“Elder Patrick Kearon: Prepared and Called by the Lord,” Liahona, May 2024.
New Callings
Elder Patrick Kearon: Prepared and Called by the Lord
The Lord has prepared Elder Kearon in unique ways and endowed him with an array of spiritual gifts that will allow him to bless others in his sacred call as a special witness “of the name of Christ in all the world.”
One Saturday several years after having been called as a General Authority Seventy, Elder Patrick Kearon and his wife, Jennifer, were entering a supermarket as Elder W. Rolfe Kerr and his wife, Janeil, were leaving. They visited briefly, and then the Kerrs headed to their car.
Almost immediately, a man approached Elder Kearon and excitedly asked him, “Was that a General Authority you were speaking to?” Elder Kearon responded, “Yes. That was Elder W. Rolfe Kerr of the Seventy.”1 The man nodded, looked directly at Elder Kearon without recognizing him, and said, “You can always tell a General Authority, can’t you?” Then the man hurried off.
“I love that story because it so represents how I feel,” says Elder Kearon with a smile. “I could have the same experience today, and that man would still probably not pick me out of a crowd as being a General Authority.”
Elder Kearon’s self-deprecating humor and humility endear him to those who know him or have had the privilege of serving with him. Called to, and ordained a member of, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on December 7, 2023, Elder Kearon knows that his new calling is less about him than it is about the ongoing work of the Lord.
“We all get to be part of His work,” he says, “trying to help people feel His light and His love and His care. What He wants us to do as members of His Church is bless the lives of others.”
The Lord has prepared Elder Kearon in unique ways and endowed him with an array of spiritual gifts that will allow him to bless others in his sacred call as a special witness “of the name of Christ in all the world” (Doctrine and Covenants 107:23). A convert to the Church at age 26 and the only member of the Church among his siblings, Elder Kearon is a man of deep empathy who knows how to listen to, connect with, and comfort God’s children. He is charitable by nature and finds joy in service. Touched by tender experiences and the loss of loved ones, he testifies that the Savior Jesus Christ, through His Atonement, offers healing balm and will one day make everything right.
Elder Kearon is a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ who trusts in the Lord. He is a leader who is easy to follow because he is devoted to following the Savior and to leading people to Him.
“The Lord,” says President Jeffrey R. Holland, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “has led Patrick to the position he now holds.”
Loving, Devoted Parents
Patrick Kearon was born in Carlisle, Cumbria, in northern England on July 18, 1961, to Paddy and Patricia Kearon. When his parents met, they were serving in the British armed forces during World War II—his mother as an army nurse in India and Burma and his father in the Royal Air Force (RAF), deployed in France, North Africa, Sicily, and Italy.
Elder Kearon remembers his parents, Paddy and Patricia, for their exemplary lives of devotion, service, and sacrifice.
Though not church-going people, they lived lives of family devotion, service, and sacrifice that left a lasting impression on Patrick, the youngest of the couple’s five children. He remembers Pat as a loving, “extraordinary mother,” gently guiding, mostly by example, and never critical of anyone. She was generous, steady, and remarkably balanced. And he remembers Paddy for “his energy, kindness, and irrepressible warmth; his love of … Arabia’s arid deserts [and] England’s and Ireland’s lush rolling hills; and his passion for the skies, the sunshine, and the sea. I can clearly recognize his imprint on my own yearning to be outside, in the open, in the air and sunlight.”2
Following his RAF service, Elder Kearon’s father went to work as a defense contractor in Saudi Arabia. Patrick, as a seven-year-old boy, learned an important lesson there in obedience, memorably recounted in his first general conference talk as a General Authority. Ignoring his parents’ instructions to wear shoes during a desert camping trip, he went exploring in “flip-flops” and suffered a scorpion sting in the arch of his foot.3
Patrick Kearon as a boy in Saudi Arabia.
Three years later, young Patrick found himself in boarding school back in England feeling great loneliness for his parents, a loneliness cushioned only by their encouraging letters.
“Harry Potter definitely had it cushy at Hogwarts by comparison. It was hard,” he says of boarding school. “I’d go home only for Christmas, Easter, and summer. I made little calendars on sheets of paper, putting a line through each day, counting down the days until I could return to my family.”
A few years later, while Patrick was at his second boarding school in England, a powerful storm blew in from the Irish Sea. The resulting storm surge flooded 5,000 homes in the surrounding area. Patrick and his classmates were called upon to help with the massive cleanup.
“I still remember the weight of the sodden carpets and the stench of it all,” he says. “But I remember digging in and getting the work done with my fellow school friends. And I remember the people and their gratitude.”
That experience was perhaps Patrick’s first glimpse into the mutual blessings of rendering and receiving service. Later, he realized that his teenage feelings of insecurity had left him “while I was involved in this great effort to assist our neighbors.”4
Following high school, Patrick returned to Saudi Arabia, where he began management training with a multinational food and drink conglomerate. That experience initiated his work in several industries, eventually concluding in communications consultancy in England with Sister Kearon.
“My World Turned Upside Down”
When Patrick was 19, he lost his father and brother-in-law in a tragic car accident in Saudi Arabia. “My world turned upside down with their loss,” he says. His father’s guiding hand, loving encouragement, and joyful view of the world were gone. Lost in grief and emptiness for a time, Patrick went home to England with his mother but eventually returned to work in Saudi Arabia.
“I had all sorts of valuable opportunities to learn and grow and see how businesses worked,” he says. He was especially grateful for “a wonderful boss who coached and guided me and became a dear friend. He was one of several father-type figures I’ve been blessed with since my father’s death.”
Later, while working back in London, Patrick met some members of the Church.
“They were great examples of our faith,” he recalls. “One of them was from California, and I went and stayed with that family while I worked there.”
That experience gave Patrick a wonderful foundation of understanding the Church. He was touched by the joy the family found in service, but he had many questions about Church doctrine and beliefs. Back in England two years later, however, he met some “impressive missionaries” on the streets of London. After discussing the gospel with them for several months and being told he was not progressing toward baptism, they asked him if he would like a blessing.
“I agreed to have a blessing from a senior missionary I knew,” he recalls. “How I felt during that blessing was a key moment in my conversion. It was an absolutely undeniable sense of light and joy and peace that no words can describe. The words of the blessing proved inspired and definitely prescient.”
That experience, coupled with “a number of other things in my progress toward baptism,” led Patrick to a testimony of the Savior and His restored Church. A couple of months later, on Christmas Eve 1987, he was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
For those seeking a testimony, Elder Kearon says: “Choose faith, and respond to the invitation in Alma 32. Follow your spiritual feelings. They will guide you, and you will know.”
“A Source of Strength”
Two years after his baptism, Patrick was attending a young single adult ward in London when he met Jennifer Hulme, a Brigham Young University student from Saratoga, California. Jennifer had come to London for six months to study art history and English literature. The youngest of eight children, she had been raised in the Church.
Almost immediately, Patrick caught her eye.
“As I watched him interact with people in the ward, I saw the way he treated them,” Jennifer says of Patrick. “Whether it was a new member, a returning member, someone who was having struggles, or someone who was a close friend, he treated everyone with the same kind of genuine love and interest. That quality first and foremost drew me to him. It is a quality I have seen him develop, and that God has put to good use, over the 33 years we have been married.”
Elder and Sister Kearon’s love and respect for each other allows them to work united in faith.
After their courtship, the couple married in the Oakland California Temple in January 1991. They then raised their family in England for 19 years until Elder Kearon was called in 2010 as a General Authority Seventy after serving in several leadership callings, including as a stake president and Area Seventy. He was serving as Senior President of the Seventy when he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Elder Kearon says his wife is a faithful disciple who knows her true identity. “She lives a happy, positive, constructive, helpful, joyful life, with the Savior at the center of it all. She has been a source of strength and an enormous blessing to me since the moment we met.”
Susannah, the second of the couple’s three daughters, says her mother loves to give of herself: “She is full of life and light and has a passion for the gospel.” And like her father, her mother is an “excellent listener.”
Susannah and her sisters say their parents’ love and respect for each other allows them to work united in faith toward common goals. They listen to one another and respect and appreciate each other’s thoughts and opinions.
Emma, the couple’s youngest daughter, says her parents’ harmonious relationship and overt love for their children “has made for a very happy and secure home environment.”
Lizzie Kearon Staheli, the oldest, says of her father: “Dad sees people with Christlike eyes. He is always anxious to encourage and empower people. He sees the potential in everyone, whatever their circumstances.”
Emma adds: “He is full of faith and loves the joy the gospel brings him. Having found the restored gospel as an adult, he appreciates the difference it makes in one’s life as a source of light and joy.”
Elder Kearon calls his daughters—Lizzie (pictured with husband, Jonathan), Susannah, and Emma—“the most beautiful light in our lives, our greatest treasures.”
Jean B. Bingham, former Relief Society General President, describes Elder Kearon as calm under pressure. She recalls a time when she, Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder Kearon, and others found themselves stranded abroad during a political uprising. Under Elder Bednar’s direction, Elder Kearon spent hours on a satellite phone working with local officials and Church representatives to create a path for their removal.
“His calm nature, focused efforts, and inspired insights produced a solution that allowed for our safe departure,” says Sister Bingham.
In December 2021, the family was shocked to learn that Sister Kearon had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I never thought cancer was going to hit me or us,” says Sister Kearon. She called the ensuing treatment extremely difficult, but the Savior was her source of strength through it all. “I’m still on oral chemotherapy, but I’m grateful to say that I’m cancer free as far as doctors can tell.”
Elder Kearon says: “Jen has been steadfast and impeccably faithful through it all. We give thanks every day for her health, and we give thanks for the exceptional care she’s been given.”
As with other trials she and her husband have experienced, Sister Kearon says, “Life serves us things we simply don’t want to do. We don’t like them. We didn’t ask for them. But we have to face them anyway. The best way to deal with things that are just plain hard is to turn to the Lord and ask for His strength, putting our faith in Jesus Christ and in His grace and power. A long time ago, I learned a lot about how the Savior succors us at our deepest, darkest times.”
Elder and Sister Kearon acquired that sacred knowledge after the birth of their first child, Sean.
“The Rock of the Atonement of Jesus Christ”
During Sister Kearon’s first pregnancy, the couple learned early on from ultrasound scans that their baby boy had “a difficult heart anomaly, a life-threatening condition,” says Elder Kearon. “We spent the rest of the pregnancy tracking down the best doctors, cardiologists, and cardiac surgeons equipped to address his particular problem. We found a world-class team in London, and they were confident they could fix the problem.”
Surgeons operated on Sean when he was 19 days old. The surgery was long and painstaking. Afterward, says Elder Kearon, “Sean’s little heart could not restart. So, we lost him. His death was exquisitely painful. This was not the result we had fasted for, prayed for, and pled for, but we knew that heaven’s hand was in that experience.”
Sister Kearon says, “God led us through those months of pregnancy and the beautiful, brief life of our son in a way that, at the end of it, we knew we had done everything we could for him. That was a tremendous comfort.”
Healing came from an increased understanding of the Savior’s Atonement and Resurrection that Sister Kearon gained from an in-depth study of 1 Nephi and 2 Nephi. “In the grief of our loss, I felt like I was spinning in a black hole,” she says. “And yet, time after time, that free fall was arrested by the rock of the Atonement of Jesus Christ—because it is true. His grace, His living reality, make even the most painful losses bearable and hopeful.”
Healing came from the birth of the couple’s three daughters. “They brought healing with them,” Elder Kearon says. “They are the most beautiful light in our lives, our greatest treasures.”
Healing came from the words of inspired Church leaders, including a general conference talk by Elder Lance B. Wickman,5 in which Elder Wickman shared the pain of pacing deserted hospital corridors as his own little boy lay dying of a childhood disease. “Elder Wickman teaches that ‘believing is seeing’ and that faith is trust in the Lord,” says Elder Kearon. “His talk was enormously valuable to me because of his clear understanding of such an experience. This was magnified by the number of times I read it and listened to it.”
And healing came from ministering to others in their loss—be they refugees in Europe,6 the abused or oppressed,7 or fellow Church leaders like Elder Paul V. Johnson of the Presidency of the Seventy, who had lost a daughter to cancer two months before joining Elder Kearon in the Europe Area Presidency in 2015.
“He and Sister Kearon were wonderful in helping us in that grieving and healing time,” Elder Johnson says. “They were so sensitive to our situation. I’ve always loved them for that.”
Such is the way of discipleship. We bear one another’s burdens. We mourn with those who mourn. We comfort those in need of comfort. And we stand as witnesses of God—and the eternal promise of joyful reunions made possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. (See Mosiah 18:8–9.)
Elder Kearon greets members in the Europe East Area.
Then, when trying times come to us, that healing love and ministering balm are reciprocated. As an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, Elder Kearon is prepared to share with all the world that gospel message of hope, healing, and peace.
“Why do difficult trials happen to us?” Elder Kearon asks. “Because we come to earth to learn, to grow, to be sanctified, and to love and trust our Father in Heaven and our Savior. For now, we can’t see Them, and They can’t hold us. But the blessings of the Savior’s Atonement are infinite—infinite!”