I stand at the graveside of Barbara,

the most important person in my whole life as my eternal companion. She is my treasure.

You come to a gravesite of a loved one,

and then you start to think about everything that they mean to you in your life. I miss her, and I know she's waiting for me.

I grew up on 1399 Butler Avenue, and I was just a normal garden-variety kid growing up.

I was blessed with wonderful parents. They loved me.

They certainly provided for us in a wonderful way.

Gratefully, I had some wonderful friends.

Young people can have good friends that do good things and give a good example.

They've got a precious, precious gift. And I was blessed with good friends.

Those were great days. I can remember those days pretty clearly.

I knew my Grandfather Ballard.

He took me to the circus when I was eight years old.

He had a gorgeous baritone voice. He used to sing all of the time.

I never had the privilege of hearing him speak, which I rue to this day.

I remember that I was 11 when Grandfather Ballard died,

and so the tabernacle was jammed.

People were lined up along South Temple during when the cartage went from the tabernacle to the cemetery,

and I was in the car following the hearse up South Temple and saw the adoration that the people had for my grandfather.

Then that dawned on me, and I was 11 then, that he is someone very special.

And then I learned everything I could learn about him,

and that stimulated an interest in wanting to learn everything I could about my mother's father and her mother.

And on both sides of the family, both grandfathers were apostles. I didn't understand what that meant, because in those days my parents were not active.

My mission was a tremendous growing experience in leadership.

I was given opportunities to lead, and I think they were very fundamental

in some of the things that I was asked to do later.

So on my last trip to Scotland, in Edinburgh, and here's this sweater shop, and in the window was this beautiful pink cashmere sweater set.

And I walked in and I bought it. And whoa, it was beautiful.

And so when I come home, I'm unpacking.

And my mother said, What in the world is this?

And I said, This is a sweater set. Yeah, that's cashmere and it's pink. And I'm going to find a girl and I'm going to marry her.

My mother thought, Oh dear, what's this? What's he learned on his mission?

So I went to a Hello Day dance at the University of Utah and then met the most beautiful girl on the dance floor, Barbara Bowen.

I danced with her for, I don't know, 20 or 30 feet, and I was tagged out,

but that was all it took.

I came home in 1950, September, and I gave it to her at Christmastime.

One of the great and most important experiences in my life was kneeling in the Salt Lake Temple and holding the hand of Barbara Bowen, and Harold B. Lee performed our marriage and sealed us as husband and wife for time and all eternity.

That was a moment as clear to me today as if it happened yesterday.

And I see her face,

and almost sometimes feel like I can touch her hand again.

Barbara was remarkable as a mother. She raised seven children. None of them ever heard her raise her voice.

She had so much self-control, and Barbara taught them how to live.

Barbara taught them how to be exemplary young people.

I would take her out to conferences with me, and I would stand at the pulpit. I would always see the people looking at my wife,

and she'd just be sitting on the stand smiling. So I think she did a better job of teaching people than I did, just from her countenance

and her wonderful radiance of love that she expressed everywhere she went.

She had a beautiful smile, and that captured everybody.

The best gift that I could give my children would be good memories.

And so I took them to every one of the major Church historical sites,

and I had them with me in places that mattered most. I had them in Palmyra.

I had them in Nauvoo. I had them in Carthage.

I'm sitting here in this marvelous and wonderful building.

I sit here as a great-great- grandson of Hyrum Smith,

who is the one that dug the first footings to build the Kirtland Temple.

In this temple came then the Restoration of the fullness of the eternal blessings of temple worship,

of the sealing power of the holy priesthood.

It was brought into reality when this was built with a great sacrifice.

I mean, the Saints, in those days, they didn't have very much. What they did have,

they willingly gave to building the house of the Lord.

And I think that's a great evidence to all of us that we must never lose sight. And of our pioneer forefathers, I've spoken to this issue many times,

if we ever lose sight of our forefathers and those who made it possible for us to have what we have, we will have lost something that's irreplaceable.

What a blessing for us to be sitting in the Kirtland Temple and knowing what we know about our purpose of life,

who we are, why we're here, and where we ultimately will go.

That's a wonderful privilege for me to be here today.

And to realize that I'm standing

next to the place, and very likely the place where my great-great- grandfather, Hyrum Smith, sat.

I've thought to myself what it must have been like for the members of the Church who were in attendance here in the temple to have felt what happened here.

This is a cornerstone in a lot of ways

for the Restoration of the fullness of the gospel, and particularly the eternal salvation and binding relationships

that come through temple ordinances.

Just knowing that Barbara and I knelt at an altar and held hands,

and by the power of the priesthood, we were married and sealed one to another for time and all eternity,

that has been such a great sense of comfort to me.

She is mine and I am hers. And she's waiting for me. And I miss her terribly.

I have a little granddaughter who was six weeks old who passed away.

I have a grandson who went down in an airplane crash.

I have other family members, parents and grandparents, great-grandparents.

And when you stop and think about what we have, when we come into the temple and we think about the sealing

power of the priesthood, binding families together forever,

it is a very comforting thing for me.

I'm grateful to be in Kirtland.

Again, I've been here many times, but I don't know how many more times I've got left.

I'm getting pretty old, but

this is a special, wonderful place for me and my family.

When I come here, I feel overwhelmed with the strength and the power of my Smith forefathers and hope I can just

try to do my part.

Now I'm going on 95 and realize that I'm in the sunset of my life.

But to know that when that day comes that I leave this world,

I will go to family, into the next one. It is a very comforting

thing for me. We've just been separated for a little season.

As I climb the stairs and contemplate that I'm going to walk into the room where my great-great-grandfather

and great-great-uncle lost their lives.

This is a tough room for family and certainly is for me.

This is the room in which Joseph and Hyrum were when the mob was seeking out Joseph. They were wanting to kill him.

This is a very tender place to be for me, and I think for all who have the privilege of coming and visiting this place where two of the greatest men that ever lived lost their lives.

And so when you're in this room, in a lot of ways, I think we're on sacred grounds.

Joseph knew

that if they crossed back over the Mississippi and came back from Iowa back here, that his terms were, they would butcher him. And it was one of the tender things in showing the love that Joseph had for Hyrum. He pled with Hyrum not to go with him.

Please don't come with me because they're going to kill me.

And Hyrum's tremendous statement and manifested in that beautiful replica of Hyrum with his arm around Joseph that stands in front of the jail here: "Joseph, I will not leave you."

That's a wonderful thing to have a companion that supports you

and loves you. And so when I'm in this room

and realize that my great-great- grandfather was holding the door,

and fell to the floor here, declaring "I'm a dead man"

and died here. And Joseph

jumped out of the window and died on the ground out here.

It's touching, and I think it should be touching for anyone who will stop and listen to the story of the Restoration of the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Prophet Joseph Smith.

His brother stood side by side with Joseph in all things.

I like to believe that Joseph was able to be Joseph

in some ways because he had Hyrum.

I think it's a wonderful thing when people have a sense of wanting to know who they are. Family history is just, Who am I?

What makes me M. Russell Ballard? Well, my mother and my father.

So I ought to know and want to know all I can about my father and his family,

and I want to know all I can about my mother and her family,

so I know who I am and where I come from.

I think it's very important for people to seek out and know what they can about those who laid the groundwork for them to have what they have in their lives.

It's a wonderful thing to know about your forefathers,

many of which paid a big price for our personal existence in this world.

I hope when I die, there'll be a few over there that'll say thank you

for maybe a little good I did along the way.

That's what I'm trying to do, is just to help where I can. And what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is,

and what it offers to our Heavenly Father's children.

I was called by President Hinckley on Sunday morning of general conference, and he called me up and he said, Russ, are you out of the shower yet? I say, yes, sir, a long time ago, I'm ready to come to conference.

He said, well, come and see me at 9:00. And I said, yes, sir.

So I went to the administration building at 9:00, went into his office,

and then President Hinckley said, President Kimball has authorized me to invite you to be a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

So

we both wept. He embraced me,

and I walked out of that experience and went home and told Barbara what had happened,

and recounted the greatest blessing that could ever come to a man to be an Apostle, declaring the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ to the nations of the earth.

And I've just been so blessed.

I can't put it in words and the privilege that's been mine and in almost all nations of the world, one way or another, of testifying that Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of all mankind, and the Church of Jesus Christ that He established when He was alive and among men was lost.

And so that is our witness to the world, that the priesthood, the authority to perform ordinances that are binding on both sides of the veil, is once again upon the earth. That's a great thing to know and it's a remarkable thing to teach.

And the whole world needs to know what has happened through Him,

and what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is,

and what it offers to our Heavenly Father's children.

I'm grateful that I can witness to you that Jesus is the Christ and He is the Son of God. By following Him in faith and trust, all may find sweet inner peace

the gospel has to offer to us,

as it has been taught to us so beautifully during this conference.

To this I humbly testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.