Elder Brook P. Hales

When Elder Brook P. Hales was eight or nine, he was in a fast and testimony meeting where his father was presiding as bishop. His father invited the congregation to bear testimonies, and nearly everyone present bore testimony. “It was perhaps the first time I felt the Spirit bearing witness to me of the truthfulness of the gospel,” Elder Hales recalls.

He has felt that witness many times since, particularly while serving as secretary to the First Presidency since 2008. When President Thomas S. Monson was sustained as prophet and President of the Church, and again when President Russell M. Nelson was sustained, he witnessed “the mantle of prophet fall on each of these men, and I knew without a doubt that they had been chosen and called to be the President of the Church for their particular time.”

Elder Hales was called as a General Authority Seventy on May 17, 2018, and sustained on October 6, 2018. He will continue as secretary to the First Presidency.

Born in Ogden, Utah, USA, on April 7, 1956, to Klea and Glenn Phillip Hales, Elder Hales received a banking and finance degree from Weber State College (now Weber State University) in 1980. After graduating, he worked in commercial bank operations and in the Church’s Finance and Records Division. He married Denise Imlay Hales in 1981, and they are the parents of four children. Elder Hales has served as a full-time missionary in the France Paris Mission, counselor in a bishopric, high priests group leader, bishop, stake president, priesthood organist, Sunday School teacher, and temple sealer.

That day when he was a young boy, Elder Hales didn’t bear his testimony. But it has grown stronger ever since. “The gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon is true, God loves us perfectly and is eager to bless us, Jesus is our Savior, and we are blessed to have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost as we are worthy of it,” he says.