DAVID TODD CHRISTOFFERSON Summary

BORN:  24 January 1945

PLACE OF BIRTH: Pleasant Grove, Utah, United States

FATHER: Paul Vickery Christofferson

MOTHER:   Leah Jeanne Swenson Christofferson

ELDER D TODD CHRISTOFFERSON

of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Key Doctrines:

Thanks, especially for “the sacred”—those things that are so precious and private, and divine gifts are often part of this apostle's teachings. Consecration is a topic he also addresses: we consecrate ourselves and our lives to Jesus Christ. He states, “As disciples of Jesus Christ, we ought to do all we can to redeem others from suffering and burdens. Even so, our greatest redemptive service will be to lead them to Christ. Without His Redemption from death and from sin, we have only a gospel of social justice. That may provide some help and reconciliation in the present, but it has no power to draw down from heaven perfect justice and infinite mercy. Ultimate redemption is in Jesus Christ and in Him alone.” (Emphasis mine.)

I learned:

His parents remember him as an obedient and happy child. He says he and his four younger brothers enjoyed a childhood that was “idyllic” and “wholesome.”

“We had a very secure, happy home life,” he remembers. “Father and Mother showed us how to live according to the pattern of the gospel.” As a teenager living in Somerset, New Jersey (where he graduated from high school, Todd Christofferson participated in the cast of the Hill Cumorah Pageant near Palmyra, New York, for two summers. During the production his first year, he remembered his former bishop had encouraged the youth to never give up striving with the Lord until they had “burned into [their] hearts a testimony of the gospel.” Todd had taken the words of his priesthood leader seriously and had prayed about his testimony. But there in Palmyra, the cradle of the Restoration, he determined this was the time and place he was going to get a confirmation.

“One night after the performance, I went to the Sacred Grove alone,” he remembers. “It was a beautiful summer evening. I entered the grove, and began to pray. I prayed very diligently for an hour, maybe more—and nothing happened. . . .” A month later, as he was reading the Book of Mormon, he received his answer. “Without my asking for it, the witness came,” he recalls. “It came without words, actually stronger than words, and I received a very powerful spiritual confirmation—the kind that leaves no doubt—about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Looking back on that experience, I realize that we can’t dictate to God when, where, or how He will speak to us. We just have to be open to receive what He disposes, when He disposes it. It comes according to His will, and it can come to us wherever we are.”

Following high school, Elder Christofferson attended Brigham Young University for a year before leaving to serve a full-time mission in Argentina. There, he says, he learned from “two exceptional mission presidents,” President Ronald V. Stone for the first several months of his mission and President Richard G. Scott (now Elder Scott, a fellow member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles) for the remainder of his mission. Of Elder Scott, Elder Christofferson remembers: “We learned to be exacting of ourselves, as he was of himself. He always focused on the higher possibilities of being able to grow more and do more and accomplish more. Because of that, we began to see a higher vision of ourselves, the work, and what we could accomplish.”

Elder Christofferson graduated from BYU with a bachelor’s degree in 1969 and then pursued a law degree at Duke University. Upon graduating in 1972, he was hired as a law clerk for Judge John J. Sirica, serving during the Watergate proceedings. “It was an exciting experience for a first job out of school,” Elder Christofferson says. “I saw some of the best and some of the worst in the legal profession all mixed together. But that experience showed me what good legal work could do, and that gave me confidence and aspiration.”  He spent his legal career working first at a law firm and then as in-house counsel for banks and other corporations, mostly in the Eastern United States.

He teaches:

“There’s something you can learn from everyone,” says Elder Christofferson . . . “I haven’t found anybody—in or out of the Church —I couldn’t draw something from that made me better.” Ensign, May 2008  

“Inasmuch as we follow Christ, we seek to participate in and further His redemptive work. The greatest service we can provide to others in this life, beginning with those of our own family, is to bring them to Christ through faith and repentance . . . We can also assist in the Lord’s redemption of those beyond the grave (D&C 138:57).  . . . With the benefit of vicarious rites we offer them in the temples of God, even those who died in bondage to sin can be freed . . .for the prisoners shall go free” (Doctrine and Covenants 128:22).” (Emphasis mine.)

The story of the currant bush told by Elder Christofferson in April 2011 General Conference, has deep personal meaning for me. My paternal grandfather knew Elder Brown and enlisted with him in when he was recruiting for WWI in Alberta, Canada. Elder Hugh B. Brown, while serving as a member of "the Council of the Twelve,"later told his experience titled 'The Currant Bush'. It was also published in the Jan 1973 New Era.  

He said, "[The General] went into the other room to answer the telephone, and I took a soldier’s privilege of looking on his desk. I saw my personal history sheet. Right across the bottom of it in bold, block-type letters was written, “THIS MAN IS A MORMON.” … When I saw that, I knew why I had not been appointed. I already held the highest rank of any Mormon in the British Army." Elder Brown tells that after returning to the camp (as we see in a video of Brown's story) and humbling himself, "While kneeling there I heard a song being sung in an adjoining tent. A number of Mormon boys met regularly every Tuesday night. I usually met with them. We would sit on the floor and have a Mutual Improvement Association. As I was kneeling there, praying for forgiveness, I heard their voices singing:

It may not be on the mountain height,

Or over the stormy sea;

It may not be at the battle’s front,

My Lord will have need of me;

But if, by a still, small voice he calls,

 To paths that I do not know,

I’ll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in thine:

I’ll go where you want me to go. (Hymns, no. 75.)

I arose from my knees a humble man."

 My grandfather was one of those Mormon Boys. Elder Brown joined the men and was uplifted as they studied the gospel together. This tightly knit group of soldiers loved and honored their commander and were very sad to know he would not be with them for much longer. He made a point to tell them personally.

Grandpa records: "April 1, 1917 – After supper I got word that Major Brown wanted me to come over to his apartment.  I went over and he and Cap’t Ainscough were there, and he was really feeling blue.  He had returned from conducting troops to France a few days before.  Now the Colonel had put another Major in his place and had told him he could either revert to the ranks or return to Canada for discharge.  He said, if he reverted to the ranks he would probably be sent to France with troops he had never seen, and never see any of the boys he had brought over.  If he returned home he could never make the mothers of those boys understand the position he was in here.  There were only 16 of us here with him, and now he was being taken from us.  He felt it was almost more than he could stand.  Captain Ainscough had been given the same ultimatum, and they were returning home together.  The colonel liked to have his drinking parties, and because they would not join them, and because either of them could handle the troops better than he could, he was jealous of them." Some of these men did lose their lives. Elder Brown remained a dear friend to them and their families.