Elder Gerrit W. Gong and Elder Ulisses Soares made history during the April 2010 general conference by being called as the first Asian-American apostle and the first Latin American apostle respectively. Here are 6 fun facts about Elder Gong.
1. Elder Gong has a Dutch first name, an American middle name (Walter after his father) and a Chinese last name.
His first namesake is Gerrit de Jong, the patriarch of the family that Elder Gong’s mother, Jean, lived with when she came to Brigham Young University as a recent convert to the Church. Gerrit de Jong was the first dean of the BYU College of Fine Arts and an accomplished composer and linguist from Amsterdam.
After receiving her bachelor’s degree, Jean moved to Palo Alto, California, to attend Stanford University, and it was there that she met her future husband, Elder Gong’s father, Walter, who also converted to the gospel. Despite no blood relation, Elder Gong’s family call Gerrit de Jong and his wife “Grandpa and Grandma.”
2. Elder Gong’s parents were married three times—to each other.
As Elder Gong explained in his October 2010 general conference talk, “there was a Chinese ceremony for family, an American ceremony for friends and a sacred ceremony in the house of the Lord for time and eternity.”
3. He has extensive political experience.
In the mid-‘80s, Elder Gong worked for the U.S. government as special assistant to the Undersecretary of State at the State Department and special assistant to the U.S. ambassador in Beijing, China. He has testified before Congress on a range of East Asia issues. From 1989 to 2001, Elder Gong worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
4. He is athletic.
While his high school basketball coach discouraged Elder Gong from pursuing his hoop dreams due to his smaller frame, Elder Gong played soccer in high school and also tried out for the crew team at Oxford.
5. Despite his international political involvement, he has quipped that he earned a degree in international relations during his transcontinental courtship with his wife, Susan Lindsay Gong.
The couple met in the Missionary Training Center as then-Sister Lindsay prepared to serve as a missionary in Taiwan. Elder Gong was not a missionary but a BYU student presenting a fireside to missionaries about Taiwanese culture. His wife, Susan, is the daughter of Richard P. Lindsay, who was a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. They did not begin dating until a few years later when Elder Gong was home for a few weeks from Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar. With Elder Gong in England and the future-Sister Gong at BYU, the two learned a few things about long distance relationships.
In fact, according to an article written by Elder D. Todd Christofferson in the October 2018 Ensign about Elder Gong, the couple got engaged over the phone. Together, they have continued their international education as they have traveled with their four sons to many places around the world, including one trip that included the Czech Republic, Greece, Turkey, India, China, and Japan.
6. Elder Gong’s wife, Susan, was the first coordinator for Utah’s Chinese language dual-immersion program.
She has also authored Chinese children’s books, completed an MA at BYU in creative writing, and taught Chinese classes at both BYU and Provo High.
