Sister Kristen M. Oaks is the wife of President Dallin H. Oaks. They were married on August 25, 2000, in the Salt Lake Temple. Sister Oaks is an inspiring woman who has led a Christlike life. Here are 10 interesting facts about her.
1. She is from Salt Lake City, Utah, and was baptized at age 10. On the Church News podcast, she said,
“I come from a wonderful family. … I couldn’t tell you how wonderful my parents are, or how well they treated me. But they were not active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I had to beg to be baptized. .. My parents really would let us go to church, my father went to the daddy daughter dates, but I never really had a father’s blessing. Or we'd bless the food, but … we didn’t pray every night as a family. And I didn’t hear people’s testimonies, or we didn’t read the scriptures together. … I know how painful it can be not to have [the gospel] in your life.”
2. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English, a master’s degree in special education (both from the University of Utah), and a doctorate degree in curriculum and instruction from Brigham Young University. Of her education, she wrote, “I loved every minute of learning and discovered not only new ideas but also my own capabilities.”
3. She served a mission in Sendai, Japan, at age 26. She wrote about her mission:
“I … learned a new depth of commitment to Heavenly Father. I learned to persist—by going door to door in monsoon weather, by eating chicken skin and seaweed, and by being told by people looking me directly in the face that no one was home. The truths of the gospel became truer to me as I declared them to others. Truths do distill upon us, a drop at a time. To this day, whenever I walk down a busy street, I look at the people passing by, think how the gospel could bless their lives, and want to tell everyone of its truth. That mission laid the groundwork for my life.”
4. Sister Oaks worked as a consultant for the largest privately held publishing house in America. She traveled widely, training teachers around the world to teach reading. Of her work, she’s said, “For me, teaching reading and doing missionary work are on a similar plane because they unlock a beautiful world of possibilities and understanding for those we teach.”
5. After years of consulting, Sister Oaks began to feel her life was unbalanced. She wanted to be home more often near her family in Utah. “Most of my life, energy, and time were going to my employment,” she says, as quoted in In the Hands of the Lord: The Life of Dallin H. Oaks. She asked her bishop for a blessing. In the Hands of the Lord explains what happened next:
“If you do not quit your job,” [her bishop] pronounced in the blessing, “you will have your blessings in the eternities but not in this life.”
“When I heard his words,” she later wrote, “I felt the truth of them. I had to stop traveling and find employment at home. For a single sister, giving up financial security is no easy thing. I had no new job to go to. I had to go on faith to resign from my job.”
Soon after she resigned and moved home, Elder M. Russell Ballard set her up on a date with President Oaks. (Read the full story here.)
6. President and Sister Oaks were married when she was almost 53 years old. It was Sister Oaks’s first marriage and President Oaks’s second. (President Oaks’s first wife, June Dixon Oaks, passed away in 1998 after a battle with cancer.)
7. She and President Oaks lived in the Philippines from 2002 to 2004 on special assignment to “establish the Church” in the country. “And I would have been happy to stay many more years,” Sister Oaks told Church News. In a different interview, she added that the Latter-day Saints in the Philippines could not have been “more receptive or more warm. ... I get teary-eyed because the people were just so good to us,” she said.
8. Sister Oaks is the author of several children’s books, including The Testimony Glove and My Home Can Be a Holy Place. Of the latter book, she told LDS Living, “I want so much for the young parents in Zion to prepare and protect their precious children, the future of our church. I hope people will realize (1) by relatively small, consistent holy acts we can achieve a sanctuary for our family, and (2) that children—properly taught—have a magnificent capacity to help make their homes holy.” She has also authored books for adults, including “A Single Voice.”
More articles for you:
▶ 10 interesting facts about President Oaks’s life
▶ A seminary teacher’s secret to helping your family love scripture study
▶ From Catholic priest-in-training to Latter-day Saint: a conversion story from Hungary
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