Mission President - Selection

Selection

Mission presidents are assigned to a mission by the leadership of the LDS church and typically discover the location a few months before their departure. Mission presidents are men typically between 40 and 65 years old. In the past some mission presidents have been much younger; LeGrand Richards and Stephen R. Covey both served as mission presidents while in their 20s and Thomas S. Monson became a mission president at age 31. In more recent years younger mission presidents have been more rare. In 2005 there were 130 new mission presidents, the youngest of them, Norbert Ounleu, was 35. The only mission president called under the age of 30 since 2005 was Kerving H. Joseph who was 29 when he became president of the Haiti Port-au-Price Mission in 2009.

Mission presidents are generally assigned to areas other than where they reside at the time of their call. There are exceptions, such as Richard G. Hinckley, who presided over the Utah Salt Lake City Mission, and Kerving H. Joseph who was president of the Haiti Port-au-Price mission at the time of the 2010 Port-au-Price earthquake. Joseph was a native Haitian living in Haiti at the time he was called as mission president. Tonga has also had a few Tongan men who were residing in Tonga and called to serve as presidents of the Tongan mission. Effian Kadarusman, an Indonesian, served as president of the Indonesia Jakarta Mission for four years in the 1980s. With over 300 missions, there are few, if any, which have a president who was a resident in the mission boundaries at the time of his call at any given time. In approximately 2005, when the Church decided to put in Venezuelan natives as presidents of all the missions due to growing discord between the US and Venezuela, but often the presidents were from areas of Venezuela other than where they resided.

According to current policy a mission president must be married. Typically, his wife and any minor children accompany him on his mission. During the first 100 years of the Church there were some single mission presidents and several others who left their wives and children elsewhere while they served. When Heber J. Grant brought his wife and six daughters with him when he came to preside over the British Mission in 1903, Francis M. Lyman looked unfavorably upon this new innovation. Mission presidents are either retired or leave their vocations for three years to preside over their mission. Prominent examples include a former United States Congressman, a former Governor of Utah, a two-time Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award recipient, and a Harvard Business School professor. They usually receive training in late June and begin the service about the first of July, unless there are emergencies or medical conditions that require otherwise.

Candidates are typically interviewed in the last few months of each year, initially by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. If candidates are chosen, the First Presidency extends the call to serve. The official announcements of new mission presidents is typically done through the first few months of the subsequent year via the weekly LDS Church News.