Elder Allen D. Haynie

First Quorum of the Seventy

Elder Allen Decker Haynie was sustained as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy on April 4, 2015.

Elder Haynie was born on August 29, 1958, to Van Lloyd and Sarah Lulu Lewis Haynie.

He was born in Logan, Utah, but spent much of his youth in other cities in northern Utah and in the Silicon Valley of California. He attended five different elementary schools, two junior high schools, and finally attended a high school in Bountiful, Utah.

This diversity in experience “taught me a great lesson about learning to appreciate everybody,” he said, “because it seemed that every year I was changing locales and having to make friends all over again. One of the things I love about the Church is that it gives us an opportunity to associate with people and find value in their differing backgrounds, experience, talents, and abilities.”

He served in the Argentina Cordoba Mission from 1977 to 1979.

With a bachelor’s degree in political science from Brigham Young University, Elder Haynie went on to obtain a juris doctorate from the university’s J. Reuben Clark Law School in 1985.

He fulfilled a yearlong judicial clerkship on the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Diego, California, before joining the law firm of Latham and Watkins, practicing out of the San Diego office. About five years ago he and his brother formed their own law firm.

Elder Haynie has also served as elders quorum president, ward Young Men president, seminary teacher, high councilor, bishop, stake president, and Area Seventy.

He met Deborah Ruth Hall while attending BYU, and the two were married on December 19, 1983, in the Salt Lake Temple. They are the parents of six children.

Becoming emotional when talking about his testimony, Elder Haynie said he first read and marked the Book of Mormon when he was 12. “I don’t have a memory of not believing; I don’t have a memory of not praying.”