Elder Alan T. Phillips

General Authority Seventy

From a young age, Elder Alan T. Phillips felt that the Church was true, but he hoped for a more personal witness of the Savior before embarking on full-time missionary service.

“I fasted, prayed, went to the woods,” he said. “I was looking for the big answer.”

Then, one week when his family was away on assignment, he attended sacrament meeting by himself.

“I wasn’t seeking. I was just there—preparing for the sacrament and singing with the congregation,” he said. “For the first time, the words and the idea of ‘his hands pierced and bleeding to pay the debt’¹ for me just jumped out and entered my heart. I felt the reality of Him in relation to me, no longer a concept, no longer abstract. He was, in that moment, my Savior.”

Elder Phillips later prayed, thanking Heavenly Father and telling Him that he would be true the rest of his life to this newfound knowledge God had given him.

That was the moment the reality of the Savior was confirmed to him. He said everything else in his testimony builds from that “sure foundation” (Helaman 5:12).

Alan Thomas Phillips was born in Kent, England, in June 1970 and grew up in Buckinghamshire, England. He married Lindsey Iorg in July 2005 in the Mesa Arizona Temple. They have four children and are members of the Church’s historic Hyde Park Stake in London.

Elder Phillips earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has worked for various organizations in business, finance, and education, including the past four years as the academic director of the Brigham Young University London Centre.

Elder Phillips served a full-time mission in the England Manchester Mission. He has also served as a counselor in the Europe North Area Presidency, Area Seventy, stake president, counselor in a stake presidency, high councilor, and counselor in a bishopric.