Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his wife, Mary Cook, attended the Sydney Australia Mortdale Stake Conference on Sunday 24th of May 2015. A stake is a group of Latter-day Saint congregations in a geographical area.
Elder Cook told members and guests of the Church in attendance, “I love being here, I feel so comfortable here.”
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The Church leader is very familiar with Australia, New Zealand and the islands of the South Pacific as he is a former president of the Church’s Pacific Islands Area and has visited the region on other occasions.
“I love diversity and unity,” Elder Cook said. “It’s a wonderful thing to have all this diversity committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
“It is very important to Heavenly Father and to our Saviour that we reclaim the Sabbath day,” he continued. “It’s got to be more important to us. The sacrament has got to be more important to us. Can we recapture the wonderful teachings of Jesus Christ, and be the kind of Christians He wants us to be?”
“We all need love, unity and devotion to the Saviour Jesus Christ, so that our children will see that commitment and learn from it. This is His Church, this is the message I want to give to the people of the Mortdale Stake.”
Sister Cook also spoke to the congregation about how important it is to hold regular family home evenings. “We need to share activities and sing the songs of the gospel together. Whatever the lesson, find beautiful songs to go with it.”
"The greatest joy is what I see now,” she said (as she looked at those in attendance). “Faces of righteous members of the Church who have a desire to train up their children and their families to follow Jesus Christ.”
Sister Cook engaged the children at the conference when she had them all wave to her.
She said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful, when it is your turn to give the lesson (in a family home evening) if every person in your family could be taught the words to ‘I know that my Saviour loves me?’” She then sang a few words of the song to the congregation.
Watch a video featuring Elder Quentin L. Cook teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.