Latter-day Saint Life

How Elder Holland Blessed My Family 24 Years After My Dad Died At Christmas Time

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As my father’s colon cancer was killing him during the 1994 Christmas season, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles unexpectedly visited my parents’ home in Bountiful, Utah, and gave him a blessing before he died.

Nearly a quarter century later, I sat in stunned silence last month in an overwhelmingly beautiful little Anglican chapel in Oxford, England, as Elder Holland delivered a Christmas message about his own father’s massive heart attack just before Christmas in 1976.

► Also: Elder Holland Shares the Powerful Rebuke He Received While with His Dying Father on Christmas Morning

Until then, I hadn’t known the rest of the story, a story of two dear fathers and two sons bereaved in their absences.

Lead image from Church News

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