Gerrit W. Gong

Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (March 31, 2018 – present)
Presidency of the Seventy (October 4, 2015 – March 31, 2018)
First Quorum of the Seventy (April 3, 2010 – March 31, 2018)

General Conference Addresses

• April 2023 General Conference
  • Ministering
    • “In some places in the Church, we have a ministering gap. More say they are ministering than say they are being ministered to. We do not want checklist concern. But often we need more than a sincere hello in the hall or a casual “Can I help you?” in the parking lot. In many places, we can reach out, understand others where they are, and build relationships when we regularly visit members in their homes. Inspired invitations change lives. When invitations help us make and keep sacred covenants, we draw closer to the Lord and each other.”
    • “We may tire physically. But in His service we do “not weary in well-doing.” We diligently do our best, do not run faster than we have strength, but trust, as the Apostle Paul teaches, that “God loveth a cheerful giver.” For God who “ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown.” In other words, God enriches “every thing to all bountifulness.” They “which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.””
• October 2022 General Conference
  • Happy and Forever
    • “In a remarkable way, the Lord’s prophet is drawing us closer to our Savior, including through sacred temple ordinances and covenants coming closer to us in more places. We have a profound opportunity and gift to discover new spiritual understanding, love, repentance, and forgiveness with each other and our families, in time and eternity.”
    • “We cannot knowingly sin on Saturday, then expect automatic forgiveness by partaking of the sacrament on Sunday. To missionaries or others who say following the Spirit means not having to obey mission standards or the commandments, please remember that obeying mission standards and the commandments invite the Spirit. We should none of us put off repentance. The blessings of repentance begin as we begin to repent.”
    • “Sometimes a willingness to repent and an ability to forgive come at different times. Our Savior is our Mediator with God, but He also helps bring us to ourselves and each other as we come to Him. Especially when hurt and pain are deep, repairing our relationships and healing our hearts is hard, perhaps impossible for us on our own. But heaven can give us strength and wisdom beyond our own to know when to hold on and how to let go.”
    • “However we may feel as we begin, we become more whole as we trust Him to make our relationships whole.”
• April 2022 General Conference
  • We Each Have a Story
    • “Sometimes unwavering commitment to abiding family relationships helps us accomplish hard things. In some cases, community becomes family. A remarkable young woman whose troubled family moved frequently found a loving Church family wherever she was to nurture and give her place. Genetics and family patterns influence but do not determine us.”
    • “We each have a story. Come discover yours. Come find your voice, your song, your harmony in Him. This is the very purpose for which God created the heavens and the earth and saw that they were good.”
• October 2021 General Conference
  • Trust Again
    • “My message today is, whether we are coming home or going home, God is coming to meet us. In Him we can find faith and courage, wisdom and discernment to trust again. Likewise, He asks us to keep the light on for each other, to be more forgiving and less judgmental of ourselves and each other, so His Church can be a place where we feel at home, whether we are coming for the first time or returning.”
    • “Trust God and His miracles. We and our relationships can change. Through the Atonement of Christ the Lord, we can put off our selfish natural self and become a child of God, meek, humble, full of faith and appropriate trust. When we repent, when we confess and forsake our sins, the Lord says He remembers them no more. It is not that He forgets; rather, in a remarkable way, it seems He chooses not to remember them, nor need we.”
• April 2021 General Conference
  • Room in the Inn
    • “First, we come to the Inn as we are, with the foibles and imperfections we each have. Yet we all have something needed to contribute. Our journey to God is often found together. We belong as united community—whether confronting pandemics, storms, wildfires, droughts or quietly meeting daily needs. We receive inspiration as we counsel together, listening to each person, including each sister, and the Spirit.”
    • “Also, the majority of adult Church members are now unmarried, widowed, or divorced. This is a significant change. It includes more than half our Relief Society sisters and more than half our adult priesthood brothers. This demographic pattern has been the case in the worldwide Church since 1992 and in the Church in the United States and Canada since 2019.”
    • “Our standing before the Lord and in His Church is not a matter of our marital status but of our becoming faithful and valiant disciples of Jesus Christ.”
• October 2020 General Conference
  • All Nations, Kindreds, and Tongues
    • “Our truest, deepest, most authentic narrative, place, and belonging come when we feel God’s redeeming love, seek grace and miracles through His Son’s Atonement, and establish lasting relationships by sacred covenants.”
    • “Great things often begin small, but God’s miracles are manifest daily. How grateful we are for the supernal gift of the Holy Ghost, the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and His revealed doctrine, ordinances, and covenants found in His restored Church, called in His name.”
    • “Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ do not want us to be paralyzed by continual uncertainty during our mortal journey, wondering whether we have done enough to be saved and exalted. They surely do not want us to be tormented by mistakes from which we have repented, thinking of them as wounds that never heal, or to be excessively apprehensive that we might stumble again.”
• April 2020 General Conference
  • Hosanna and Hallelujah—The Living Jesus Christ: The Heart of Restoration and Easter
    • “Dear brothers and sisters everywhere, as we meet and learn together, your faith and goodness fill me with a sense of gospel adventure and gratitude. Your testimony and gospel journey enrich my testimony and gospel journey. Your concerns and joys, your love for the household of God and community of Saints, and your lived understanding of restored truth and light increase my fulness of the restored gospel, with the living Jesus Christ at its heart.”
• October 2019 General Conference
  • Covenant Belonging
    • “When we covenant all we are, we can become more than we are. Covenant belonging gives us place, narrative, capacity to become. It produces faith unto life and salvation.”
    • “As we honor our covenants, we may sometimes feel we are in the company of angels. And we will be.”
• April 2019 General Conference
  • Good Shepherd, Lamb of God
    • “Today our Savior desires that what we do and who we are becoming will invite others to come, follow Him.”
• October 2018 General Conference
  • Our Campfire of Faith
    • “My testimony is—for those who seek, allow, and live for it—the dawn of faith, sometimes gradually, will come or can return. The light will come when we desire and seek it, when we are patient and obedient to God’s commandments, when we are open to God’s grace, healing, and covenants.”
    • “Faith includes a desire and choice to believe. Faith also comes from obeying God’s commandments, given to bless us, as we follow His covenant path.”
    • “Perfection is in Christ, not in ourselves or in the perfectionism of the world.”
• April 2018 General Conference
  • Christ the Lord Is Risen Today
    • “Words—at least my words—cannot express the overwhelming feelings since President Russell M. Nelson lovingly took my hands in his, my dear Susan at my side, and extended this sacred call from the Lord that took my breath away and has left me weeping many times these past days.”
    • “Together, our covenants and our Savior’s Atonement enable and ennoble. Together, they help us hold on and let go. Together, they sweeten, preserve, sanctify, redeem.”
    • “Everything worthy and eternal is centered in the living reality of God, our loving Eternal Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ, and His Atonement, witnessed by the Holy Ghost.”
• April 2016 General Conference
  • Always Remember Him
    • “We can always remember Him by having confidence in His covenants, promises, and assurances.”
    • “We can always remember Him by gratefully acknowledging His hand throughout our lives.”
    • “We can always remember Him by trusting when the Lord assures us, “He who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.””
    • “If we have unkind feelings, grudges, or resentments or if we have cause to ask forgiveness of others, now is the time to do so.”
    • “He invites us to remember that He is always welcoming us home.”
    • “We can always remember Him on the Sabbath through the sacrament.”
    • “Our Savior invites us to always remember Him as He always remembers us.”
• October 2010 General Conference
  • Temple Mirrors of Eternity: A Testimony of Family
    • “In temple mirrors of eternity, I began to understand my wife and myself as children of our parents and parents to our children, as grandchildren of our grandparents and grandparents to our grandchildren. Mortality’s great lessons distill upon our souls as we learn and teach in eternal roles, including child and parent, parent and child.”
    • “A miracle of the images we discern in temple mirrors of eternity is that they—we—can change. When Jean and Walter Gong entered the new and everlasting covenant, they opened the way for ancestors (such as First Dragon Gong) to be sealed and for posterity to be born in the covenant. Please remember: as we reach out to each sister or brother, we bless generations.”

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