President Holland emphasizes God’s love, mercy and watch care during leadership training meeting in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As a father who would do anything for his children, President Jeffrey R. Holland said he has glimpsed the great love God has for all His children.

“I would do anything in righteousness for my children. There is no river I would not swim. There is no mountain I would not climb. I will fight a school bus, if you tell me to,” said President Holland, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during leadership meetings near the nation’s capital on Feb. 24.

If earthly fathers feel this way, what must it mean “for an Eternal Being filled with glory and mercy? What must it mean for Him to love you — to love us — to try to make this work, to try to withstand evil and try to increase and cultivate and expand life and love?” he asked.

Speaking to Area Seventies, mission presidents, temple presidents and stake presidents in the Church’s North America Northeast Area gathered in a chapel just outside of Washington, D.C., President Holland emphasized God’s love, mercy and watch care.

Quoting Elder J. Reuben Clark, who served in the First Presidency before his death in 1961, President Holland said that he believes God, in His judicial role, will exercise the minimum amount of justice necessary to adequately cover whatever justice is required. And “He would expend and share and cast on us the maximum amount of mercy and forgiveness and peace — essentially without bounds.”

It will be “as little on the one hand and as much on the other hand as the eternal balance scales would require.”

President Holland was joined in the instruction meeting by Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder José A. Teixeira of the Presidency of the Seventy, Elder Allen D. Haynie and Elder Robert M. Daines, both General Authority Seventies who serve in the North America Northeast Area presidency. After the meeting, Elder Holland spoke to missionaries serving in the Washington, D.C., area.

The trip to Washington, D.C., marked President Holland’s first assignment outside of the western United States since an extended illness.

President Holland, who missed October 2023 general conference, has resumed a full schedule at Church headquarters — leading the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; speaking at the funeral services for President M. Russell Ballard on Nov. 17, 2023; rededicating the St. George Utah Temple on Dec. 10, 2023; and participating in leadership training and other assignments this year.

President Holland said his desire to do the work of the Lord is great. “I would go anywhere in the world to be with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” he said.

Looking out upon a congregation of people who give hours and hours of their time each week to the Church, President Holland said the response to a call to serve in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of its basic miracles — starting with Joseph Smith and continuing to this day.

Speaking about the prophetic priorities of the Church, President Holland emphasized that members in stakes will come unto Christ as they are mission oriented and temple going.

Elder Renlund said Latter-day Saints “joyfully bind themselves to God,” through their covenants.

“This is the Lord’s work,” he said. “President [Russell M.] Nelson has said any time anyone does anything that helps anyone make covenants and keeps them on that covenant path, then they are gathering Israel.”

Elder Renlund spoke of the importance of the covenant path — especially for new members.

Referencing his medical training, Elder Renlund said there is both a “golden hour” to treating new patients in medicine and new members strengthening their conversion. Just as a patient who comes into the emergency room after a trauma has better outcomes when medical intervention sets them on the right path, there is a small but effective period to get a new member of the Church headed in the right direction and making additional covenants. “And then they just need to be guided along the path,” he said.

President Holland noted that when Elder Edward Dube, a General Authority Seventy, first joined the Church at age 22 in Zimbabwe, he attended Sunday meetings for two weeks and then prepared to stay home the third Sunday. Soon, however, a member couple stopped by and insisted he attend with them. In the more than three decades since, Elder Dube never missed Sunday Church meetings again.

Elder Teixeira also addressed helping new and returning members have a joyful experience — so they “sense they belong, so they are a part.”

Everyone that comes to Church should feel that they are “not only welcome but that they are wanted,” he said.

Elder Daines spoke of helping Latter-day Saints feel the “joy of the Sabbath day” and of “being connected to the Savior.” They can then pass that joy on by “welcoming and inviting and helping other people feel the same thing.”

Elder Haynie asked the leaders to help members, especially children, “have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Emphasizing scripture study, he said, “Christ said this: ‘Search the scriptures. … They are they which testify of me.’”

While addressing missionaries, President Holland spoke of the blessing his own mission had been in his life. As a 19-year-old young man, he had a college scholarship, was on the basketball team and held a student body office. Still, his future wife encouraged him to serve a mission.

He came home 24 months later to discover that everything in his life was touched by that decision.

“Every single thing that I cherish in this Church and gospel, I can trace back to the decision to go on a mission and do the best I could … and then to come home to a life of blessings that no young man from St. George could have dreamed possible.”