“Special Witness: Getting to Know Elder M. Russell Ballard,” Liahona, Aug. 2005, F11
Special Witness:
Getting to Know Elder M. Russell Ballard
Adapted from Kathleen Lubeck, “Elder M. Russell Ballard: True to the Faith,” Ensign, Mar. 1986, 6–11; “Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles,” Ensign, Nov. 1985, 99–100; “Elder Melvin Russell Ballard, Jr., of the First Quorum of the Seventy,” Ensign, May 1976, 134–35.
Photograph by John Luke
To learn more about Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, match the lettered pictures above with the clues below.
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Elder Ballard says that while he was growing up, these people were his friends and they taught him to work hard.
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When he served as a missionary in this country, he was called to be a counselor to two mission presidents.
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He met his wife, Barbara, at a dance. “I kid her now that getting her to agree to marry me was the greatest sales job I ever did,” Elder Ballard says. They were married here.
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n 1974 he was called to serve as a mission president in this country.
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This President of the Church is Elder Ballard’s great-great-uncle.
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He loves spending time with his children. When his son Clark was younger, Elder Ballard would take him to Nevada to visit a mine. For safety, they wore these.
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One of his jobs as an adult was to sell these to people. Later he took over the company that his father had started.
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As a businessman, he advised people to save this whenever possible and to stay out of debt. “But never become so involved in business that you feel unable to accept a Church calling,” he says.
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He has worked under President Gordon B. Hinckley’s direction to “raise the bar”—the standards—for these members of the Church.
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When asked what has helped him prepare to be a Church leader, he says that this event “is the key to any man’s success.”