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New Leadership For LDS Church Announced


	Thomas S. Monson was named as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints	Moapa Valley Progress The new First Presidency of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was announced at a press release held in Salt Lake City on Monday, February 4. Thomas S. Monson will fill the vacancy left by President Gordon B. Hinckley as the sixteenth President of the Church; Henry B. Eyring will serve as his First Counselor, with Dieter F. Uchtdorf as Second Counselor. “We pray for the new prophet and his counselors,” said Stake President Asahel Robison,
	LDS Spokesman for Southern Nevada. “We will sustain and support them as we have always done in the past.” Born in Salt Lake City, on August 21, 1927, Monson attended Salt Lake City public schools and graduated cum laude from the University of Utah in 1948, receiving a degree in business management. He later received his MBA degree from Brigham Young University. Monson was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on October 4, 1963, at the age of 36. He has served as a Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church since November 10, 1985. Monson served as president of the Church’s Canadian Mission, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, from 1959 to 1962. Prior to this, he served in the presidency of the Temple View Stake in Salt Lake City, Utah. “President Monson has had a unique ministry in terms of breaking down barriers when the politics seemed to defy it,” Robison said. “This is perhaps best exemplified with his work in the approval of a temple in Freiberg, Germany at a time when it was still behind the iron curtain. President Monson spent years negotiating carefully and quietly with the government of East Germany in bringing that temple project to fruition.”
	Born in Princeton, New Jersey, May 31, 1933 Eyring holds a bachelors degree in Physics from the University of Utah and a Master of Business Administration and Doctor of Business Administration degrees from Harvard University. Eyring has served as Second Counselor in the First Presidency since October 6, 2007. He was named to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 1, 1995.	Henry B. Eyring, First Counselor in the new First Presidency
	Uchtdorf was born in Moravska, Ostrava which at the time was in the Nazi-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now Ostrava, Czech Republic. As a child, his family moved to eastern Germany while his father was away in the army, traveling through areas being bombed by the Allies. Uchtdorf’s family joined the LDS Church when he was young because of his grandmother’s encounter with a church member in a soup line.
	Dieter F. Uchtdorf was named as Second Counselor in the First Presidency.	Uchtdorf first entered the aviation industry as a pilot after serving in the German Air Force. He became a chief pilot and later an executive for Lufthansa Airlines. Uchtdorf twice served as a stake president in the Church. The stakes he presided over were the Frankfurt Germany Stake and the Mannheim Germany Stake. Uchtdorf was first called as a General Authority on April 2, 1994 with an assignment in the Second Quorum of the Seventy. Uchtdorf was sustained as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on October 2, 2004. Uchtdorf is only the eleventh LDS Apostle to be born outside the United States.
	“With the calling of President Uchtdorf the new first presidency reflects more than ever, the international, and indeed universal, nature of the church,” Robison said. The First Presidency is the highest-ranking governing body of the LDS church consisting of the president and his two counselors. This three-man body supervises the work of the entire Church in all matters of policy, organization and administration. The second-highest presiding body in Church government is the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.