“Sister Jean B. Bingham,” Ensign, May 2016, 137
Sister Jean B. Bingham
First Counselor, Primary General Presidency
For almost six years, Sister Jean Barrus Bingham has loved serving in her calling on the Primary general board. She has visited the homes of members and attended Primaries, witnessing the strong faith of Latter-day Saints—especially the Primary children—around the world.
Sister Bingham, who was recently sustained as the first counselor in the Primary general presidency, has spent much of her life teaching, nurturing, and loving children. Whether it has been with her younger siblings growing up, her own two daughters, her foster daughters, grandchildren, visitors to her home, or those she has met as a member of the Primary general board, she has been an advocate and source of strength for many.
“Every child has wonderful potential, and if we see them through Heavenly Father’s eyes, we can help them become all that He has designed them to be,” she says.
Born on June 10, 1952, in Provo, Utah, USA, to Edith Joy Clark and Robert Rowland Barrus, Sister Bingham is the third of nine children. When she was three months old, her family moved to Indiana so her father could continue his schooling. In the first six years of her life, Sister Bingham and her family lived in four states.
After graduating from high school in New Jersey, Sister Bingham moved to Provo, Utah, to attend Brigham Young University. In her second year there, she met her future husband, Bruce Bryan Bingham, a farm boy from Illinois who was baptized as a teenager with his parents. They were married on December 22, 1972, in the Provo Utah Temple.
Her lifetime of Church service has included time as a ward Primary president, Young Women president, counselor in a Relief Society presidency, stake Young Women president, temple worker, and early-morning seminary teacher.
“The pattern I have seen in her life, over our 43 years of marriage, is a consistent adherence to the promptings of the Spirit,” Brother Bingham says of his wife. “She has, over and over, done what the Lord wanted her to do.”