40 Fun Facts About LDS Apostles

As a law clerk, LDS apostle D. Todd Christofferson worked for the judge who presided over which scandal's trials?

Watergate landed on Judge John Sirica's desk soon after Christofferson began clerking for him. The two were the first people outside the White House to hear Nixon's recordings.

Which LDS apostle spent three decades as an airline pilot, making captain at just 29?

Dieter F. Uchtdorf first trained as a fighter pilot in Big Spring, Texas, where he won the trophy for the best student pilot in his class. He left the airline in 1996, having risen to senior vice president.

Which LDS apostle, a pioneering heart surgeon before his call, later led the church past age 100?

Russell M. Nelson built his own heart-lung machine in Salt Lake City and used it for Utah's first open-heart operation. He died in 2025 at 101.

Which LDS apostle sat in Eisenhower's cabinet for eight years without giving up his church calling?

Ezra Taft Benson ran the Department of Agriculture through both of Eisenhower's terms with the church president's blessing. An earlier apostle of the same name was his great-grandfather.

Which LDS apostle spent thirty years in the U.S. Senate and co-sponsored a notorious 1930 tariff?

Reed Smoot faced a four-year fight over whether an apostle could sit in the Senate at all. His tariff raised almost 900 import duties and is widely regarded as a catalyst for the worsening Great Depression.

Which early LDS apostle, an ancestor of Mitt Romney, was murdered in Arkansas in 1857?

Parley P. Pratt was killed by the estranged husband of his twelfth wife. A canyon above Salt Lake City, where he built the first public road, still carries his first name.

Ulisses Soares, the first LDS apostle from South America, was born in which country?

Brazil got its first stake of the church in 1966, at a meeting Soares attended as a boy. The branch his family first went to met in a rented room above a bakery.

Which LDS apostle was called to the Twelve in 1963 at just 36, leaving a career in printing?

Thomas S. Monson was the youngest man called to the Twelve in 53 years, and he led the church from 2008. He once led a ward with 85 widows and kept visiting them long after his release.

Which LDS apostle, a Utah Supreme Court justice, was twice considered for the U.S. Supreme Court?

Dallin H. Oaks was weighed for the nation's top bench by Gerald Ford in 1975 and again by Reagan in 1981. He had clerked there for Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Which LDS apostle once led a cruise-ship dance band and later served the shortest church presidency?

Howard W. Hunter played piano, violin, drums, saxophone, clarinet and trumpet, and named his band Hunter's Croonaders. He led the church for nine months before his death in 1995.

Which LDS apostle, a Yale PhD, led BYU as its president for most of the 1980s?

Jeffrey R. Holland saw the university's Jerusalem Center founded during his nine years in charge. He was born in St. George, Utah, and died in 2025 as president of the Twelve.

Which LDS apostle taught business at Stanford and is the son of a renowned chemist of the same name?

Henry B. Eyring spent nine years on the Stanford faculty, then left to run a church college in Idaho. His father, also Henry Eyring, was president of the American Chemical Society.

Which LDS apostle oversaw Ricks College's change into the four-year BYU–Idaho before his 2004 call?

David A. Bednar inherited what was then the largest private junior college in the United States, after years teaching management at the University of Arkansas. At 52 he was the youngest apostle called in two decades.

Which LDS apostle, called in 2015, was a cardiologist who ran a Utah heart transplant program?

Dale G. Renlund spoke Swedish before English, because his Finnish and Swedish parents had only just emigrated so they could marry in a temple. He directed the transplant program from 1991 to 2009.

Gerrit W. Gong, the first LDS apostle of Asian descent, won which award to study at Oxford?

The Rhodes Scholarship led to an Oxford doctorate in international relations in 1980. Gong went on to work at the State Department and at the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

Which LDS apostle, called in 2023, joined the church as an adult, baptized on Christmas Eve 1987?

Patrick Kearon spent part of his childhood in Saudi Arabia and first met Latter-day Saints while staying with a family in California. He met missionaries in London a few years later.

Which LDS apostle, called in 1961 and later church president, sat for 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace?

Gordon B. Hinckley stayed friends with Wallace for the rest of his life and later appeared on Larry King Live. In 2004 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House.

Which LDS church president, an apostle since 1943, announced the 1978 revelation on the priesthood?

Spencer W. Kimball spoke in a hoarse rasp after cancer surgery removed one vocal cord and half of the other. He wore a small ear-mounted microphone even at pulpits that had their own.

Which LDS apostle was badly wounded at Carthage Jail in 1844 but lived to lead the church?

John Taylor was long said to have been saved by a pocket watch that stopped a musket ball. Later analysis suggests the watch broke when he fell against the windowsill.

Which LDS apostle, a geologist born in Berkshire, wrote the 1915 book Jesus the Christ?

James E. Talmage wrote it in under a year, a decade after the First Presidency first asked him for it. He had also been president of the University of Utah.

Who was president of the LDS Quorum of the Twelve when Joseph Smith was killed in 1844?

Brigham Young was preaching near Boston that summer and had no firm word of the killing for almost three weeks. The Twelve then governed the church under him until 1847.

Joseph Smith asked which group to choose the original LDS Quorum of the Twelve in 1835?

The Three Witnesses, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris, announced their choices on 14 February 1835 and then ordained the new apostles themselves.

Nine of the original twelve LDS apostles had marched to Missouri in 1834 with which expedition?

Zion's Camp failed in its stated aim of protecting church members in Jackson County, but Joseph Smith later drew most of his first leaders from the men who had made the march.

By long custom, which member of the LDS Twelve becomes church president when a president dies?

The longest-serving apostle has succeeded every time, which leaves no room for campaigning. Rank is set by the date a man joined the Twelve, not by his age.

Latter-day Saints sustain the First Presidency and each LDS apostle under which threefold title?

Prophets, seers, and revelators is how Joseph Smith asked the congregation to acknowledge the Twelve at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple in 1836.

LDS teaching likens the calling of each new apostle to which man, chosen to replace Judas Iscariot?

Matthias filled the gap Judas left among the Twelve, as told in the first chapter of Acts. In the LDS Church the First Presidency makes the choice, and members then vote to sustain it.

In which Lancashire town did two LDS apostles win the church's first British converts in 1837?

Preston offered a ready audience through relatives of Canadian converts, and more than 140 people were baptized there by October 1837. Within a year Britain had about 1,500 members.

From which Illinois city did the LDS Twelve lead the church in 1845, before heading west?

Nauvoo was held just long enough for the Twelve to ready its temple for ordinances in December 1845. Nearly 6,000 members received temple blessings there by February 1846, when the exodus began.

The title apostle, used for the LDS Twelve, comes from a Greek verb meaning what?

To send forth is the sense of the Greek apostellein, so an apostle is an envoy acting as someone's representative. The Twelve carry that role as missionaries to the whole world.

The LDS Twelve are instructed to call on which body first when they need help in their ministry?

The Seventy echo the seventy disciples Jesus sent out two by two in Luke's Gospel. Their presidents report to the Twelve, who direct their work around the world.

Which LDS apostle, the Quorum's first president, left the church in 1838 and was rebaptized in 1857?

Thomas B. Marsh stayed away for almost 19 years and never held office again. A later sermon put his exit down to a quarrel between his wife and another member over a milk cow.

Which LDS apostle, nicknamed Captain Fear-Not, died of wounds from the 1838 Battle of Crooked River?

David W. Patten is regarded by Latter-day Saints as a martyr. Before the Missouri conflict he had been one of the first missionaries to carry the faith into the southern United States.

Which LDS apostle climbed the Mount of Olives in 1841 to dedicate the Holy Land for the Jews' return?

Orson Hyde finished the journey alone, because the fellow apostle assigned to go with him never reached Jerusalem. A memorial garden on the hillside was dedicated in 1979.

Which LDS apostle's journals hold the earliest known account of fly fishing west of the Mississippi?

Wilford Woodruff learned the sport in England and wrote the entry after fishing the East Fork River in 1847. His diaries are a prime record of early Latter-day Saint history.

Which LDS apostle, a lawyer by training, wrote the sweeping 1958 reference book Mormon Doctrine?

Bruce R. McConkie called it the first attempt at an encyclopedic commentary on the whole gospel. It stayed in print until 2010, and he also wrote the chapter headings for the church's 1979–81 scriptures.

Which LDS apostle helped design the reactor for the Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine?

Richard G. Scott was interviewed by Hyman Rickover, who snapped at him about his mission and then, as Scott rose to leave, said he had only been testing his confidence.

Which LDS apostle, trained as a World War II bomber pilot, was also an artist who painted birds?

Boyd K. Packer had his paintings and sculptures shown in an exhibit at a BYU museum in 2014. Before his call he supervised the church's seminaries and institutes.

LDS apostle John A. Widtsoe, who led two Utah universities, was born in which country?

Norway was his home until 1883, when his widowed mother brought her two sons to the United States. He was born on the island of Frøya and was six when his father died.

Which LDS apostle, a Salt Lake City businessman, opened the church's mission in Japan in 1901?

Heber J. Grant joined the Twelve in 1882 doubting that his relish for commerce suited the calling. He went on to lead the church for more than 26 years.

Which LDS apostle, once a Utah school principal, served nearly 64 years as a general authority?

David O. McKay started a school paper and basketball teams for men and women as a principal, then joined the Twelve in 1906. No one in church history has been an active general authority for longer.