A special broadcast honoring the 100th birthday of President Russell M. Nelson will be streamed live on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ YouTube channel on September 9.
The 75-minute program will honor the life and teachings of President Nelson and his service as a prophet of the Church since 2018.
“How grateful we are for a prophet of God, for His inspired teachings, and for His invitation to follow the Savior’s example of love and righteousness in all that we do,” said President Jeffrey R. Holland, acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, in a letter announcing the broadcast.
The livestream begins at 4:00 p.m. and is also available on Broadcasts.ChurchofJesusChrist.org and the Gospel Stream app in 18 languages.
The event can then be viewed on demand on YouTube, Gospel Media and the Gospel Stream app.
Last week, more than 94,000 young single Latter-day Saints sent messages for President Nelson’s 100th birthday. A Guinness World Records judge stopped the count after 31,384 people wrote personal and virtual messages and announced a new record for “most contributions to a greeting card.”
President Nelson told members of his Church earlier this year that on his 100th birthday, his hope was that those who chose to celebrate him would follow Jesus Christ’s teaching about the shepherd in the parable of the lost sheep and reach out to “that one” in their lives who may be feeling lost or lonely.
The show shows examples of how people celebrated his birthday by helping him.
In his letter accompanying the broadcast, President Hollande encouraged Church members to consider how they might respond to President Nelson’s invitation.
“For ideas on how to support this effort, visit the 99+1 resource page on ChurchofJesusChrist.org,” he wrote.
President Nelson was born in Salt Lake City on September 9, 1924. He graduated from high school at age 16 and then enrolled at the University of Utah, where he earned his bachelor’s degree at age 20 and his medical degree at age 22.
He married Dantzel White in 1945, and they had ten children, nine girls and one boy. After Dantzel’s death in 2005, President Nelson married Wendy Watson in 2006.
President Nelson began a groundbreaking medical career that began with a medical residency and Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. He was part of the research team in Minnesota that developed the heart-lung machine. The machine’s cardiopulmonary bypass procedure made possible the first open-heart surgery on a human.
President Nelson then returned to Utah, where he built his own heart-lung machine and became the third surgeon to perform open-heart surgery and the first west of the Mississippi. He trained hundreds of cardiac surgeons in Utah and around the world and served as a visiting professor in China, Mexico, Uruguay, and Chile.
In 1972, he operated on the future church president Spencer W. Kimball, replacing a defective aortic valve with a prosthesis and performing a coronary artery bypass.
President Nelson retired from medical practice in 1984 when President Kimball called him to be an Apostle of Jesus Christ. His 29-year medical career was followed by 24 years as an Apostle.
President Nelson has served as prophet and president for six years since the death of his predecessor, President Thomas S. Monson, in January 2018.
“I declare my devotion to God, our Eternal Father, and to His Son, Jesus Christ,” President Nelson said at the time. “I know them, I love them, and I vow to serve them – and you – with every remaining breath of my life.”
Live interpretation will be available in Arabic, Cantonese, Cebuano, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Tagalog and Tongan.
