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Welcome to the first Church History Library Men and Women of Faith Lecture for 19-- Here we go. [LAUGHTER] I live in the past. What can I say? 2014. Tonight's lecture is entitled "Neal A. Maxwell: A Story of a Disciple's Life." Our presenter is Elder Bruce C. Hafen, an emeritus member of the first Quorum of the Seventy. We acknowledge in attendance several members of the first Quorum of the Seventy and other General Authorities. The General Relief Society Presidency and General Relief Society board, welcome. And we also acknowledge several members of the Maxwell family, including Sister Colleen Maxwell. We are very honored to have you here. My name is Deborah Xavier. I am the marketing and communications specialist for the Church History Department. Elder Bruce C. Hafen grew up in St. George, Utah. And sitting on the stand is also his wife, Marie. After serving a mission in Germany, he met Marie from Bountiful, Utah, at BYU. They were married in the St. George Temple. And they recently served as President and Matron of that temple from 2010 to 2013. The Hafens have seven children and 44 grandchildren. Is that still correct? OK. Elder Hafen received a bachelor's degree from BYU and a juris doctorate degree from the University of Utah in 1967. After practicing law in Salt Lake City, he went to BYU as a member of the original faculty of BYU's law school. He served as the President of BYU Idaho, formerly Ricks College, from 1978 to 1985. Then he was the dean of the BYU law school and later served as the provost, the chief academic officer, at BYU. He was called as a General Authority in 1996. As a member of the first Quorum of the Seventy, he served in area presidencies in Australia, North America Central Area, and Europe. He also served as the Executive Director of the Priesthood Department. And he was there until becoming an emeritus General Authority in 2010. He is the author of several books, including Believing, Broken, and Belonging Heart series. During the October general conference in 1999, Elder Neal A. Maxwell asked Elder Hafen to write his biography. Shortly after returning home in August of 2000 from serving at Australia, Elder Hafen embarked on a spiritual journey of fulfilling Elder Maxwell's request. Welcome, Elder Hafen.

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Thank you, Sister Xavier. Brothers and sisters, it's a great treat for Marie and for me to be here tonight. Sister Colleen Maxwell, so glad you are here. And we also are very glad to see Elder Snow and his colleagues, who are the General Authorities assigned to the Church History Department. And it's an added treat and bonus to have the Relief Society Presidency and board here, and all the rest who are here. I know we share a common interest in Elder Maxwell. I've been asked to talk about my experience in writing his biography. I think to start with, for those who may not know, let me just summarize a few headlines about him. He was born in Salt Lake City in 1926, served in World War II, and then was a missionary in Canada. He attended the University of Utah. He married Colleen Hinckley in 1950. And they had four children: Becky, Cory, Nancy, and Jane. He taught political science and was an administrator at the University of Utah until becoming Commissioner of Education for the Church in 1970. He was called as a General Authority in 1974, becoming an Apostle in 1981. He contracted leukemia in 1996 and passed away in 2004. It's been 10 years. The story behind my work on Elder Maxwell's biography really takes us back to 1976 when he invited me to take a leave from my work at BYU and come and work with him at Church headquarters, where he'd been assigned as the managing director of a new department, the Correlation Department. In later years, when I was an administrator at Ricks College-- BYU-Idaho-- and then BYU Provo as well, I would often see him at meetings of the Church Board of Education, where he was a key leader. In 1996 I was called to the Seventy and assigned to an Area Presidency in Australia. I would remain there for four years. Like so many of you, my wife, Marie, and I were stunned when we learned that Elder Maxwell had leukemia later that year of 1996. He was 70 years old. After we heard that he was receiving daily and intensive inpatient chemotherapy, we prayed continually for him. We then shared with the Church a profound sense of gratitude when his cancer went into remission in 1997. And he made that unforgettable appearance in general conference.

Two years later, during October conference, he invited me to come by his office. As we talked, he was very uncertain about his condition. I still remember his phrase. "Well, I'm OK now. But one of these days, the leukemia will be back." And then he explained that, for that reason, because he didn't anticipate he had a long time, had no idea how long, he had finally yielded to the prodding of the people who had encouraged him to have his biography written. I thought he was asking for my advice about that. And I said, yes, you should have it written, by all means. And I told him all the reasons why. [LAUGHTER] And then he asked if I would write it. And I couldn't believe he was serious. I was honored that he would think of that. I hadn't written a biography before. But I was in Australia on a Church assignment. And we didn't know if he would live a long time or a short time. And so I explained to him why this was not a good idea. This was a very hard thing, to be saying no to someone I loved and honored so much. But it just didn't seem to me that it could work. I knew he hadn't kept a personal journal. I explained to him, you have to do research before you can write a biography. Somebody's got to do a lot of interviews. There's all this work that has to be done. And I said, "I'd be glad to recommend somebody." And he just nodded quietly, kind of waited for me to be done with that. [LAUGHTER] So nonetheless, after some more visits and talking with a few others, I agreed that I would go ahead as quickly as possible. You can perhaps imagine how I felt. We had three days until our plane went back to Sydney. I had no idea how this could be done. We got to Australia. Deborah just said in the introduction, he started it after he got home from Australia. That would have been a really good idea. But it was not possible. I had just started in Australia. We were the first year in that assignment. And so I still remember waking up often in those beautiful Australian mornings where the birds rule with their cries in the morning. And I would wake up thinking, I'm going to write a biography for Elder Maxwell. And I'm glad that dream is over, because it just-- and then the reality would hit me. And I would remember scriptures about how the Lord would help us when we have work to do. Then as time went by, I found really wonderful people who wanted to help. And that brought about peace to both Marie and me. We realized we had been given a rare privilege. And so whatever came of this experience would bless us. We prayed fervently that the Lord would lengthen Elder Maxwell's life. After such prayers, I would sometimes remember what I'd heard him teach, quoting from the Book of Daniel: But if not, meaning we do everything we can in a situation where we don't know the end from the beginning. And if we are able to finish, wonderful. And if we're not, it mattereth not. Looking back now, I believe we all witnessed a genuine miracle in the Church. Elder Maxwell's oncologist, a Church member named Clyde Ford, told me that Elder Maxwell had beaten the statistical odds when his leukemia went into its first remission, which lasted about 15 months. When the illness returned in 1998, the odds were much worse. Dr. Ford knew that even if the standard medical treatment would achieve a second remission, it would inevitably be shorter than the first remission. And so he told me how he went about his work. He prayerfully studied the medical journals. He kept saying to himself, "This is Elder Maxwell. I need to find something." And then he ran across a report of a very small-scale study that had been done in Sweden with doctors who were using a new treatment pattern. The sample size wasn't enough-- wasn't big enough to justify much of a prediction. But Dr. Ford proposed this to the Maxwells. And they agreed. This treatment kept his illness at bay for another six years, until 2004. Along with its far more substantial blessings, that miracle made it possible to have a biography that drew on lengthy interviews with Elder Maxwell. And it was also possible that he and Sister Maxwell were able to read the whole manuscript and offer comments on it. You can perhaps imagine how important that was for me. Let me tell you an instructive little story I thought about in these last few days, getting ready for this moment. When Elder Maxwell first learned how serious his leukemia was and how much the odds were against any remission at all, he was inclined to just accept the inevitable. He had worked for years, asking the Lord to help him tame his own strong will. He had talked about being meek and submissive, not only in counseling others, but he was often talking to himself. He wanted to follow King Benjamin's advice by being willing to submit to all things the Lord seeth fit to inflict on him. And I heard him say he felt no claim to a special miracle. And he didn't want to promote a fan club to demand a miracle. But after numerous discussions together, Colleen saw things differently. And she knew how to get his attention: by talking about doctrine. She said something like this. This is a paraphrase. Neal, I think you haven't paid enough attention to the first part of the scriptural account of the Savior's experience in Gethsemane. It's true that he said, "Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." But before that, he said, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." He's our model in all things. Don't you think it would be OK if you were to ask the Lord if it were possible, let this pass from me? He had learned to listen to Sister Maxwell through a long lifetime of very close listening to each other. And so he accepted her counsel. And they went ahead with the treatment. This incident illustrates to me something I'd heard Elder Maxwell say more than once. He said something like this: "For too long in the Church, the men have been the theologians and the women have been the Christians. It's time to change that, because both men and women can be both Christians and theologians." And he honored that in his own relationship with Sister Maxwell. Well, my work on this project caused me to ask myself, why do we read, let alone write, biographies? Since ancient days, we've been taught the gospel by stories-- the accounts of the War in Heaven, Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel-- the first stories showing what happens to people who live God's teachings, or who don't live them. The New Testament is itself a story about Jesus-- who He was, what He taught, and what He did. The life of Christ is the story of giving the Atonement. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of receiving the Atonement. As we experience mortality the way our first parents did, we struggle with opposition between good and evil. And we can look at the story of Adam and Eve and say, that is the story of my life. And when we tell our own stories to each other, we realize that the cosmic quest to overcome evil and find God is a very personal quest for each of us. Even our own testimonies are simply true stories that capture in vivid detail how the Lord blesses us, protects us, changes us, and helps us overcome. Nothing brings the Spirit into a conversation or a classroom more than hearing people just bear honest testimony, telling the story of their personal experience. The Church membership itself is the aggregation of thousands of personal stories, testimonies from people all over the world. Every one of these stories is unique, richly textured, full of meaning, full of lessons about life. Each story develops its own fresh narrative each day against the many oppositions of mortality. Recent research tells us that children who know their own family stories-- the life stories of ancestors, parents, others-- are better able to cope with disappointment and stress than children who don't know those stories. And we live in a world where we're losing the connection with those stories. My own mother lost her husband, a son, a sister, and both of her parents during a span of just a few years. In her later years, my mom would sometimes ask our children at dinnertime, "Well, what hard things did you do today?" That question, and their answers around the dinner table, always touched our children's hearts. Now, many years later, I recently heard one of our daughters say she's teaching her children, we do hard things, and we can do it. I said, that's really good. Where did you hear that? She knew where I heard it. She said, "From Grandma Hafen." And she smiled. Even the scriptures are mostly a collection of stories. We have those stories because God asked His prophets to write down their experiences in His desire to give us guidance about life. The Lord could have given us a big rule book. He could have given us a bunch of essays about the meaning of life. Well, He's given us some of those things. But they're embodied primarily in stories, stories about people like ourselves. Again and again, we hear the Book of Mormon tell some story about somebody's experience. And then we read "and thus we see." Elder Maxwell's life story is valuable in all these ways. And it's valuable at a couple of levels. One is a chapter in the history of the Church. The other, particularly his story, illustrates the process of trying to become a disciple of Christ. One of my hopes in telling this story was not just to record the life of a Church leader, important as that was and is, but also to offer his experience as one model to anyone seeking to be a true disciple. I'll have more to say about that in a few minutes. The Bible Dictionary defines a disciple as "a pupil or learner, a name used to Denote, capital D, the Twelve, also called Apostles, and lowercase D, all followers of Jesus Christ." Close quote. I wanted to speak in that book about both meanings, as suggested by the biography's opening sentence. "All Apostles are disciples. But not all of Jesus's disciples are Apostles." The Church History Department works primarily with the history of the institutional Church. But the personal history stories of all disciples' lives, disciples with a capital D and a small D, teach us about God's interaction with His people. That may be one reason for this wonderful lecture series about men and women of faith. Just a few words now about the research and writing process for Elder Maxwell's biography. The day after I agreed to proceed, I had a heaven-sent conversation with my close friend Elder Marland K. Jensen, who later became the Church historian. After hearing my worries about conducting interviews from Australia, he suggested that I contact Gordon Irving. And he told me that Gordon was the Church's primary oral historian. I called Gordon on the phone, but I didn't have time to go see him before we left for Australia. So we became pen pals. During the next six months, we swapped lots of emails. As it turned out, Gordon became my principal collaborator. Using an agenda of research questions that we shaped together, we prepared for interviews he would conduct, decided who we would see.

The interviews, first of all, were with Elder Maxwell. He conducted 18 separate interviews which, when transcribed, filled 560 pages. In addition to the interviews that I later did, Gordon did most of the interviews. He recorded, had transcribed, edited interviews about Elder Maxwell with each member of the First Presidency, numerous other General Authorities, and several other people, members of the family. Gordon would email the edited transcripts to me for my research base. And his well-schooled and faithful touch made this a much better book. My other indispensable email companion was Elder Maxwell's son Cory, who in some kind of poetic justice is tonight in Australia as a mission president. He's learning how those birds sing as well. Cory combed and inventoried and copied and shipped us a weekly care package across the Pacific, portions of the large annual scrapbooks that Elder Maxwell's secretaries had compiled since the late 1960s. As helpful as these materials were, I soon realized why a biography really can't be much better than its primary sources. The parts of the story of Elder Maxwell's life-- and I think any biography, I understand better now-- the stories that draw on such contemporaneous materials as letters and journals and personal writings are richer than other parts of the story. Elder Maxwell was always such a clean-desk man that he didn't keep much correspondence or other personal papers. His written personal history was mostly an annual summary of key events without much commentary. I once asked him if he had written letters home while he was in World War II or on his mission. He said, "Oh, there's nothing profound in those little letters." When I finally did receive copies of some of those letters, all we could find, my feeling for this process began to change. Suddenly I could sense for myself why Churchill's biographer, Martin Gilbert, called such letters "history's gold." The issue here is the depth of real evidence. Memories recalled years afterward are very helpful. But they're just not the same as uninterpreted, contemporaneous evidence that allows readers to draw their own conclusions. Let me give you one small example.

Neal's experience as an 18-year-old infantryman on Okinawa during World War II was a defining moment for his entire life. He was in a mortar crew in a ferocious battle. One night in May of 1945-- you can see him in the middle on the left-- the shrieking noise of artillery fire caught Neal's attention with a frightening realization. He noticed that three shells in a row had exploded in a sequence that sent him a dreadful message. The enemy had completely triangulated his position. And the next series of shots would hit home. Suddenly a shell exploded no more than five feet from where he was. Terribly shaken, he jumped from his muddy foxhole and moved down a little knoll, seeking protection. And then, uncertain what to do, he crawled back to the foxhole. And there he knelt, trembling, and spoke the deepest prayer of his life, pleading for protection and dedicating the rest of his life to the Lord. In his pocket, he was also carrying a smudged copy of his patriarchal blessing, which contained a special promise of protection for him. No more shells exploded near him after that moment. He came to know God that night in a way that changed him. It directed his life course. When the leukemia came, he would often compare that experience with Okinawa, both in its terror and in its spiritual impact on him. I knew this was a significant event for Elder Maxwell. He always kept a picture of Flattop Hill, the picture you see now, in his office. But I knew almost nothing specific about Okinawa. So I began reading about that battle in its historical context after my esteemed research assistant, Marie, went to the Sydney City Library while I was working in the area. And she would bring home books. I remember the big stack of books about World War II that she had on the kitchen table. I learned from those books about Okinawa. I learned why the Japanese defense of Okinawa was so fierce. I came across detailed accounts of the miserable battlefield conditions there. During the time of Neal's key battle, the place was a mess. The intensity of the fighting combined with the deplorable conditions made some people who survived this trauma unable to talk about it for years. Heavy rains turned the battlefield into such a mud puddle that even tanks disappeared into the ooze. Disease and dysentery plagued the soldiers. They were so exhausted that what little sleep they got was often while standing up in the mud. Supply trucks couldn't provide consistent food and ammunition, so the troops were always hungry. And especially, they were always thirsty. Even when they had water, it was often too foul and oily to drink. One historian said the only thing that saved the soldiers from the unrelenting thirst was coffee, which, having been boiled, was at least drinkable. Not long after reading these military histories, I ran across an innocent little paragraph in a short letter that young Neal had hastily scrawled to his family during the Okinawa battle. I'll quote it. "Had a dream the other night," he wrote to his parents. He was 18. "You folks were holding Carol--" that's his sister-- "up to a window. And I was saying 'boo' to her. And she laughed, just as she does. Boy, if that didn't make me blue. It's rough here. It'll be wonderful to bathe again. Still not smoking, drinking tea, or coffee. Nothing great. But the coffee is tempting sometimes." When I showed Elder Maxwell that letter, I asked him, "Do you remember why the coffee was tempting?" He couldn't remember. I asked if he remembered how thirsty they were and how hard it was to get water. He did remember this detail, that he blessed his own sacrament each day that he was pretty sure it was Sunday. And to get enough water for his own sacrament, he would take the metal helmet off his helmet liner, just the metal part. And he would hold it to the rain and gather enough water for his sacrament. Then he would bless it. But he didn't remember the thirst. And he didn't remember the connection between that and his comment to the family about the coffee. And he never did drink coffee, then or ever. And the combination of knowing that messy battlefield context and seeing his innocent reference to being tempted but not giving in helped me discover how the battle shaped his character. I believe his determination to avoid the coffee was a very practical, youthful expression of the commitment and sacrifice he made on Okinawa to serve the Lord. This experience illustrated for me the value of specific details and contemporaneous sources in telling the story. Another research source that offered rich contemporaneous evidence about Elder Maxwell's personal development was his prolific writing and speaking.

Neal Maxwell, as all of you know who are here tonight, was just a very interesting person.

His verbal style was so distinctive that I could only call it "Maxwellian." [LAUGHTER] As President Hinckley once said, quote, "Neal speaks differently from any of the other General Authorities. He just has a unique style all his own. We all admire it." At Elder Maxwell's funeral, President Hinckley added this: "Each talk was a masterpiece. Each book was a work of art, worthy of repeated reading. I think we shall not see one like him again."

I'll offer only brief comments about his approach to language. Then I'll say something later about content. For one thing, his handwriting was nearly illegible. When his son Cory was in his teens, Elder Maxwell once left him a handwritten note when Elder Maxwell was going out of town. Corey couldn't read the note. He brought it in to his mom in the kitchen. And she looked at it and said, "Well, I think you've got it upside down." [LAUGHTER] So they turned it right side up and they still couldn't read it. [LAUGHTER] President Hinckley once said at a dinner-- President Hinckley knew this man pretty well. At a dinner of tribute at the University of Utah for Elder Maxwell, President Hinckley said, "Surely a man who has so many virtues must have a vice or two. Have you ever seen Neal's handwriting? I don't know how in the world Colleen ever derived any comfort from anything he ever wrote to her." [LAUGHTER] The tales about Elder Maxwell's use of language are legendary. A returned missionary who was translating live into Mandarin Chinese for general conference a few years ago told me that the translation staff here at Church headquarters had categorized Conference talks. They normally had four categories, four being the highest level of difficulty for a translator. And they had one other category-- level five for Elder Maxwell. [LAUGHTER] He explained that the challenge was not that he used big, fancy words. The challenge was that his language was so compressed, full of carefully chosen imagery, metaphors, and allusions. One" of his talks is like a bouillon cube," said Karen Bradshaw Maxwell, his daughter-in-law, with a pretty good metaphor of her own. She said, "Metaphors are a great way to say a lot in a few words. But the listener must bring something to it before it will expand for you." Consider one little example from a general conference sentence. Elder Maxwell referred to people who take too many risks with their religious faith by engaging in what he called "intellectual bungee jumping." Try translating that into Chinese. [LAUGHTER] Elder Maxwell's use of language also reflected a unique and very quick sense of humor. When he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve in 1981, the Ensign asked me to write an article about his life for the Ensign. In my only comment about his service as a young missionary, I included something in my draft of that article, something I'd heard him say about his mission. And I knew he cared about this sentence because he sometimes would share it with missionaries to comfort those who were struggling in their missions. The sentence as I wrote it originally was "Elder Maxwell served a mission to Canada. Helping maintain his sense of realism, the Maxwell children occasionally remind their father that on his mission, he baptized two people and excommunicated four as a branch president, for a net loss of two." [LAUGHTER] The magazine editors who read my draft suggested that we delete that sentence. And then they said they would defer to the new Apostle, Elder Maxwell. So I told him what they were recommending. I said, I'm happy to do whatever you want. And he smiled and said, "Those people don't have much of a sense of humor, do they? Let's leave the sentence in." [LAUGHTER] I checked today on LDS.org. It still has that sentence in it.

And that will comfort some missionaries. Once when I was in the BYU administration, we worked for months with faculty committees to draft an important University statement on academic freedom. Because the statement needed to address numerous complex faculty issues, it was about 20 pages long. It also needed approval by the BYU Board of Trustees, which included the First Presidency, several of the Twelve. We sent the statement to the board members so they could read it before our meeting with them. Just before the meeting was about to begin, one of the senior Brethren walked into the room holding that BYU document in his hand. And he asked in a kind way, to no one in particular, "Why does this thing have to read like it was written by a bunch of professors?" Well, that's who had written it. [LAUGHTER] But some of us sat there. And quick as a wink, Elder Maxwell, with a little smile, called this man by his first name and said, "Well, you know, the Doctrine and Covenants says each man gets to hear the gospel in his own tongue." [LAUGHTER] I had originally expected that the main theme of Elder Maxwell's life would be his rare contributions to the Church as a role model for educated Latter-day Saints. Consider a few comments about that theme. In his 1957 book called The Mormons, which was a very widely circulated book back then, a Catholic sociologist named Thomas O'Dea who had taught at the University of Utah summarized toward the end of his book what he called the major sources of strain and conflict for "the Mormons," as he called it. Heading his list about possible future sources of conflict was the problem he saw coming between the Church's emphasis on higher education and its authoritarian theology. He wrote, "Perhaps Mormonism's greatest and most significant problem is its encounter with modern secular thought." He noted that the Church had long emphasized education. But he observed correctly that the skepticism engendered by higher education reflects the secular culture of our age. O'Dea predicted that Mormon youth, who he said usually come from a background of rural and quite literal Mormonism, would encounter in their university studies much doubt and confusion, bringing religious crisis to them and profound danger to the Church. O'Dea believed this conflict was so significant that at least from his vantage point in the mid-'50s, he said, "Upon the outcome of this problem will depend, in a deeper sense, the future of Mormonism." I encountered this conflict myself close to that era as a university student when I enrolled at BYU in 1963 after my mission. I seemed to bump against that problem everywhere I turned. I had one friend who was a seminary teacher who told me to avoid classes in subjects like history and literature and philosophy because they would lead me into intellectual apostasy. But some of my professors of liberal arts classes told me to beware of anti-intellectual religion teachers who, as one person put it, "expect the Holy Ghost to do their thinking for them." That year I took a superb religion course from the Dean of Religion at BYU, West Belnap. It was called "Your Religious Problems." I met Marie in that class, which solved my biggest religious problem. [LAUGHTER] I called the topic I presented to the class-- as each student did, that was the format-- mine was called "liberalism versus conservatism in the Church." I was looking for a framework to help me understand and resolve issues and conflicts that ranged from evolution and politics to women's rights and constitutional law. And I suspect that my experience wasn't really unusual. The potential for the problem O'Dea had identified was growing in the Church because the American boom in higher education in the last half of the 20th century drew an ever higher fraction of LDS people to college campuses. And the apparent conflict between accepting religious authority and the independence fostered by a liberal education can create a paradox that seems difficult to resolve. I-- like many of you, I suspect-- have been in many discussions over the years about how to reconcile reason and faith. These discussions can help. But I have found that the best resolution to the faith/reason paradox is not in abstract analysis, but in the lives of real people whose actual experience demonstrates how a faithful spiritual life and a rigorous education can work together to yield both greater spiritual depth and a more abundant intellectual life. I've come to find the best way for students to resolve this conflict is to have a mentor, a good teacher whose example they can watch and follow. That mentoring is part of the educational vision that guides everything we do at our Church, colleges, and schools. During the 1970s and '80s, I, along with many others, was blessed to enjoy a mentoring relationship with Neal Maxwell, who was so very competent and yet so very faithful. Because of the way Elder Maxwell's example had helped resolve my version of the O'Dea paradox, I wasn't surprised when I ran across this statement from former BYU Social Sciences Dean Martin Hickman, regarding Elder Maxwell's general influence. He said, "Neal Maxwell was a legend in the Church for the depth of his thought, his knowledge of the scriptures, the elegance of his language, and for his compassion for those in and out of the Church who needed comfort." Martin said that "what a good mentoring teacher does for college students, especially in a Church setting, Elder Maxwell provided for an entire generation of young Latter-day Saints who came not only from Utah, but from the continents and islands of the sea all over the Church," close quote. Even now when I'm on the BYU campus, I can still hear the sound of Elder Maxwell's voice echoing off Y Mountain in these paraphrases of talks he gave to faculty and students there. A few samples-- "We can't let the world condemn our value system by calling attention to our professional mediocrity." "A disciple's excellence scholarship is a form of consecration." "We must become truly bilingual, as fluent in the language of the scriptures as in the language of our academic discipline." "In a morally deteriorating culture, we must lean into the fray like Joseph of Egypt, rather than just being another hungry mouth to feed." "Keep your citizenship in Jerusalem, but use your passport to go to Athens." In this role, Commissioner Maxwell also became a principal mentor to three future members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve when he helped bring into leadership positions in the Church educational system Dallin H. Oaks, Jeffrey R. Holland, and Henry B. Eyring. And how did Neal Maxwell learn how to provide such significant mentoring? His two principal mentors during his own young years were G. Homer Durham, who was his professor at the University of Utah, and Harold B. Lee, whom he came to know through an assignment on the Church Leadership Committee. When I learned who Elder Maxwell's mentors were, I reflected on what I had learned from other reading in the biographies of Church leaders. And then I saw a short but potent chain of title for Neal's tutoring process, and a complete vision of Church education. In a nutshell, it goes this way. Carl G. Maeser had originally tutored Brigham Young's children before Brigham Young sent him to Provo to start BYU in 1876. There, Carl Maeser blended the best of his intellectual discipline with his commitment to Brigham Young's advice-- "Don't teach even the multiplication tables without the Spirit of God." And then as the first general superintendent of schools, Carl Maeser taught that vision to a young BYU science teacher named James E. Talmage, who later on taught it to a promising young student named J. Reuben Clark, who taught that vision to a young stake president named Harold B. Lee, who taught that vision to young Neal A. Maxwell. And as if that weren't enough, another young teacher mentored by Carl Maeser was Joseph Tanner, who later mentored young John A. Widtsoe, who later mentored young Homer Durham, who mentored young Neal A. Maxwell. So Elder Maxwell was mentored by teachers who had resolved the O'Dea paradox. He came from a kind of literal authoritarian background. But he encountered with zest the confusion and doubts of the modern secular world at very sophisticated levels. And he emerged with a spiritual maturity that was enriched, rather than undermined, by his educational and professional experiences. Then as a role model, he taught other young teachers and students how to blend their hearts and their minds. I thank the Lord for such teachers, both in my own life and in today's generation of Latter-day Saints. I began my research with the assumption that Elder Maxwell's example as an educator would be his greatest contribution. But it soon became clear to me that the long-term, central message of Neal Maxwell's life and his teachings had a much broader, deeper focus. And that was how to become a true follower of Jesus Christ. His work as a teacher and scholar still mattered. In fact, they mattered even more, given his fundamental theme. But his life story, as Sheri Dew once said, is a kind of manual on trying to be a disciple of Jesus. The title of his biography is, then, A Disciple's Life. Let's consider both what he taught and how he lived in conveying that message. His talks and his prolific writing over the years are a veritable library of his letters to the Saints. These messages also reveal a great deal about him. As much as any other biographical evidence, the evolving word print of Neal Maxwell's writing faithfully tracked and illustrated both his personality and his own spiritual growth. He wrote autobiographically, even if he never said so. And maybe he didn't even think so. I don't know. But the eventual but central theme of his writing became personal discipleship. It became the central preoccupation of his life. So most of his writing consists of little typewritten notes he left tacked on the trees, metaphorically, for those of us who would come afterward on the path of discipleship. As he once wrote, "Having found the only passage, we should willingly service guides for other wanderers." Let me offer just one little example-- his use of the term, the word, "disciple." It changed over time from bud to blossom, as reflected in his writing and life experience. In the 1960s when he was a teacher and leader at the University of Utah, he used the word "disciple" essentially as a synonym for Church member. In the early 1970s when he was Commissioner of Education for the Church, he saw further that a disciple was a Church member who disengaged from the unclean and worldly distractions of the secular culture that surrounds us. And then a few years later, after his call as a General Authority, his experience with two young fathers who had terminal cancer launched him on a quest to understand the connections between discipleship and adversity. In a book he dedicated to these two young fathers, he used a phrase that hauntingly anticipated the leukemia that would strike him nearly two decades later. He wrote, "The very act of choosing to be a disciple can bring to us a certain special suffering. All who will can come to know what Paul called 'the fellowship of His suffering.'" Close quote. In 1981, about three years after writing these words, Elder Maxwell was called to the Quorum of the Twelve, filling the vacancy created by Elder Gordon B. Hinckley's call to the First Presidency. That call soon focused him intently on discipleship as a personal relationship with Jesus, a master/apprentice relationship, a tutorial in which the disciple has the duty to become more like the master. Now he began to see discipleship as a personal growth process designed to develop Christlike attributes. This let him see that suffering, when it's part of a divine tutorial, can be personally sanctifying, helping the disciple develop the skills and attitudes he uniquely needs to learn. During the late 1980s and into the 1990s, he built on this foundation to focus both his personal discipline and his writing on such qualities as meekness and submissiveness, submitting not only to the commandments, but accepting whatever the master may inflict on the apprentice to teach him how he personally may become more like the master. Then he sensed that, in his words, quote, "If we are serious about our discipleship, Jesus will eventually request each of us to do those very things which are the most difficult for us to do." Close quote. This was what he came to call "the wintry doctrine." At the funeral of a young father in 1996, he put it this way. Quote, "There are in the gospel warm and cuddly doctrines. And then there are some that are just outright wintry doctrines. One of them, frankly, is that we can't approach real consecration without passing through appropriate clinical experience, because we don't achieve consecration in the abstract. Sometimes, therefore, the best people have the worst experiences because they are the most ready to learn." Close quote. Only a few months after writing these words-- saying these words at that funeral, the dark shadows of leukemia entered Neal Maxwell's life. He immediately sensed that his readiness to learn had qualified him for his own clinical experience and what he started calling the graduate curriculum in the school of discipleship. Indeed, given his previous preoccupation with the connection between discipleship and adversity, he said of his illness, "I should have seen it coming." [CROWD MURMURS] In his own season of the wintry doctrine, Elder Maxwell said he learned especially about empathy, which made him far more able to understand what others were going through and their own wintry trials. During the mid-1970s, he'd been so moved by watching President Spencer W. Kimball very personal ministry to the sick and afflicted, he began to reach out more himself in that way. This was learned behavior for Elder Maxwell. He hadn't done a lot of it in earlier years. But it stirred him to meet people, such as those with terminal illnesses and others whose example taught him how affliction can draw people closer to the Lord. Then when his own illness struck, he reached out even more, now in a truly understood empathy. When I was working on the biography, I was touched by the sheer number of people who took the initiative to contact me and tell me how deeply his personal visits-- and so often with his dear companion, Colleen-- how those visits and calls had blessed their lives. I learned that he didn't always wait for invitations. He'd often just call or show up in some unexpected place to express support. And often, he would talk to people-- talk about how to turn a serious illness into an opportunity to learn, drawing close to one's own family and to the Lord. He showed great interest in people who weren't members of the Church, along with less active and estranged Church members. Some of the tenderest stories I heard were about people among his old friends from the University of Utah who were once chilly toward the Church, but who quietly returned, some to be baptized, some for temple ordinances, and all with Neal's compassionate presence and support. He would often make multiple calls and visits, staying close, remembering details, giving encouragement, sometimes for months or years. He paid particular attention to what he called the secondary sufferers, the spouses and family members of the stricken ones. Colleen, who knew this perspective firsthand, was always present to lend strength for those visits. Can I give you just two small examples of his ministry that aren't in the biography? I was just thinking about these today. One day during his cancer years, he invited me to drive with him up to the LDS Hospital on his lunch hour to help him give somebody a blessing. He said we needed to be back for a meeting in half an hour. As we walked quickly down a hospital corridor looking for our patients, some people in a different room saw him coming and said, "Elder Maxwell, you came! How did you know we were praying for you? We're so glad you're here." He walked into that room. There was a man who was very, very sick on the bed. And his family were gathered around. Elder Maxwell didn't know these people at all. But instantly he knew them. He asked such honest, direct questions. We soon gave that father a blessing. And then Elder Maxwell said, "How about your mom? Does she need a blessing, too?" And we gave her a blessing. And we embraced with that family, hurried back to the other room, visited those we were appointed to see, and then rushed back to the meeting. Only a few months ago, I met a bright, interesting man about my age who was in the St. George Temple to receive his own endowment and to be sealed. When I asked about his background, he said he'd gone to the University of Utah as a young student. He wasn't a Church member then. He'd had a terrible experience at the University until he met a person he described as "a guy named Neal Maxwell," who became his friend and guided him through his classes and his questions, making his experience at the U a very good one. He just called him Neal, as so many who knew him did. He had no idea that I knew who Neal Maxwell was. And I didn't say anything yet. Then he went on to tell me just the nutshell of his life, how he ended up at the temple in his late 60s. He said he'd had such bitter experiences as a soldier in Vietnam that his entire adult life had been full of bitterness. I asked, "What finally brought you to the Church?" He said, "I finally figured out that instead of telling God what to do, I needed to let Him tell me what to do." He had joined the Church just a year before he had come to the temple with his wife. Then I said, "I knew your friend Neal Maxwell, actually quite well. He passed away only a few years ago. I don't know if you know that." And then I told him, "I have a strong sense today that your friend Neal rejoices to see you here completing your way through the rest of the curriculum." As I saw the tears in this man's eyes, I said, "After you've finished your endowment and sealing, come back to my office. I'd like to give you a copy of Elder Maxwell's biography in memory of this great day in your life, and in memory of his influence in your life and in mine." He smiled and wiped away the tears as he left. He did come back and he got the book. And after he left, I couldn't stop thinking about his friend Neal, renewing my own sense of privilege to have been so close to him for so long. I realized that his empathy for me, as well as his empathy for so many others, had blessed my life with an unusual degree of peace and security. I really missed him that day. And I felt his closeness. Well, as Elder Maxwell's empathy increased more and more toward his later years, this let him discover experientially what he'd already sensed and taught about Christ's empathy for us. The Savior understands and succors us in our sicknesses and afflictions because He has tasted such sorrow Himself. Elder Maxwell called that "earned empathy." In this photo, he's carrying the Olympic torch for the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002. As I stretched to understand all of this enough to even try and describe it, I realized I would never really grasp all of this until going down a few more wintry roads myself. But I did see a fresh doctrinal link. The increased empathy that Elder Maxwell had found looked more and more to me like what the scriptures call charity. He was coming to feel more fully the pure love of Christ for other people. Then came what was, for me, the most significant doctrinal link, the connection between charity and affliction. Perhaps those who seek apprenticeship with the master of mankind must in some way emulate His sacrificial experience to the fullest extent of their personal capacity. Only then can they taste His empathy and His charity, for only then are we like Him enough to really feel his love for others the way He feels it. He said, "As I have loved you." That charity is a deeper, different love from "love thy neighbor as thyself." Perhaps it isn't possible to have Christ's charity fully without submitting to at least some form of His affliction, not only through physical pain but in many other ways, because after all, charity and suffering are but two sides of the simple, same reality. The Savior's love for all mankind is fully bound up in the exquisite pain He suffered on our behalf. "How sore, you know not," He said. "How hard to bear, you know not." Perhaps we can't really know His love without at least knowing something about His suffering. If so, the personal suffering we confront in the sanctification process, the fellowship of His suffering, could move the pure love of Christ from a concept in our heads to a substance in our hearts. And once in the heart, charity will circulate all through the body, because it's being moved by a new heart. That's what I and so many others like us, many of you here, saw happening in Elder Maxwell's life. Brothers and sisters, I pray that I and each of us may learn from the lives of people like Neal A. Maxwell how better to prepare ourselves to sacrifice and submit ourselves to whatever will help us know the Savior and become more like Him. May we not be surprised and may we not shrink when we discover, paradoxically, how dear a price we may need to pay for what is ultimately a gift, a gift of charity, the pure love of Christ. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Amen.

Do we have time for some questions, Deb? We have just a few minutes for questions.

If you have one, you could stand and I think they'll bring you a microphone.

And if you have any questions about Elder Maxwell's life, Sister Maxwell is here. [LAUGHTER]

I think you've done a great job in presenting Elder Maxwell's life. But truth be told is we probably haven't really written the true biography of him. And having served as a bishop down in Miami, one of the former bishops before me, he had contracted a life-threatening disease similar to Elder Maxwell. And he reached out to him and put his name-- or offered in the First Presidency's prayer envelope for the week. So there's so many things where he reached out that we cannot count them. Or a book could not contain them. Thank you for mentioning that. We've so many that we can't count them. And we wouldn't. In writing that biography, I felt I was kind of treading on sacred ground. I thought, would you try to round up every story of all that reaching out? No. It's too personal. It's almost sacred. It is sacred. And your comment about "the biography couldn't contain them" reminds me of a phrase I had thought of including, but decided not to in the interest of time. So may I add this based on your question? Because that phrase comes from the New Testament, when we're told that all the books in the world couldn't contain the life of Jesus Christ. I heard a wonderful BYU professor named Jeff Keith once say that he thinks the reason that's true is because the Savior's life story includes the life stories of all those for whom he has found-- created a bond through the covenant of the Atonement. And I think it works the other way. Our story includes His, as His includes ours. So thank you for mentioning that. Another question?

Like so many, Elder Maxwell was like a ministering angel to me. And I so much appreciated what he wrote and said. But my question is about something he said one time. He was trying to teach us to encourage others. And he said somebody had encouraged him at a young age, complimented him. And he was still running, still motivated by that in the later years of his life. And I wonder if you remember that story, what the compliment was and who extended it. Oh, I don't know. Do you know, Sister Maxwell? Who could possibly have encouraged-- who could have told him something good when he was young? [LAUGHTER] Everybody he knew, he was that kind of person. So, no. I don't know what it was. As you were starting to talk about that-- he had wonderful stories for so many occasions. When I saw that it was raining tonight and I said to Sister Hafen, do you think the rain will keep away our audience? And I remembered Elder Maxwell's comment, quoting some ancient battle, when one of the warring parties sent a message to the other one saying, if you don't surrender, we will cover the sky till the sky is dark with our arrows coming at you. And the other side responded, good. Fire away. And then we can fight in the shade. [LAUGHTER] Another of his delightful ones about rain-- "never mistake local cloud cover for general darkness." I thought of that one tonight, too. Yes?

Just curious about the daily dialogue with Elder Maxwell. His prose is so magnificent. Just talking with him one-on-one without a talk before him, was it that magnificent all the time? Did he talk that way in real life? Did he, Colleen?

He did. It really-- it was not-- he was not-- what's the word I want? He wasn't overdoing, trying to be clever. I mean, he really-- when he would talk, that was the reason for my quick comment about one of the brethren walked into the room, why does this have to sound like professors or whatever? Well, everybody gets to hear the gospel in their own tongue. That just came right off the top of his head. He simply spoke that way. And that's one of the reasons it was so genuine. I think sometimes people who try to be a little too artful--

you really start to-- it's less genuine. It's less authentic. He was able to reflect what he was and who he was, although I do know this, Sister Maxwell. I know there was a time when he asked me to read something he had written. And I put a question mark in the margin. And he said, "It's too cute, isn't it?" And I said, "Well, I wouldn't have said it that way." And he said, "That's how Colleen said it." [LAUGHTER]

So he crossed it out. How are we doing, Deb? You tell us when to quit. Yes. Sister Maxwell and her children-- I joined the Church at about 26 years old. And I was in the Church just a few years. And I lived on Vashon Island in the state of Washington. And one day we had this group of young married couples with some children come to Vashon Island. And their children were ill. And my wife and I just invited them over to our house to have some lunch with us. And we just appreciated them being there. And I did not realize until about two months later, when I received a signed book from Elder Maxwell saying how much he appreciated the service we had given to his grandchildren. And as a young convert to the Church, receiving a letter from an Apostle of the Lord had a tremendous impact in my life. Thank you.

Elder Hafen, in response to the one gentleman's question about the person who influenced him, I know that he told the story of having an English teacher for whom he had written a paper and had not given it his best effort. And she gave him a D or an F. Yes. And said, Neal, you can do so much more. Thank you. So much better. And that influenced him literally all of his life. Yes. It turned his life around to know that he had to do things better, I think. Thank you for remembering that. I was thinking of a story to encourage him. That was a story to tell him. I mean, it didn't-- you might not think of that as encouragement. It really was. What you just recounted happened exactly the way you said it. He respected that English teacher. And she said, Neal, you can do better than that. And it got his attention because of the relationship they had. And she expressed her confidence, but in a way that was that direct. Thank you.

Maybe more a personal question. With spending that much time with Elder Maxwell and writing his biography, was there anything that he taught you that greatly influenced your life or caused you to change your behavior in some way? Something that really impacted you. What a wonderful question. [LAUGHTER] Oh, I'm really serious about that. I tried to give some of that answer tonight. It is a very personal question. I would say that--

when I said I went into this project expecting to write about education, and then came out of this knowing his life was really about discipleship, and he was such a student of that process, to see how someone who was that good work so hard to be better, and how he did it, and to see the effort that he gave, and to see how it came from his heart, was a magnificent example to me. And so, yes. I want to be like that, not so I can be like Neal Maxwell. I mean, this is not about Neal Maxwell wannabes. This is about his example to all of us in humility and faithfulness every day. What does it look like to try to be a disciple of the Savior? How do we become sanctified? How do we learn to deal with adversity and hard things? How do we turn to the Lord when those things come? We can discover Him in the darkest moments of our lives. So those are lessons for me, for all of us. Thank you for the question. [INAUDIBLE]

There's a microphone right there. [INAUDIBLE] Up there? Oh, excuse me. You're-- [LAUGHTER] You know, there's a song about you in the hymnbook. It's called "An Angel from on High." [LAUGHTER] I can't see you because of the light. But then angels bring lights. [INAUDIBLE] There's a brief mention of West Belnap. And I've heard so many comments about students that have had classes from him and how they've never been the same after that. And in the biography, there's a brief mention of interactions with Elder Maxwell. Did you gain any more insights into that relationship? Oh, well, thank you. That's a wonderful question. [INAUDIBLE] --testimonies I have is the story of losing his glasses. That's Brother Belnap's story. Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] West Belnap was the Dean of Religion at BYU when Marie and I were students there. He's the one who taught that class called "Your Religious Problems." He gave us a demonstration the first day of class of how the format would proceed. He shared with us his religious problem. And it was, I can't figure out how to obtain the gift of charity. He was so honest. We all knew that Brother Belnap had been a stake President. He was on the Church Correlation Committee. He was very close to President Harold B. Lee. He was in his early 40s, a man of wonderful spiritual depth. And he just said to us, how do I find charity? I want that more than I want anything else. What you've just asked about it is, why is West Belnap mentioned at the end of the biography? And the reason is-- there's an allusion to this, but I didn't want to take lots of time with it, take away space in the biography. But I hope the point was clear. West Belnap contracted brain cancer in his early 40s. And he died within a fairly short time after contracting that disease. The pain was unbelievably excruciating. We can't imagine it. I heard about it from his family. And then Marie and I attended that funeral. This was only a few years after we'd had the class from him. Harold B. Lee spoke at that funeral. He knew Brother Belnap really, really well. And I'll always remember President Lee in that funeral talk gesturing to Brother Belnap's wife and I think it was eight children on the front row, saying, we ask ourselves, why was he taken? He must be doing something more important. And then President Lee opened up and said, what could be more important than these children and this dear companion? Then he recounted his experience with West in the hospital one night. And there are such echoes of Elder Maxwell's hospital experience. There were some really awful, excruciating moments for him, for Elder Maxwell, and similarly for Brother Belnap. One night, it was so terrible when Elder Lee was visiting with him in the hospital. He said some question like, do I have to endure this? Why can't-- why can't I just-- why can't I just die? Why can't-- why do I have to-- I don't know the words. You sense the kind of question. And President Lee said to him, you know, West? Maybe there's a purpose in all this. Maybe you'll come to know something through this much suffering that you couldn't learn any other way. Nobody gave much more of an explanation. But Marie and I chose to take from that, maybe, maybe West Belnap got his wish. He found the gift of charity.

And he wouldn't have known how much of a price he would need to pay if he wanted it that much. That's how he and Elder Maxwell are similar. When you start the path of a disciple's journey, you might be asking for more than you really would want. But if you want it enough, the Lord will give it to you. I don't mean for that to sound like doctrine. I don't mean to suggest, brothers and sisters, that we all have to go through horrible physical torment. That's only one illustration. There are so many hard things in life. I don't think we have to look very hard to find them. They find us soon enough. It's just that they can turn us to God. And we can realize our hearts' desires in dark hours by turning to Him. That's what these two lives teach me, Brother Belnap and Elder Maxwell.

OK. I guess, is our time up, Deb? [INAUDIBLE] Yes? OK. [INAUDIBLE] So is this the last question? Yeah. OK. When Elder Maxwell was battling leukemia, did he ever struggle a lot and ask, why me, and all these other questions? And how did he really get through the pain of knowing he was enduring cancer? Because my brother had the same thing. And he died a few days after Elder Maxwell did. And it has always touched me to know that Elder Maxwell was a great prophet. But did he ever struggle with his leukemia and wonder why he had to be the one that went through it? Yes. Yes, he did. In fact, I once heard him say, "I'm now asking the second of the 'why me' questions," because he was in the hospital with two or three young men who were much younger than he was, who still had children at home.

And when they died, and he didn't, he asked the second of the "why me" questions. And that was, "Why not me? Why should they go?" Yes, he did ask them. That's central to much of what we've been talking about.

He asked them. And he asked them in a way-- I go back to that-- maybe we can conclude with this thought. Remember his statement at the funeral for the young father, the one who had been stricken with, I think it was a virus. And he was paralyzed. He was paralyzed for months and wondered, why me? His life was just full of questions. He was despondent. Elder Maxwell got to know that young man. He got to know him well enough. That's when he said at his funeral, "Maybe sometimes the best people have the worst experiences because they're the most willing and ready to learn." So his point was not just "why me?" And that's the end of it. It's-- I suppose you could put it this way. I don't mean to put words in his mouth. But I think this would be his message-- "Why not me? If I want to learn enough to pay the price to learn the insights, the principles, the love, the relationship with God that comes only from descending into the depths, then why not me? I care about it that much." Maybe unless we ask those questions in that constructive way, we won't learn what that survivor of the Martin and Willie handcart experience said. "We came to know God in our extremities, and the price we paid to know Him was a privilege to pay." I think Elder Maxwell would agree with that. Brothers and sisters, it's been wonderful to be with you tonight. Sister Maxwell, so glad you were here. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]

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