How Well Do You Know Our Church Leaders?

General conference is next month, and among the many speakers will be members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. See if you can match their names with events or other details from their lives.

President Thomas S. Monson
President Henry B. Eyring
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf
President Boyd K. Packer
Elder L. Tom Perry
Elder Russell M. Nelson
Elder Dallin H. Oaks
Elder M. Russell Ballard
Elder Richard G. Scott
Elder Robert D. Hales
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Elder David A. Bednar
Elder Quentin L. Cook
Elder D. Todd Christofferson
Elder Neil L. Andersen

As a youth he enjoyed playing vanball, a modified version of volleyball.
This leader shares his name with his father and is known among family and close friends as Hal.
When this Apostle was a deacon, his father, an artist, took him to the Sacred Grove. Upon returning home, his father painted a picture of the Sacred Grove for him. Ever since that time, this Apostle has hung that painting in his office as a reminder of that special visit.
When he was five, his family moved to a dairy farm in Pocatello, Idaho, USA, where he raised rabbits, rode horses, and played in the fields with his siblings.
He is the only member of the First Presidency or Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to have been born outside the United States.
As a high school student, he served as senior-class president and participated in debate.
An avid athlete from a young age, he lettered in football, basketball, track, and baseball at his high school and was a member of state-championship football and basketball teams.
He played checkers with his young son nearly every night. His son remembers, “He’d play three games of checkers. He’d let me win one, then he’d beat me at one, and then we’d play give-away checkers, and either one of us could win that.”
He served his country as a World War II pilot in his early 20s.
To earn money for college, he worked on an oyster boat. Other fishermen ridiculed him for refusing to drink alcohol until a man went overboard; this Apostle, because of his commitment to abstain, was sober and was sent to rescue the man who had gone overboard.
As a college student he worked as a radio announcer.
Prior to his call to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he was president of Ricks College and helped the school make its transition to Brigham Young University–Idaho.
He performed open-heart surgery on President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) a short time before President Kimball became President of the Church.
Elder Scott was this Apostle’s mission president in Argentina.
Before he was called as a General Authority, he, like his father, worked in the automobile business.