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.