Hello, everyone! While I have not forgotten my promise to post about President Uchtdorf's birthday, and while I am actively working on getting that put together to post shortly here, there was yet another apostolic coincidence that I learned of recently, and it is well deserving of a mention here. So, what is that latest coincidence? Let's talk about that.
In early June 2007, amid the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Elder D. Todd Christofferson, who was serving as the second most senior member of the Presidency of the Seventy, and was just 10 months away from the time he would be called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (which, though he did not have any idea that would happen, was surely known to the Lord), had a supervisory role in overseeing the Church response to Hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath of that natural disaster, and knowing that many Saints had been forced to move out of the Slidell Louisiana Stake and find both new homes and work outside of the storm's destruction zone, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave Elder Christofferson the assignment to go supervise the dissolution of that stake.
It was a sad day for all concerned, but the remaining members in the region gave their full support to this decision. Fast forward now to the middle of October 2017. Having been an apostle of the Church for almost 10 years, and following General Conference, Elder Christofferson was given the joyful assignment to represent his Brethren in the apostleship by returning to the Slidell Louisiana region, this time to reorganize the stake he had dissolved over 10 years earlier.
Elder Christofferson commented to the Church News that he told the Saints in that area that he was pleased to fill this assignment, which, as he put it, gave him the opportunity to repent and redo what he had undone a decade before. As further evidence that the Lord not only knew this situation would happen the way it did (including that Elder Christofferson would be an apostle when he was sent to reestablish the stake he had previously dissolved), the Lord indicated to him that the man who should be the first president of the reinstated stake was a man who had, not coincidentally, given a prayer at the gathering 10 years earlier when the stake had been disbanded.
It was awesome to read the account the Church News shared in publishing this story. You can find that article here. This is yet another witness to me that the Lord is, in a very real way, clearly involved in the minute details of the lives of each of us. I am confident that each one of us could share many examples of how such coincidences have occurred in our own lives, and while it may seem that the leading Brethren have such things occur more often than the rest of us, I am grateful to testify that I know for myself how mindful the Lord is of each of us as individuals. In His infinite wisdom and compassion, He orchestrates events in our lives that are not in any way random or happenstance, that demonstrate His tender mercies in the details of our lives.
I am grateful for the opportunity I have had to share all of this with each of you today. That does it for this post. Any comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated. Thank you for the privilege of your time. Until my next post, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in all that you do.
Monday, November 6, 2017
Elder Christofferson reorganizes a stake he was once sent to dissolve
I have had a lifelong love for Church history, which has extended to ongoing reports of the ministry of our apostles and prophets, General Conference, and all temple developments. This blog enables me to share that love with all who read my thoughts on these developments, which are sometimes reported multiple times per day as needed.
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