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Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Portrait of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Portrait: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

AUTHOR PROFILE

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Jeffrey R. Holland combined a career in education with more than three decades of apostolic service. Many readers know his conference addresses for their direct invitations to trust Jesus Christ through grief, doubt, and ordinary discipleship. Reading a full address alongside a short excerpt can show how he developed its message.

FEATURED QUOTE
“When life is hard, remember – we are not the first to ask, ‘Is there no other way?”
— Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

Biography at a glance

  • Born: December 3, 1940, in St. George, Utah
  • Died: December 27, 2025
  • Family: Married Patricia Terry; they had three children
  • Education: Studied at Brigham Young University and Yale University
  • Church service: Apostle from 1994; President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from October 2025 until his death

A teacher before his apostolic call

Holland’s years in education shaped the way he spoke to students and Church members. He served as dean of religious education at Brigham Young University, Church commissioner of education, and president of BYU from 1980 to 1989. The Church’s leadership biography records those assignments and his academic training.

A witness of Christ

He was called to the Seventy in 1989 and to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1994. His public teaching often met people at difficult moments: when a family was hurting, a prayer seemed unanswered, or a disciple felt unable to keep going. Rather than treating those experiences as marginal to faith, he returned to the life and Atonement of Jesus Christ as the center of hope. The Church’s memorial biography places his teaching in the larger course of his ministry.

His final years

Holland became President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in October 2025 and died that December. Patricia Holland had died in 2023. Their long partnership, family life, and shared work in the Church appear throughout accounts of his life. His addresses remain available in the Church’s conference archive, where readers can compare individual quotations with the complete talks.

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Quotes by Jeffrey R. Holland

104 quotes

“You can change! You can be anything you want to be in righteousness. If there is one lament I cannot abide, it is the poor, withered cry, ‘Well, that’s just the way that I am.’ I’ve heard it from too many people who want to sin and call it psychology. You can change anything you want to change, and you can do it very fast. Another satanic sucker punch is that it takes years and years and eons and eons to repent. That’s just not true. It takes exactly as long to repent as it takes you to say, ‘Ill change’ and mean it. Of course, there will be problems to work out and restitutions to make…but change, growth, renewal , and repentance can come to you as instantaneously as for Alma.”

For Times of Trouble

— Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

“As one of a thousand elements of my own testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, I submit this as yet one more evidence of its truthfulness. In this their greatest—and last—hour of need, I ask you: would these men blaspheme before God by continuing to fix their lives, their honor, and their own search for eternal salvation on a book (and by implication a church and a ministry) they had fictitiously created out of whole cloth? “Never mind that their wives are about to be widows and their children fatherless. Never mind that their little band of followers will yet be “houseless, friendless and homeless” and that their children will leave footprints of blood across frozen rivers and an untamed prairie floor.9 Never mind that legions will die and other legions live declaring in the four quarters of this earth that they know the Book of Mormon and the Church which espouses it to be true. Disregard all of that, and tell me whether in this hour of death these two men would enter the presence of their Eternal Judge quoting from and finding solace in a book which, if not the very word of God, would brand them as imposters and charlatans until the end of time? They would not do that! They were willing to die rather than deny the divine origin and the eternal truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.”

"Safety for the Soul," Conference October 2009

— Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

“It [Missionary work] is by definition the most important thing you can do in the world, in time or eternity. For this reason you are engaged in the saving of the human soul. And that is the highest and holiest work in the universe. That is the thing that God Himself said was His work and glory. It is the purpose for which the Savior came to the earth and gave His life and was resurrected to open those possibilities and promises of Eternal Life. It is the purpose for which every prophet has lived and every apostle has spoken. It is the purpose for which every missionary since Adam and Eve has gone forth to declare the truth. You join those ranks! You join that brotherhood and sisterhood and it is as I said by definition, by theology, it is the most important thing you can do.”

“The Miracle of a Mission”

— Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

“There are several reasons for bearing testimony. One is that when you declare the truth, it will bring an echo, a memory, even if it is an unconscious memory to the investigator, that they have heard this truth before—and of course they have. A missionary’s testimony invokes a great legacy of testimony dating back to the councils in heaven before this world was. There, in an earlier place, these same people heard this same plan outlined and heard there the role that Jesus Christ would play in their salvation… “So the fact of the matter is investigators are not only hearing our testimony of Christ, but they are hearing echoes of other, earlier testimonies, including their own testimony of Him, for they were on the side of the faithful who kept their first estate and earned the privilege of a second estate. We must always remember that these investigators, every man, woman, and child, were among the valiant who once overcame Satan by the power of their testimony of Christ! So when they hear others bear that witness of Christ’s saving mission, it has a familiar feeling; it brings an echo of truth they themselves already know.”

Missionary Work and the Atonement

— Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

“The Lord has probably spoken enough comforting words to supply the whole universe, and yet all we see around us are unhappy Latter-day Saints, worried Latter-day Saints, and gloomy Latter-day Saints into whose troubled hearts not one of these innumerable consoling words seems to be allowed to enter . . . on the night of Gethsemane, the night of the greatest suffering ever to take place on this world, the Savior said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you . . . let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27). I submit to you, that may be one of the Savior’s commandments that is, even in the hearts of otherwise faithful Latter-Day Saints, almost universally disobeyed.”

CES Young Adult Fireside, BYU, March 2, 1997

— Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

“If we constantly focus only on the stones in our mortal path, we will almost surely miss the beautiful flower or cool stream provided by the loving Father who outlined our journey. Each day can bring more joy than sorrow when our mortal and spiritual eyes are open to God’s goodness. Joy in the gospel is not something that begins only in the next life. It is our privilege now, this very day. We must never allow our burdens to obscure our blessings. There will always be more blessings than burdens – even if some days it doesn’t seem so. Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Enjoy those blessings right now. They are yours and always will be.”

— Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

“Anyone who does any kind of missionary work will have occasion to ask, Why is this so hard? Why doesn’t it go better? Why can’t our success be more rapid? Why aren’t there more people joining the Church? It is the truth. We believe in angels. We trust in miracles. Why don’t people just flock to the font? Why isn’t the only risk in missionary work that of pneumonia from being soaking wet all day and all night in the baptismal font? “You will have occasion to ask those questions. I have thought about this a great deal. I offer this as my personal feeling. I am convinced that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation never was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him? It seems to me that missionaries and mission leaders have to spend at least a few moments in Gethsemane. Missionaries and mission leaders have to take at least a step or two toward the summit of Calvary.”

Missionary Work and the Atonement

— Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

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