The following is excerpted from the Deseret News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE. 

Last week’s calling of Elder Patrick Kearon as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles elicited international attention, including queries about what it’s like to be called to the modern apostleship within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Since 1835, some 106 individuals have entered the apostleship. New apostles do not apply or campaign for positions, but are rather called by the most senior apostle — the church’s prophet-president — who seeks God’s will about who to select to fill vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

The most senior apostle is sustained by the membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the leader of the church, and counsels together with the other apostles in the church’s governing First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The current president is President Russell M. Nelson.

The calling to the apostleship

The call to the apostleship often comes as a surprise. President Jeffrey R. Holland, now acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve, has said he had no specific sense of foreshadowing when he was invited to meet with church President Howard W. Hunter in early summer of 1994, according to a later report. And President Henry B. Eyring, now a member of the First Presidency of the church, likewise had no premonition of his impending call following the death of Howard W. Hunter — evidenced by his need to return quickly to his office to begin working on a general conference talk he was asked to deliver the next day.

Few were more surprised, however, than President George Albert Smith, who had been unable to attend the October 1903 general conference session when his new calling was announced. Arriving at home to see a number of visitors, he asked, “What is all this about?” Upon hearing the news, he said, “That couldn’t be right. … There must be some mistake. It must have been some other Smith.”

His daughter Emily later recalled witnessing numerous people “streaming across the lawn” into their house, “crying.” Since these visitors kept repeating how their father was now an “apostle,” she remembers thinking as a young child that “being an apostle must be the worst thing that could possibly happen to you.”

The weight of the responsibility

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