Elder Patrick Kearon describes feelings as the first adult convert called as a Latter-day Saint apostle in 119 years
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A future call to serve as a modern apostle of Jesus Christ was inconceivable to a 26-year-old Londoner as he stepped into the waters of baptism in 1987 to become a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Impossible. Utterly impossible. Utterly just beyond the realms of possibility,” Elder Patrick Kearon said Tuesday, six weeks after he became the first adult convert to join the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 119 years.
Even today, the idea of his younger self imagining apostleship baffles him: “Just wouldn’t have crossed my mind. Didn’t.”
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Latter-day Saints believe such callings come from Jesus Christ through the church’s prophet, President Russell M. Nelson.
The trust they placed in Elder Kearon, 62, suddenly swept him up like a tornado six weeks ago. Those swirling winds continue to knock a man who is both Englishman and Irishman about in ways he still struggles to describe, he said Tuesday in an interview with the Deseret News.
An unexpected note and a ‘dizzying’ call
Elder Kearon received a note Dec. 7 as he left another weekly meeting with the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
“Could you meet with President (Russell M.) Nelson in 10 minutes?” the note said.
Elder Kearon was the senior president of the Presidency of the Seventy, responsible for the dozens of General Authority Seventies who support the First Presidency and apostles as they both preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and administer a global church of 17 million.
After a short wait, President Nelson, the church’s prophet and president, greeted him.
“We talked. He asked me some questions. He was beautiful, as is his nature and way. But then he extended the call,” Elder Kearon said. He was to take the seat in the Quorum of the Twelve that had been vacant since the death of President M. Russell Ballard on Nov. 12.
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“You know, there are no words to describe that, as you can imagine,” Elder Kearon said. “There are just no words to describe that.”
Knee-buckling is the term fellow apostle Elder Gary E. Stevenson used after his call.
“Knee-buckling is a good description,” Elder Kearon said. “It is a good description. Dizzying. Shaking. Shocking. We had that moment, and then just a few minutes later — I thought the First Presidency and the Twelve had left — but he said, ‘Well, let’s go and meet the counselors in the First Presidency and the Twelve, and there they were.”
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They greeted him, and President Nelson extended a charge to Elder Kearon. While he was seated, those 14 apostles gathered in a circle around him and laid their hands on his head.
“Then I was ordained and set apart, all in that moment,” Elder Kearon said.
In a matter of minutes, he had gone from a full-time ministry as a General Authority Seventy, which traditionally ends at age 70, to the apostleship, a call to serve for the rest of his life as a special witness of Jesus Christ.
By that point it was about 1:30 in the afternoon, and he had a flight to catch at about 5 p.m., to San Francisco and then on to Hawaii, where he presided over and spoke at BYU-Hawaii’s commencement exercises the next day.
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“Just utterly extraordinary, that chain of events,” Elder Kearon said. “And it still, of course, feels just that way.”
‘Heavenly distraction’
To date, that still includes a great deal of sleeplessness, Elder Kearon said.
“I’m grateful I slept last night, which is amazing,” he said Tuesday. “I slept well, but a lot of sleeplessness and soul searching and all of those inner feelings that I think most of us have in relation to anything we’re asked to do. I still don’t really have words to encapsulate it, but I have to deal with my response to it.”
The best antidote to the internal whirlwind, he said, is getting out and trying to help others, something his calling affords.
After the BYU-Hawaii commencement and Christmas break, Elder Kearon was assigned to accompany a senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve, Elder Quentin L. Cook, at an area instruction meeting for temple presidencies, mission presidents and 44 stake presidencies in Henderson, Nevada.
“That’s where it all feels fine,” Elder Kearon said. “Well, mostly by comparison, because you’re engaged and you’re not thinking — I’m not thinking — about myself. And so that was wonderful. And Elder Cook is of course, just fantastic.”
Last weekend, Elder Kearon was assigned to accompany Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Twelve at the Orem Utah Temple dedication, “another wonderful holy heavenly distraction from myself,” he said.
President Jeffrey R. Holland assigned Elder Christofferson to mentor Elder Kearon in his new role in the Quorum of the Twelve.
“So pray for him,” Elder Kearon said with a laugh. “He’s the ideal mentor in my mind. He’s gentle, kind, thoughtful, anticipates. He gives me sort of practical guidance in terms of, ‘this is roughly how that goes, and these are things you might have on your mind as you approach this moment, and here are some things that I’ve learned.’ That’s kind of his approach. It’s very, very, very gentle, thoughtful and kind, in keeping with the man.”
Elder Kearon’s conversion
Elder Kearon began to learn about the Church of Jesus Christ in London, England, and while living with a Latter-day Saint family when he worked in California in his 20s. When he returned to England, missionaries stopped him on a street in London in 1987.
“Like shining beacons, they were,” he said. He told them, “I admire you greatly, but don’t try to convert me.”
That began a more intensive, six-month study of the church.
“In the midst of that, about three months into that final six months, a sister missionary said, ‘You’re not moving forward,’ which was a funny thing to say to me, personally. ‘Yeah, I suppose not.’”
She asked him if he’d like a blessing. He agreed, and said he felt heavenly power involved.
“It was how I felt, and it was pretty well beyond description in terms of going from a sort of regular, gloomy London day to an impossibly light, bright, soaring sensation,” he said.
He came to learn “the church is true, that our Savior lives and that we can live joyfully here and hereafter, too.” He was baptized on Christmas Eve 1987.
He had no idea that his baptism could come to resemble the 1850 baptism of Charles W. Penrose, who then was 18. In 1904, Elder Penrose was called to the Quorum of the Twelve, the last adult convert to join the Twelve before Elder Kearon.
Elder Kearon’s self-deprecating wit surfaced regularly Tuesday, and again at the mention of Elder Penrose.
“None of this makes me feel any better,” the newest apostle joked upon learning how he is unique in the past century of church leadership.
Elder Kearon’s calling and ordination also marks the first time in 117 years that three members of the Quorum of the Twelve have been from outside the United States. He is both an English and Irish national because he was born in Carlisle, Cumberland, England, and his father was born in Ireland.
Concern for the marginalized
Elder Kearon said his first six months as an apostle come with “refresher orientation” about the church’s three major leadership councils. He is spending January and February with the Missionary Council, March and April with the Priesthood and Family Council and May and June with the Temple and Family History Council.
Many church members appreciated Elder Kearon’s past conference talks in support of abuse victims, refugees and others who are marginalized.
“I think like all of us, I feel for anyone who feels compartmentalized in some way, badged in some way that makes them something other,” he said. “Whoever we are, we’ve had those kinds of experiences. I feel that for anybody in that plight, not necessarily attuned to everyone in those situations, but I want to be better at that.”
