"We Seek After These Things" | Gerrit W. Gong | 2018

Elder Gong shares the lessons we have the opportunity to seek after now, so that in the future we can grow closer to Christ in understanding and love.

This speech was given October 16, 2018.

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"Dear brothers and sisters, my wife, Susan, and I are grateful to be with each of you today on this special campus.

Don’t you love fall and a new school year?

Some here today are freshmen. Welcome. I learned many things as a freshman. For example, as a new freshman, I learned that, while it was not necessarily obvious to me, most people could immediately tell if I was wearing a collared shirt or a collared pajama top (even under a sweater) to class. Similarly, as a new freshman, I learned detergent and bleach are both used to wash clothes but with quite different effects.

Some here today are seniors. Welcome. You are trying to decide which is harder—graduating or knowing what to do after graduating. We know how you feel.

Some here today are preparing for missions with faith and anticipation, and some are returning from missions with spiritual maturity and significant service and testimony. We thank you.

In the rhythm of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, of missions, of seeking a companion who doesn’t get transferred, and of graduate studies, there is a wonderful sense of our time and our season.

Don’t you love President Russell M. Nelson? In this month’s general conference, President Nelson promised:

If we will do our best to restore the correct name of the Lord’s Church, He whose Church this is will pour down His power and blessings upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints, the likes of which we have never seen.1

Across the world, there are only four places where we find in close proximity a house of the Lord, a higher-education campus sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a community of Saints seeking learning “by study and also by faith.”2

Of course, in every institute, Pathway group, or righteous gathering where two or three come together in His name,3 we delight in seeking after that which is “virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy.”4

Daily I am grateful for things I learned and experienced at BYU—sometimes years ago. I could not have imagined then, until I have needed them now, how valuable and significant formative BYU lessons and experiences can be.

Here is an example. On a recent flight from Salt Lake City to New York City, my seat assignment was changed at the last moment—in this case, perhaps not without purpose.

I asked my new seat companion if she was traveling to New York or Milan, the plane’s final destination. The question opened a conversation. After explaining she had spent her life as a bilingual, bicultural Italian-English translator, she began quizzing me about Italian art and culture.

As she queried me about Michelangelo, I remembered a BYU humanities class with Professor Todd A. Britsch. I was able to say that in Michelangelo’s statue Pietà, the same piece of Carrara marble feels alive and lifeless at the same time. Mary is alive with compassion while the body of her son, our Savior, hangs lifeless.

My airplane companion nodded approvingly. We then talked about the Sistine Chapel, where God’s vibrant hand touches Adam’s limp hand, and about Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper in Milan.

Then we talked about Dante. After studying Shakespeare for five years in London, she thought Shakespeare might approximate Dante’s genius and accomplishment. What did I think?

I remembered BYU classes on Shakespeare with Professor Arthur Henry King and others, but I diplomatically suggested both Shakespeare and Dante were great literary figures.

Then something unexpected happened. Seemingly out of the blue, this good woman quietly asked, “You want to know how my son died, don’t you?”

We had been discussing Italian art and ­literature—her language of love. I am an amateur in that language, but perhaps because I was willing to try to listen with my heart, she felt she could say, “My son committed suicide. I am going to Italy to make arrangements.” She then added, “I feel you are a man of God. God put you here today because I have no one I can talk to about these things.”

For the rest of the flight we spoke tenderly about God’s plan of happiness, the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and how families can be together forever."