Gordon Bitner Hinckley 1910 - 2008

I feel the need to give something of my kudos to President Hinckley, and I decided to wait until after his funeral to do so. After spending thirty minutes or so last Sunday night making a slide show on Windows Movie Maker I found myself unable to add the music I wanted, so I ditched the idea. Here are some of the pictures from it, however. I'm sure many of your lives were as touched by President Hinckley as deeply as mine has been. I love him so much.


I was able to attend his funeral at the conference center. I found myself so much more emotional than I thought I would be. So I wondered why, and then I realized how much President Hinckley meant to me. More on that at the bottom. These are from his funeral...

Next, his great life...

You can hardly speak of President Hinckley and his character without talking about the relationship he had with his wife in the same sentence. I think the entire church was moved with compassion for him when he lost her and then again and again each time he spoke of her afterward. I have a talk by him entitled, "Living Worthy of the Girl You Will Someday Marry" that I put into the same envelope as my patriarchal blessing when I was fifteen. I have probably read that talk a couple of times a year since then and it will stay in that envelope the rest of my life. I know he pulled much of that material from the overwhelming senses of love and gratitude he had for his own wife. My little goal is to live worthily enough to qualify for the blessing of marrying as perfectly as he did. Here are he and his wife...

I think I got so emotional at his funeral because my love for the gospel has become great. I realized that when President Hinckley was sustained as prophet in the spring of 1995, nearly thirteen years ago, church was just a place I reluctantly went each Sunday, and it meant I had to sit on hard seats, listen to boring adults I couldn't understand, and wear uncomfortable clothes. Now, thirteen years later, my feelings for the gospel couldn't be more different. During President Hinckley's watch, I read the Book of Mormon and for the first time actually understood it, recieved a distinct, vivid, and unexpected answer to a prayer regarding who should be in my presidency in a quorum of thirteen deacons, gained a testimony of the gospel principle-by-principle over two years of sitting in third-hour teachers' quorum lessons, left my group of friends freshman year of high school in response to a spiritual experience, actually received an answer after repeated attempts to find out the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, and learned by experience that blessings do and do not come when we do or do not abide closely to the standards in "For Strength of Youth." As my mission approached and my life was all over the place, going a hundred miles an hour a million different directions, I felt that the church was true and that it was a good thing. Having now completed my mission, all 724 days of which were under President Hinckley's watch, the gospel is not just a good thing in which I believe. It is the happiest truth on the face of the earth. It fills me with incomprehensible joy each time I wonder what I have done to deserve the blessing of being a part of it. It provides continuous blessings each time I achieve my gospel-related goals.

Church has gone from a dreaded place to go on Sundays to my life, and President Hinckley was at the helm the whole time. When I was in Vegas going through the most intense, converting change of heart I have ever gone through, lots of things about my life and the world back home changed, but President Hinckley never did. I grew to love what he so stalwartly represented, and that's why I couldn't hold back tears as we all waved white handkerchiefs and his coffin was taken away, and music played over a slide show of his life.

Check out this short video made with funeral footage http://deseretnews.com/photo/sslides/detail/1,5498,40,00.html?linkTrack=rotator:cvr

Let's all stand a little taller!