1978—Counselor to President Ballif

As I mentioned much earlier, J Reuben Clark was the first General Authority to whom I paid serious attention as a little Saint. In one of his most memorable (and oft-quoted) utterances, he described Church callings as duties which faithful members “neither seek nor decline.” In that spirit, I have always tried to rejoice in the duties and associations that come with my current office, without giving an inappropriate amount of thought to what might come next, nor contrasting unduly the present situation with others. When the Time comes to account for my failings, I don’t expect to be found guilty of any serious degree of Church careerism. excuse to get to know more of its places, people, and history, in the line of duty. President Ballif was then a stranger, but had I known him or of him already, that would have made it even easier to contemplate working with him. My predecessor as Jae’s counselor in the New England Mission Presidency was Lin Bothwell, an old high school acquaintance from ’way back in San Bernardino days. If I recall correctly, he (Lin) had moved out of the area, opening the way for me to receive one of the most delightful Church assignments I’ve yet had. When Bruce Olsen released me, five years later, I wept salt tears of sorrow and loss and still to this day make jokes about the difficulty I’ve felt in exercising the duty of forgiveness toward my wellbeloved cousin (yes, him, too) President Bruce. Mission Presidents normally have two counselors, and Jae was no exception. Few of our functions, however, required the three of us to come together. By mentioning which I hope to excuse myself for retaining no very strong memories of the other counselor. Not even his name. The Mission’s boundaries enclosed a lot of territory from southern Maine through New Hampshire, Vermont,

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and some of Connecticut and New York, and he came, as I think I recall, from a fairly distant part of it. By this time, the Mission had achieved President Packer’s mid-Sixties goal of turning all its former Districts into Stakes. I won’t remember them all, but our area included stakes headquartered in Boston, Hingham, Newport, Hartford, Albany, Montpelier, Manchester (New Hampshire), and Augusta (Maine). The bulge of northern Maine belonged to a mission based in Canada. So, unlike Pappy’s situation in France, Iberia, and North Africa, the New England Mission had responsibility only for its missionaries, and the Stake Presidents bore the full ecclesiastical burden for the Church membership. The President tended to concentrate on supervising, guiding, and motivating the missionaries, who answered to him and to his missionary assistants (and not to the bishops and stake presidents in their assigned areas). And the counselors were primarily responsible to maintain cooperative relations between the Mission and the leaders of the local membership. Our President divided up the stakes between us counselors, and so we did most of our work separately. You might not expect any friction to arise between these overlapping jurisdictions. And, by and large, we were able to promote brotherly and sisterly concord. But not without effort and vigilance: the ecclesiastical authorities didn’t always see their missionary responsibilities and authorities and ours in exactly the same fashion as did the full-time elders and sisters, and so communication and collaboration were significant to both sets of agenda. This division of labor was something of an innovation in New England. Mission Presidents before Jae hadn’t called counselors from the local membership, while they still had ecclesiastical responsibility, at least in parts of their territory.

Counselor to President Tempest…

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