While at the Church of Oxford's Pembroke College Chapel, Elder Holland answered questions concerning family life, mental health, Church policy, and many other concerns members have.
[Elder Holland] moved the lectern aside and sat in a chair to listen to and answer deeply personal questions from women and men in their 20s and early 30s that drew him to relate relevant personal experiences. One woman said the Church has been the source of her greatest joy but that some policies and past history have been the source of pain and confusion for her and for family and friends who have left.
"I would like to stay," she said. "I would like to not let my doubts-slash-pain get the better of me," she said. "I'd love to hear your insight to people like me."
Elder Holland welcomed the question, leaning forward in his chair to listen and respond. He said he had many answers but not all and spoke of the pain and deaths experienced by Peter and Paul, whose statues flanked a painting of Christ in a red robe on the wall above and behind him. He said the impact the gospel has made on his life, after growing up without its consistent presence in his childhood home, has marked him forever, as has the gospel influence of his wife, Sister Patricia Holland.
"There is not enough pain, there is not enough cost, there is not enough difficulty that could tear from my heart the conviction that this is God's Church," he said. "This has been everything in God's earth to me. . . . There is nothing that could take me from this."
Lead image from Church News