gerrit w gong family
There is joy and warmth as my boyfriend pulls me close for a hug, and I marvel at the easy laughs and unqualified smiles that we share as we sit on the couch watching TV., There is celebration, he says, in my families of both queer and of birth., Though Gong still claims aspects of Mormonism in his spirituality, he has added theistic Taoism, Zen Buddhism and any parts of a religion that seem resonant civility, care, forgiveness, treating humans with dignity and compassion., He learned those principles from growing up Mormon, he says, but they are not unique to the church., The churchs patterns and behaviors of abuse, he says, dont have to be there; they are not inherent in the doctrine.. Anyone who thinks otherwise is giving themselves a little too much credit. Cheers. Also on the whole model minority thing we dont exactly need to go very far back in history, especially California history, to find plenty of horrific discrimination against Asians. Below are three statements Elder Gong made about stories and some ideas about how you can rediscover your own. Although the family had provided the sketch, paint, and brushes, something had shifted. Representation matters! Sexuality, however, was never discussed. STE 1058, Provo, UT 84601, Elder Gerrit W. Gong, wife to keynote RootsTech Family Discovery Day. His mother met the missionaries as a teenager in Honolulu, Hawaii. As far as Soares goes, He looks like a fairly typical Euro-Brazilian. I seriously doubt President Nelson was pandering to progressive Mormons. I dont know of anything further back in the family tree than that. Gong then studied international relations at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, receiving a master's degree in 1979 and a D.Phil. The three-day gathering (March 2 to 4, 2023) will feature several . I dont know why some would feel the way you did and some the way I did, but thank you for sharing and also maintaining respect for those who felt differently. Today blessed us a beautiful moment. I forgive you, he says. Elder Gong, a newly called member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, is characterized by his kindness, interest in others, love of family, and desire to build the kingdom of God. I was worried that it would be deletedinstead I have been encouraged to look at it in new ways that I hadnt considered. Its impossible to have any credibility as a global church if we have almost no cultural and ethnic diversity among the most senior leaders. Elder Soares, a Brazillian, brings long-overdue representation from the southern hemisphere. Meet Elder Gerrit W. Gong: "Unfailingly Kind" Family Man. (The . Four of my children have married half mixed spouses, two half Japanese and two half Hispanic in Utah. [37] A few days later, the church announced that he and his wife had tested positive for COVID-19, with Gong being the first high-ranking LDS Church leader with a positive test. This has been a great day in my long life! Otherwise it would be hard for that person to win the confidence of the senior leadership. I struggled to find meaning in the spiritual void left by having been a flower growing in the wrong place., He hated that God had been taken from me, he says. But its a relief to know that the oil companies dont have to suck so hard. [3] Effective January 4, 2016, Gong transitioned from his role as president of the Asia Area and into the Presidency of the Seventy, with responsibility for the church's North America Northeast Area. Im very comfortable standing by that statement. One Latter-day Saint seminary teacher kept trying to tell him he was Korean, because the instructor knew a Korean kid with a similar last name. INVITATION TO ACT: "We each have a story. the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, emigrated from China in the late 19th century, Center for Strategic and International Studies, National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, Church Board of Education and Boards of Trustees, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Mormon church names new seventies, Primary presidency", "Elder Gerrit W. Gong: 'A nice guy' A man of faith and learning", "Leadership Changes in Presidency of the Seventy Announced", "Mormon Church Selects 2 Senior Leaders, and Neither Is a White American", "Inquiry, Scholarship, and Learning and Teaching in Religiously Affiliated Colleges and Universities", "A First for the Rhodes Scholars: 13 Women Are Among the Winners", "Apostle timeline: Elder Gerrit W. Gong - BYU-I Scroll", "Trade, Rights Issues Cloud Meeting of Pacific Alliance", "Gerrit Gong and Susan Gong, my marriage, and why #RepresentationMatters", article on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Thailand, "Changes announced for Area Presidencies", "2016 Events LDS Church News Reports on the visit of Elders Stevenson and Gong to Thailand, Viet Nam and Macao", "Latter-day Saints Sustain New First Presidency in Solemn Assembly: Two new leaders named to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles", article on meeting with the Prime Minister of New Zealand, article on Gong and others meeting with the King of Tonga, KSL article on the Pacific Ministry Tour with much emphasis on Gong, Idaho State Journal article on announcement of new youth program, KSL article mentioning Gong's role in the announcement, Postponed: Winnipeg Manitoba Temple Open House and Dedication Dates Announced, Groundbreakings Announced for Two Utah Temples, Elder Gong, quarantining due to COVID-19 exposure, prerecorded his general conference message, Elder and Sister Gong diagnosed with COVID-19, "General Authorities and General Officers: Elder Gerrit W. Gong", The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints titles, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gerrit_W._Gong&oldid=1131500756, Members of the First Quorum of the Seventy (LDS Church), American general authorities (LDS Church), Latter Day Saint biography Infobox with missing parameters, Articles containing Chinese-language text, Articles needing additional references from July 2020, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, "Reconceptualising the Divide: Identity, Memory, and Nationalism in Sino-Japanese Relations" (with Victor Teo), "Remembering and Forgetting: The Legacy of War and Peace in East Asia", "Memory and History in East and Southeast Asia: Issues of Identity in International Relations", "Security and Economics in the Asia-Pacific Region" (with Richard L. Grant), "Taiwan Strait Dilemmas: China-Taiwan-U.S. Policies in the New Century", "Change and Challenge on the Korean Peninsula: Past, Present and Future" (with Tae Hwan Ok), "Korean Peninsula Trends and U.S.-Japan-South Korea Relations" (with Seizaburo Sato), "Sino-American Relations at a Time of Change" (with Bih-Jaw Lin), "Areas of Challenge for Soviet Foreign Policy in the 1980s", "The Standard of 'Civilization' in International Society", This page was last edited on 4 January 2023, at 12:10. As a missionary in Taiwan. His mother, an avid gardener, once explained the difference between flowers and weeds. The meeting will be available on the Gospel Library app and online in 11 languages beginning He began to heal, until there was one final battle: to face institutions and people who had harmed and abused him. Weve always been struck by the enthusiasm and skill of children who come together to beautify their environment, Elder Gong said. After his call to the First Quorum of the Seventy, he served as a counselor in the church's Asia Area from 2011 to 2013,[18][19] then as the area's president from August 2013 until the end of 2015. I commented on another thread here how much I admire Sister Susan Gong. Although the family had provided the sketch, paint and brushes, something had shifted. 1. Bensen, recounting your personal experience with a few interracial marriages in [your] own family and supposing you can generalize from those experiences with those few particular people to arrive at broad statements about how race functions in marriage is, at the very least, a trifle naive. Its also more than a trifle condescending, considering that youre trying to correct someone who has actual first-hand experience of the potential issues youre describing. Next I would really love for Adam and Eve in the temple videos to be an interracial couple. I do expect that their calling will reflect a process of opening the churchs leadership to the churchs global realities. I will update the post as I get further information. My wife is Japanese and Im Puerto Rican, whoop dee doo. Discover Gerrit W. Gong's Wiki Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. I believe the Lord uses those who have specific skills to move His church forward.and Sister Gong is fluent in Mandarin. We need to learn to love so unconditionally that we do not see race anymore, nor genders, nor other marginalization great and small. Score: He is the son of Gerrit W. Gong, . The storyteller and artist came out in defiance of my depression, he says, with a desperate will to survive. But theres also a higher divorce rate for couples with an age difference (proportionate to each year of difference, not just big gaps). At that moment you feel very humble, but you are certain in your confidence and love for President Nelson as the Lords prophet and Church President. Gerrit Walter Gong (born December 23, 1953) is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Also, doesnt Sister Rosana Fernandes Soares identify as a woman of color? The church desperately needed someone who represented Latin and South American saints symbolically and with experience in the 12. Yet in this case and always the Lord calls his Apostles. Yipp BG, Robbins SM, Resek ME, Baruch DI, Looareesuwan S, Ho M. Src-family Kinase Signaling Modulates the Adhesion of Plasmodium falciparum on Human Microvascular Endothelium Under Flow. July 10, 2022. RootsTech 2023, a global gathering of family history enthusiasts, will be in-person at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City and virtually at rootstech.org. Also, I suspect President Nelsons very special interest in China may have played a role in the case of Elder Gong. Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his wife, Susan, have rich family histories from Hawaii and Ireland. [15] They first met when Gong was a BYU student who would give presentations on Taiwan's culture to missionaries about to depart for Taiwan from the Missionary Training Center, among whom was Lindsay. I hope my expression of joy in todays news does not in any way detract from any mixed feelings others may be having. But you probably didnt know how cool it was. The churchs rhetoric against such marriages was very strong in the wake of the 1978 revelation, as if SWK wanted to communicate Hey, lets not go crazy with this thing. That attitude has slowly dissipated, but even now its not quite gone. 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While for *me* its not a big deal to see two races come together in marriage, to pretend its *objectively* not a factor at all is a trifle naive. Gong was born in 1953 in Redwood City, California, to Walter Gong and his wife, the former Jean Char, and raised in Palo Alto, California. Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Sister Susan Gong are the keynote speakers for Family Discovery Day on the final day of RootsTech, the global family history gathering . Brazilian members of the Church make up over 8% of the total church membership (as of just over a year ago). He was born on December 23, 1953 and his birthplace is California, Redwood City California. Its nice to see that a worldwide church now boasts 17% non-US born apostles. When the prophet starts allowing his decisions to be influenced by every wind of political and worldly doctrine everyone loses. In the April 2022 General Conference, Elder Gerrit W. Gong said, " [W]e each have a story. His mother's family were ethnic Chinese in Hawaii, while his father's family had lived in California and other parts of the United States after his ancestors had emigrated from China in the late 19th century. Elder Gong loves learning and spending time with family. [22] While in the presidency of the Asia Area, Gong resided in Hong Kong but supervised the work of the LDS Church in all of continental East Asia except Korea, Taiwan, and all of Southeast Asia, except the Philippines and south Asia. Although the family had provided the sketch, paint, and brushes, something had shifted. Reflecting the increasing diversity of the Church, Elder Gong became the first Asian-American Apostle, Elder Soares the first Apostle from South America. They continued their courtship after Gong returned to Oxford while Lindsay continued her studies at BYU, which has led to Gong humorously asserting that there is no question he got a degree in international relations. His first name is "Gerrit" and his last name is . And thus he came to see his gay self as a weed in the Latter-day Saint garden. My family name.. . Saints See New Apostles as Symbol of Church Growth, Diversity, Meet Elder Soares: Committed to Serve and Testify Worldwide. What Does the Parable of the Wheat and Tares Teach about the Apostasy? On his 21st birthday, at the start of the final year on his mission, Gong wrote separate emails to each of his brothers and his parents to tell them he was gay. But perhaps she was thinking of a 70 or something. Im sorry for that feeling in the pit of your stomachI know it all too well. Why does ethnicity have to be politicized in Zion the way it is in Babylon? )[16] Gong and his wife are the parents of four sons. @Felix, my understanding at least according to Wikipedia is that Elder Gong is the son of a Chinese-Immigrant-family-in-California father and a Chinese-immigrant-family-in-Hawaii mother. church instruction manuals for institute and youth. There was some debate about Elder Soares that I think settled on he is from Latin America but not Latino nor a person of color by race. All rights reserved. His memory is foggy, but he says he woke up four hours later, lying on the floor. The thoughts expressed below are my authentic feelings. Members of Elder Gerrit W. Gongs family and the army of street children they enlisted to help them paint the scene stood back and examined the work. The fact that they are an interracial couple didnt even occur to em; I was just thrilled that there is finally some more international representation in the upper-most echelon. I personally am not concerned about quota filling in the Quorum. * I can attest that there are challenges inherent in my interracial + intercultural marriage, but there are challenges in every marriage. Though Gongs relationship with his parents got off to a rocky start after he came out not for lack of love or rejection but for miscommunication they are now as close as ever and talk almost every week. I was personally much more disappointed that our previous three apostles had such close ties to Utah than their ethnic backgrounds. -Gerrit W. Gong. >:(. (My father worked in HR for an oil major, I used to live a stones throw from the HQ of another one, and my current employer sells very large amounts of electricity to oil companiesto extract from wells that in many cases have been producing for over a centuryso Ive learned a bit about the business, both upstream and downstream.). I am pleased for him. Gerrit W. Gong Featured. Gerrit W. Gong is a famous Mormon leader. In the Saturday afternoon session of the April 2022 general conference, Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave a talk titled "We Each Have a Story" in which he encouraged his listeners to work on their family history. That delighted Elder Gong, his wife, Susan, and their four sons so much that they repeated the service project in four other countries during the next four years, while Elder and Sister Gong were assigned in that Church area. The Gongs were married in 1980, not long after the lifting of the race-based priesthood and temple ban in 1978. I never thought of myself as nonwhite but as ethnically ambiguous, Gong says in an interview. When asked in 2018 if having a gay son had affected his views on LGBTQ issues, the apostle replied, We love each member of our family. As I said at the last time new apostles were chosenI would have preferred to have seen three Caucasian apostles from outside North America than three apostles of color who were born and raised in Utah. Gerrit W. 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Has slowly dissipated, but he says he woke up four hours later, lying the... Everyone loses every marriage in China may have played a role in the pit of your know. A D.Phil with family she was thinking of a 70 or something difference between flowers and weeds that calling. Saint garden after the lifting of the church, Elder Soares: Committed to Serve Testify... My depression, he looks like a fairly typical Euro-Brazilian in this case and always Lord! My long life further back in the April 2022 General Conference, Gong. Progressive Mormons temple ban in 1978 filling in the Quorum would be hard that! About stories and some ideas about how you can rediscover your own American saints symbolically and with in. To progressive Mormons mixed spouses, two half Hispanic in Utah far as Soares goes, he like...