The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will hold a worldwide devotional for Young Adults on Sunday at 8 p.m. LDS young adults from the greater Chattanooga area will participate.
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the First Presidency and his wife, Sister Harriet Uchtdorf, will speak. They will be speaking about the “adventure of mortality.”
Elder Uchtdorf is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and was sustained in 2004. Since 2008, he has been serving as the Second Counselor in the First Presidency.
As told in 2008 by Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles at https://www.lds.org/ensign/2008/07/president-dieter-f-uchtdorf-a-family-man-a-man-of-faith-a-man-foreordained?lang=eng, Dieter F. Uchtdorf was born in Czechoslovakia. As a young boy, he lived in East Germany with his parents, two older brothers and his sister. In 1952, he and his family fled to West Germany to find freedom. They left behind all of their possessions and trekked as refugees. The journey was so dangerous that the family had to split up and journey separately.
By the Grace of God, they all made it – and settled in a suburb near Frankfurt. But they owned nothing. However, they had everything because five years earlier they had joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Uchtdorfs stuck together as a family – and they held to their testimony that God lives, that He is our Father in Heaven, that He loves us and has a plan for us, that Jesus Christ is the only Son of the living God and the Savior of the world.
With his testimony firmly in place, Dieter F. Uchtdorf went on to serve in many callings in the Church of Jesus Christ. He married Harriet Reich in 1962. She is also a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. President Uchtdorf calls her “the sunshine in his life – the love of his life” (Nelson, 2008, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf). In fact, he says he is married to the woman “I had loved since I first saw her.” Theirs is a story of eternity – a happily ever after with no beginning or end.
Prior to being called to serve as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, Dieter F. Uchtdorf was a pilot for Lufthansa Airlines where he achieved the rank of captain at the age of 29. Later, he became chief pilot and senior vice president of flight operations. As an aside, in 1973, when five terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa 737 jet in Rome, Italy, with hostages on board, Lufthansa’s president chose his chief pilot, 33-year old Dieter F. Uchtdorf, to take a plane and follow the hijacked plane. Dieter F. Uchtdorf was to negotiate for the release of the hostages, the pilots, and the plane. He was then to fly the hijacked plane back to Frankfurt. Without bloodshed, Dieter F. Uchtdork accomplished his mission https://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/what-are-prophets/bio/dieter-f-uchtdorf?lang=eng
But, today, President Uchtdorf has a different calling – a sacred calling. As an Apostle of The Lord, his sacred calling is “to teach and testify of the Lord Jesus Christ to ‘every nation, kindred, tongue and people’” (Nelson, 2008).
As President Uchtdorf has said before, “Disciples of Jesus Christ understand that compared to eternity, our existence in this mortal sphere is only ‘a small moment’ in space and time. They know that a person’s true value has little to do with what the world holds in high esteem. They know you could pile up the accumulated currency of the entire world and it could not buy a loaf of bread in the economy of heaven” (You Matter to Him, Uchtdorf, 2011 at (https://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/what-are-prophets/bio/dieter-f-uchtdorf?lang=eng).
This is why young adults across the world and in the greater Chattanooga area are looking forward to hearing from President and Sister Uchtdorf. The Uchtdorfs are an example of the believers – “in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:14). They have much to share about the “adventure of mortality” – about our Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness for each of us and about the hope that Jesus Christ makes possible.
All are invited to watch the broadcast which will be transmitted live from the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, and can be seen on BYUtv on Direct, Dish and EPB, as well as on YouTube and at LDS.org at https://www.lds.org/?lang=eng.