance in his life, family life as well as professional life.
7:07
Jon Ryan Jensen: That focus on the gospel of Jesus Christ has been evident in President Nelson’s Church service from the start. Nathan gives some further insight into what it has been like to observe his grandfather not just as a patriarch, but as a general authority, Apostle and now head of the restored Church. Nathan and his wife, Emily, share some of their favorite invitations from the centenarian Prophet.
7:28
Nathan McKellar: He’s been a general authority for a lot of years. I think I was about 12 when he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve, so I didn’t even know what that meant back then. But so I’ve always had the grandfather that’s been Elder Nelson. I actually saw a change when he became the president of the Quorum of the Twelve. I remember thinking that there was just a little more focus suddenly on his messages, and as the mantle fell to him to become the President of the Church, I noticed an increase in not just the urgency but the boldness with which he is inviting us not only to stay on the covenant path but to let us know that we’re going to face some difficult things in the future, but that there’s reason to help. I see a next-level boldness that I don’t remember being quite as aware of when he was in the Quorum of the Twelve. It’s been neat to watch.
8:19
Emily McKellar: And I agree with that. I just see with his invitations that he is inviting us to take more of a part in the gospel and in this gathering of Israel. His messages before were all so wonderful, and I love them, but I love each of these challenges because they don’t seem like something somebody else has to do, something that is impossible. These are small changes that we can make each day, you know, by repenting daily or improving our personal prayer, these things that it makes me feel like I have ownership, and I have a partnership, and I have a part in this work, and it’s not just the full-time missionaries or the leaders of our Church, but I’m part of this, and I have liked that about his leadership.
9:04
Nathan McKellar: Yeah. To me, I mean, there’s a long string of invitations that we’ve been invited to follow, but I love that he does couch them as an invitation. It’s not a “thou shalt.” We’ve got plenty of “thou shalts,” and we know where this is coming from, but that he makes it an invitation to us. I would say that the one that has been the most personal for me is his message about letting God prevail in our lives, because we all face challenges. We all have our hurdles to overcome. We all have setbacks and disappointments and bad outcomes and things like that. But the message that when we can allow our trust to be placed in the Lord, our hope to be placed in the Lord, our love and our efforts to grow His work and His kingdom here, that has been the one that I have clung to the most in those difficult times as well as in the good times.
9:57
Emily McKellar: And I just see that, you know, it doesn’t matter how old he is, he’s always looking forward, you know? I mean, think about these challenges that he’s giving us. And he has never, in his own personal life, stopped learning. You know, learning Chinese, you know, getting a tutor, learning — it just never stops. You can always be progressing. And I think this focus of him turning 100, it’s not on him. It’s: What can you do for the one? There are 99; what can you do for the one? And that’s just always where he is. He’s like, any progress that he wants to make, anything that he wants to do, is to help other people and to help us.
To me, I think when he first talked about gathering Israel, and that was something that I hadn’t really considered much and hadn’t really thought about much, but the way that he put it — and, you know, his quote of, you know, whatever you’re doing in your life, you can be a part of gathering Israel — it just really changed my perspective on my part in the gospel. It’s not something faraway that’s happening. It’s not something subtle. This is part of my work too, and so I’m really grateful for that perspective.
And it seems like everything that he’s inviting us to do is continuing with that gathering. You know, whether it’s my own temple attendance and the covenants that I’ve made or helping my neighbor, or even just cooking a dinner for my family. All of these things can be a way of gathering Israel if we’re remembering that and using these things to bring us closer to God and to be strengthening our covenants. And I love that it can be in just the small ways, and it just gives me that confidence and that ability to feel like I have a part in this, and no matter how small my part is, it is a part in this great work, and I’m really grateful for that perspective.
11:40
Nathan McKellar: Yeah, that’s another one that I’ve thought a lot about. In the early, you know, we didn’t know how much time we would have with him as the President of our Church. He wasn’t a spring chicken when he became the President of the Church. But it seems like in those early first year or two, I think that’s going to be his legacy. It’s going to be to my sisters in Zion (”Sisters’ Participation in the Gathering of Israel”). And then he would give another talk, and I would think, “That’s what his legacy is going to be.”
There are so many legacies that I think he’s going to leave, but if I had to pick one, it would also be the importance of gathering Israel. And the universality of that, not only is gathering Israel what we do in our homes and in our neighborhoods and in our wards, but on the grandest scale, from the book of Genesis to the Pearl of Great Price, that’s the focus in these latter days, that this is the global work of our Heavenly Father and His children, but also that we are a part of that as individuals, families, ward members, on and on.
12:41
Jon Ryan Jensen: While the legacy President Russell M. Nelson has given the world encompasses a vast amount of invitations and revelations, Nathan has embraced that legacy in a different way. Just as his grandfather chose to become a physician, Nathan also chose to become one. He shares a bit about that decision as well as touching experiences they had at Nathan’s graduation ceremony.
13:02
Nathan McKellar: I’m a family physician. When I first started thinking about a career in medicine, back in high school, I had always sort of envisioned myself as a pediatrician. Maybe it’s because I had, you know, 55 younger cousins who I loved to be with at our gatherings and parties. But I ended up choosing a career in family medicine because I love to care for families. I’ve always thought that family is the heart of society, and certainly, I come from a family where I have seen how wonderful it can be. No one had really charted this course for me, but reading about some of my grandfather’s adventures in his early training; of course, I didn’t go through anything like that. I don’t claim to be a pioneer in expanding our knowledge about heart surgery and things, like him. But not only did I look to his example of someone that was a caring, compassionate health provider, but how supportive and enthusiastic he was in my decision.
In fact, one of my favorite memories, I attended a medical school where, at our graduation ceremony, if we had a family member that was a physician, they could come to the commencement and do the hooding ceremony for us. Of course, we didn’t do that here in Utah. I threw an email out a couple months before and said, “More as an FYI; I don’t expect you to be able to do that,” but he rearranged his schedule. He and Grandmother flew out to Erie, Pennsylvania, for a five-second hooding ceremony.
And I also remember sitting in this huge auditorium thinking, “I bet no one has any idea who this is that’s hooding me, that he’s a world-famous pioneer in cardiothoracic surgery.” But I felt like a million dollars, you know, the fact that he would — not only did he change his schedule, but he made other Church assignments happen there. We were living in the Kirtland stake, and he met with some of the Church historians, provided a nice fireside for our friends and our colleagues, and I just — that example of ministry multitasking is another lesson that I’ve learned from my grandfather.
15:08
Jon Ryan Jensen: University of Utah Hospital’s Dr. Craig Selzman, who is the Dr. Russell M. Nelson and Dantzel W. Nelson presidential endowed chair, as well as professor and chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Utah, explains the impact President Nelson had as a doctor on the medical world, the college’s reputation and the importance of the donated documents to the school.
15:29
Craig Selzman: Most people don’t recognize that he was the first person to do heart surgery in the state of Utah, open-heart surgery, meaning using a heart-lung machine to fix a hole in a kid. Like, that was such a bold thing to think about. Like, it’s not that long ago in, like, geologic time, but in medical time, there’s been so much that what he did, which was so bold, so ambitious, so crazy. So there’s so many things that he means to us as cardiac surgeons. And for Utah, you know.
And an amazing thing about is that whenever you start talking about, like, health care with him, he gets a little twinkle in his eye. So when he told the university and said that, hey, he wanted this to come to the University of Utah library, I was like, “Absolutely.” And it’s really neat; we’re invited to go to the vault of the University of Utah. And the University of Utah, it kind of has, like, a Da Vinci Code kind of feel to it, like you were going into the Vatican and you were going to, like, see some original text of something. But indeed, there are some really, in this airtight chamber, stuff from the 14th century and the 15th century, some of the original medical literature. And right next to it all is Dr Nelson’s operative notes.
So he’s being held in the same level as Archimedes and, you know, all these historical, Descartes, all these medical philosophers and people that are historical in health sciences, right there. And I think that’s one of the lessons that we all take away with someone like Dr. Nelson, is that he was a superb surgeon physician but also just a really good dude.
17:29
Jon Ryan Jensen: President Nelson’s century of service has been observed by millions around the world. His words have inspired change and spread Christlike love. His ministry has multiplied temples and helped members focus on a Christ-centered, home-supported gospel. He has helped the restored Church of Jesus Christ reach out globally and digitally like never before, tapping into technologies and resources beyond perception decades before. President Nelson has pioneered educational, medical, humanitarian and civil rights efforts, encouraging peacemaking in a world of conflict.
President Camille N. Johnson, the Relief Society general president, has had a unique viewpoint of these observations, first having served as Primary general president through to her current calling. President Johnson gives our last word on today’s Church News podcast episode celebrating President Nelson’s 100 years of life, sharing her testimony with the President’s prophetic call and his ministry to share God’s love and gospel with the world. She invites others to gain that same testimony by studying the words and legacy of President Nelson.
18:37
President Camille N. Johnson: I’ve had the opportunity to look into the eyes of our Prophet, who I know to be the Lord’s mouthpiece on the earth today, and feel the love of my Savior through him. What I wish for all of my sisters around the world is to have an experience feeling the love of our Savior through the words of our Prophet. And while I realize that I have been uniquely blessed to be physically present with him, all of us have an opportunity to have that experience as we listen to and study his words.
You know, President Nelson has given 112 conference talks. I’ve studied all of them. I’ve made it a personal habit to listen to President Nelson every morning before I leave for the day. It’s made a remarkable difference in my life. I leave the house more joyful and more optimistic because he is. It sets my resolve more firmly on the covenant path. I think celestial. I think I’m a better peacemaker. When I listen to President Nelson’s words each morning, it stills me for the challenges of the day.
And so I invite my sisters, my brothers and sisters and friends of all faiths, to listen to President Nelson, to study his words. I trust that as you do, you will feel the love of our Savior, Jesus Christ. It is clearly one of his primary roles as our Prophet to invite the Savior, Jesus Christ, into our lives as he witnesses of His reality. He’s outward facing, and yet — this is one of the qualities, I think, that I admire most about President Nelson — of course he’s outward facing, he’s a Prophet to the world; and yet, when you’re with him, he makes you feel like you’re the most important person there. When he looks into your eyes, it’s with all sincerity and graciousness that he addresses you, that he communicates his love and his confidence in you.
You can absolutely feel prophetic direction coming in a council, where a matter has been discussed, he’s heard the wisdom of his two counselors sitting on either side of him, and then it comes, and it really is almost like a rush of wind. You can feel it. It fills up the whole room. This is prophetic direction. It’s remarkable. And yet, I can have that rush, that exhilaration, I can have the Spirit speak to me in that same way when I listen to his words and when I study his words.
That experience does not have to be unique to me. It can be an experience that all of us have when we explore prayerfully, and inviting the Spirit into that exploration, the words of a mighty Prophet. And part of my testimony that he is who he says he is is from my study, hearing that, seeing that, feeling it. But you have to get in there. You have to get in there and study his words. And I fear that we’re looking for answers in places where we’re not going to find truth. I know we’ll find truth with the Prophet.
22:42
Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
