On April 2, 1995, President Gordon B. Hinckley stood in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on Temple Square just three weeks after he had been ordained and set apart as the 15th President of the Church.
He spoke of his dependence on the Lord and of his gratitude for Latter-day Saints worldwide.
Then he talked about his grandfather — who was baptized in summer 1836 in Ontario and eventually gathered with the Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois. When the Saints left Nauvoo, he was an 18-year-old wagon builder and blacksmith. He paused his own journey in Iowa to assist others on the westward trail. He married in 1848 and set out for the Salt Lake Valley in 1850.
“Somewhere along that wearisome trail, his young wife sickened and died. With his own hands, he dug a grave, split logs to make a coffin, lovingly buried her, then tearfully took their 11-month-old child in his arms and marched on to this valley,” recounted President Hinckley.
During his remarks, President Hinckley spoke of “a great sense of gratitude and love, and an almost overwhelming obligation” to keep the trust his grandfather passed to him.
The conference was my first as a reporter. I remember listening to President Hinckley in a way I had not listened to a Church leader before. His words sunk deep into my soul.
It was a powerful experience that caused me — even then in my early 20s — to ponder the legacy I want to leave to those who come after me.
Some 13 years later, on April 6, 2008, President Thomas S. Monson stood in the Conference Center one day after being sustained as the 16th President of the Church, just two months after he had been ordained and set apart on Feb. 3, 2008.
Just like President Hinckley, his remarks that Sunday morning focused on working together to accomplish the Lord’s work. They were titled “Looking Back and Moving Forward.”
“I was born of goodly parents, whose own parents and grandparents were gathered out of the lands of Sweden and Scotland and England by dedicated missionaries. As those missionaries bore humble testimonies, they touched the hearts and the spirits of my forebears. After joining the Church, these noble men, women and children made their way to the valley of the Great Salt Lake.”
He spoke of his great-grandmother’s family, who en route to the Salt Lake Valley encountered cholera in St. Louis, Missouri. In just two weeks, four family members died — including both parents. Little is recorded of the heartache and struggles of the remaining family, said President Monson. “We know that they left St. Louis in the spring of 1850 with four oxen and one wagon, arriving finally in the Salt Lake Valley that same year.”
President Monson spoke of other ancestors who faced similar hardships. “Through it all, however, their testimonies remained steadfast and firm,” he said. “From all of them I received a legacy of total dedication to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because of these faithful souls, I stand before you today.”
Six years ago, on April 1, 2018, President Russell M. Nelson stood in the Conference Center during general conference one day after the solemn assembly in which he was sustained as the 17th President of the Church.
Like President Hinckley and President Monson, he also expressed gratitude “for those upon whose shoulders I stand.”
“I also owe much to my forebears,” he said.
He spoke of his eight great-grandparents, who were all converts to the Church in Europe. These “stalwart souls sacrificed everything to come to Zion” — laying the foundation for President Nelson’s family in Utah. This would enable him to seek out and embrace the gospel as a child and youth, despite not being raised in a gospel-centered home.
“I adored my parents. They meant the world to me and taught me crucial lessons. I cannot thank them enough for the happy home life they created for me and my siblings. And yet, even as a boy, I knew I was missing something,” he said. President Nelson also spoke of the joy he felt when he was sealed to his parents in the temple when his parents were in their 80s.
President Nelson’s life is an example of how one’s spiritual legacy not only ripples forward but can also ripple backward to bless one’s family tree.
It has now been almost three decades since that day in April 1995 when I heard President Hinckley testify of the rolling forth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and of the sacrifices of those who came before him. I have thought about it again in recent months as the Church has remembered and honored — with the purchase of the Kirtland Temple in Ohio and historic buildings in Nauvoo and with efforts to renovate and preserve the Salt Lake Temple — the legacy of these and other early Latter-day Saints who gave everything to build temple cities in Kirtland, Nauvoo and the Salt Lake Valley.
It is a heritage that we all share regardless of our ancestry, a heritage so powerful that President Hinckley, President Monson and President Nelson referenced it in each of their first major Sunday morning general conference addresses as Presidents of the Church.
That’s because this “is a work that matters,” said President Hinckley in 1995. It is a “great endeavor” we are in together.
Our faith ripples forward and back.
“We are here to assist our Father in His work and His glory, ‘to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man’ (Moses 1:39),” said President Hinckley in 1995. “All of us in the pursuit of our duty touch the lives of others.”
