Latter-day Saint Life

President Uchtdorf Shares Touching Childhood Christmas Tradition, How We Can "Love Better" at Christmas Devotional

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"Christmas inspires us to love better," President Uchtdorf shared at the Christmas Devotional on Sunday, adding that divine love, "refuses to allow bias or prejudice to stand in the way of imparting comfort, compassion, and understanding. It is completely devoid of bullying, discrimination, or arrogance. . . . This is the kind of love we strive for. It should be our defining characteristic as a people.”

Sharing joyful memories of Christmases he experienced in the lean years during his boyhood in Germany, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf encouraged “greater generosity and increasing love” as he spoke at the annual First Presidency’s Christmas Devotional Sunday evening, December 3.

President Uchtdorf, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, said Christmases during his early childhood almost never included a “picture-perfect winter,” but instead were marked by foggy skies, slushy snow, or even rain.

“Nevertheless, on Christmas Eve, my mother would bundle us up in warm winter clothing, and our father would walk with us through the streets of our town,” he recollected.


President Dieter F. Uchtdorf has earned a reputation among members of the Church for using his decades of experience as a pilot to draw gospel metaphors. he has even joked about the frequency of the phenomenon from the pulpit, once noting that a congregation may be asking, "What does this have to do with an airplane?" President Uchtdorf's ability to draw on real-life experience and share easily interpreted analogies has endeared him to Church members the world over.

This new book brings together many of those stories of flight that President Uchtdorf has used in his ministry. In this colorful, inviting format, more than 20 of his best-loved stories come together under five major themes: Principles of Flight, Lift, Guidance on the Journey, Weathering the Turbulence, and Our Eternal Destination.

Lead image courtesy of Deseret Book
Lead image from lds.org
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