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SALT LAKE CITY — More than half a century before he became the 16th president of the LDS Church, Thomas S. Monson, who died at 10:01 p.m. Tuesday in his Salt Lake City home at age 90, was an inexperienced, 23-year-old Mormon bishop with a distressing problem that would define his life.

He had the distinct spiritual prompting to leave a priesthood leadership meeting as his stake president was speaking and visit an elderly member of his congregation in the hospital. It seemed rude to stand, shuffle over 20 people and exit as his presiding leader spoke. Instead, he sat uncomfortably until the talk ended, then bolted for the door before the closing prayer.

At the hospital, he ran down the corridor. He stopped when he saw commotion outside the room of the man he was to visit. A nurse told him the man had died, calling Bishop Monson's name as he passed away. Shattered, the fledgling bishop went outside and wept, sobbing. He vowed then, in the parking lot of the old Veterans Hospital in Salt Lake City's Avenues, that he would never turn a deaf ear to another prompting.

"It's the most impressive story I know from him about his ministry to the one," said Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. "As far as I know he kept that promise ever since. It became fundamentally characteristic of his life and what sets him apart from others, that he committed to this idea of following a prompting, and the focus almost always was a single person."

President Monson's death, after nearly 10 years as prophet-leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, closes a distinctive era in church leadership. During his time as one of the longest-serving apostles in Mormon history, church membership expanded from 2.1 million members to 15.9 million. The number of temples grew from 12 to 159.

Still, he will be most remembered for his individual ministry, a relentless drive to go to the rescue. President Monson's biographer described his lifelong, tender ministry to widows, the lost, the obscure, the dying and the downtrodden as a portable pool of Bethesda, the New Testament place of mercy and grace where waters made the lame whole and Jesus Christ healed a paralyzed man. President Monson carried what he himself termed "Bethesda’s blessing" of heartfelt ministry to a grease pit, countless hospitals and behind the Iron Curtain.

Place in history

Grid View President Thomas S. Monson in Salt Lake City on Friday, April 9, 2010. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson gestures to attendees after the Saturday morning session of 185th Annual General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City Saturday, April 4, 2015. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

Following the Sunday morning session President Thomas S. Monson bends down and kisses sister Barbara Ballard's hand as LDS members gather for the 186th annual general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City at the Conference Center Sunday, April 3, 2016. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson walks out after the University of Utah unveiled the newly refurbished Enos A. Wall Mansion and name it The Thomas S. Monson Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016. The mansion will become home to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. Presidents Dieter F. Uchtdorf and Henry B. Eyring and Ann Dibb attend the event. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

The First Presidency — Presidents Henry B. Eyring, Thomas S. Monson and Dieter F. Uchtdorf — of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints attends the final session of the church's 180th Semiannual General Conference at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City on Sunday, Oct., 3, 2010. Deseret News archives

President Thomas S. Monson waves to the congregation after LDS General Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson leaves the afternoon session of the 186th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City on Saturday, April 2, 2016. Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints waves to those in attendance as he leaves the Marriott Center at Brigham Young University in Provo, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011. Ravell Call, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson points to the congregation after the Sunday morning session of the 178th Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City on Oct. 5, 2008. Deseret News archives

President Thomas S. Monson, in his first general conference as president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, hugs Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles after a conference session April 5, 2008. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

President Henry B. Eyring and President Thomas S. Monson sustain current church leaders during the afternoon session of the 186th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City on Saturday, April 2, 2016. Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson exits following the morning session of the 184th Semiannual General Conference Sunday, Oct. 5, 2014, at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

President Thomas S Monson shakes hands with members of the Twelve following the 183rd Semiannual General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Sunday, Oct. 6, 2013 inside the Conference Center. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson blows a kiss to someone in the crowd as he and his daughter sister Ann Dibb exit the morning session as LDS members gather for the 186th annual general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City at the Conference Center Sunday, April 3, 2016. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson speaks during the priesthood session of the 180th Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Oct. 2, 2010. LDS Church

President Henry B. Eyring, President Thomas S. Monson and President Dieter F. Uchtdorf attend the afternoon session of the 184th General Conference at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Conference Center in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014. Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tells a story while speaking at an event honoring former Young Women General Presidents Florence Jacobsen and Ruth Funk at a luncheon in the Relief Society Building in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009. Deseret News archives

President Thomas S. Monson salutes as the University of Utah unveil the newly refurbished Enos A. Wall Mansion and name it The Thomas S. Monson Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016. The mansion will become home to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. Presidents Dieter F. Uchtdorf and Henry B. Eyring attend the event. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson commemorates his 80th birthday at the LDS Church Administration Building in Salt Lake City on Aug. 22, 2007. Tom Smart, Deseret News

Presidents Henry B. Eyring, Thomas S. Monson and Dieter F. Uchtdorf smile prior to the Saturday afternoon session of 185th Annual General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City Saturday, April 4, 2015. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson announces 5 new temples as he speaks in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City during the Sunday morning session of the LDS Church’s 187th Annual General Conference on Sunday, April 2, 2017. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson, and his daughter sister Ann M. Dibb exit the Conference Center in Salt Lake City following the morning session of the LDS Church’s 187th Annual General Conference on Saturday, April 1, 2017. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson, newly named president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, speaks to the media at the announcement of the newly organized First Presidency of the church. Photo taken at the LDS Church Office Building in Salt Lake City on Monday, Feb. 4, 2008. Deseret News archives

President Thomas S. Monson visits with members after speaking at a sacrament meeting for the Etobicoke and Churchville YSA wards, Mississaugua Ontario Stake, on Sunday, June 26. Sunday, June, 26, 2011. Photo by Gerry Avant Gerry Avant

President Thomas S. Monson rides in the Days of 47 Parade in Salt Lake City on Thursday, July 24, 2014. Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson, center, First Counselor Henry B. Eyring, left, and Second Counselor Dieter F. Uchtdorf comprise the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They speak at a news conference in the LDS Church Office Building in Salt Lake City on Monday, Feb. 4, 2008. Deseret News archives

President Thomas S. Monson, center, and his counselors — President Henry B. Eyring, first counselor in the First Presidency, left, and President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the First Presidency in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City during the morning session of the LDS Church’s 187th Annual General Conference on Saturday, April 1, 2017. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson and Kent F. Richards of the Seventy and director of the church's temple department pause for a moment prior to entering the temple as they rededicate the Ogden temple Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

Elders Gordon B. Hinckley and Thomas S. Monson, then members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, are shown in 1970. Deseret News archives

President Thomas S. Monson waves to members gathered for the cornerstone ceremoney at the dedication of the Calgary Alberta Temple on Sunday, Oct. 28. Sunday, Oct., 28, 2012. Photo by Gerry Avant Gerry Avant, Deseret News

From left, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, President Gordon B. Hinckley and Elder Thomas S. Monson tour the bishop's storehouse in Ogden on Sept. 18, 1982. Deseret News archives

President Thomas S. Monson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, laughs along with U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, left, and Rep. Greg J. Curtis, speaker of the Utah House of Representatives, after a comment by Utah Valley University President William Sederburg. President Monson offered the dedicatory prayer for the new UVU library. Stuart Johnson, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson display "the game ball" presented to him after a cultural program segment portrayed a football game. The event was held in conjunction with the rededication of the Boise Idaho Temple. Saturday, Nov., 17, 2012. Photo by Gerry Avant Gerry Avant, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson shakes hands with a young girl at the end of the morning session of the 184th Annual General Conference at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Conference Center in Salt Lake City on Saturday, April 5, 2014. Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson salutes graduates during his address at the Weber State University commencement at the Dee Events Center in Ogden on Friday, April 23, 2010. Deseret News archives

President Thomas S. Monson speaks during the 184th Semiannual General Conference Sunday, Oct. 5, 2014, at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

LDS Church President Ezra Taft Benson cuts a ribbon with his wife, Flora, at his side. Standing to the left are President Thomas S. Monson and his wife, Frances; at right are President Gordon B. Hinckley and his wife, Marjorie, Oct. 26, 1986. Deseret News archives

President Thomas S. Monson delights youngsters by wiggling his ears after a dedicatory session of the Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple on Aug. 22, 2009. President Henry B. Eyring is in the background. Gerry Avant, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson speaks during the funeral services for President Boyd K. Packer, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City Friday, July 10, 2015. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson attends the cultural celebration performed by youths of the Twin Falls Idaho Temple district Aug. 23, 2008. Scott G. Winterton, Deseret News

Thomas S. Monson, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is animated during his talk in the morning session of the 183rd Semiannual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Sunday, Oct. 6, 2013, in Salt Lake City. Tom Smart, Deseret News

Elder LeGrand RIchards, left, Elder Thomas S. Monson and general Sunday School Superintendent David Lawrence McKay go over a program of a Sunday School session in the Tabernacle, which featured talks and a dramatization, April 8, 1968. Deseret News archives

FOR CHURCH NEWS COVER--President Thomas S. Monson Friday, Feb. 25, 2011, in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Tom Smart, Deseret News) Tom Smart, Deseret News

FOR CHURCH NEWS COVER--President Thomas S. Monson Friday, Feb. 25, 2011, in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Tom Smart, Deseret News) Tom Smart, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson smiles after printing a page on a replica of the Gutenberg press at the opening of the Crandall Historical Printing Museum on Tuesday, April 21, 2009, in Provo, Utah. Tom Smart, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson and Eldred G. Smith talk after President Monson stopped by for a visit to Eldred G. Smith on his 105th birthday at the Smith's home Monday, Jan. 9, 2012. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson and his wife, Frances, observe his 80th birthday at the LDS Church Administration Building in Salt Lake City on Aug. 22, 2007. Tom Smart, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, salutes and waves following funeral services for his wife, Sister Frances J. Monson, at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Thursday, May 23, 2013. Ravell Call, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson waves to the congregation with his wife, Frances, and their daughter, Ann M. Dibb, at the conclusion of the Saturday morning session of the 179th Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City on Oct. 3, 2009. Deseret News archives

Thomas Monson, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, right, and his son-in-law Roger Dibb attend the interment of Frances Monson, wife of Thomas Monson, in the Salt Lake City Cemetery on Thursday, May 23, 2013. Frances Monson was born on October 27, 1927 and passed away on May 17, 2013. Laura Seitz, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson greets his wife, Frances, before an LDS general conference session April 5, 2007, in Salt Lake City. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson and his wife, Frances, receive honorary degrees at Utah Valley University's commencement Friday, May 1, 2009. Stuart Johnson, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson sends his wife Frances a kiss while leaving the General Relief Society Meeting at the Conference Center on Temple Square in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Sept. 29, 2012. Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson assists his wife Frances out of the conference center following the morning session of General conference Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012. Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson and his wife, Frances, ride in the Days of ’47 Parade on July 24, 2006. Laura Seitz, Deseret News

Estabelecer uma rotina para as principais atividades do dia faz o tempo ser mais bem aproveitado. (Photo: DepositPhotos) Ravell Call, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson gets high-five from Michael Branan after selecting him as one of the children assisting in applying the mortar during the cornerstone ceremony for the new Oquirrh Mountain Temple in West Jordan Friday, Aug. 21, 2009. The event begins a weekend of dedication sessions for the 130th working temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jason Olson, Deseret News Deseret News archives

Jan. 24, 1995President Thomas S. Monson and wife, Frances, visit with newly installed Bishop Neiderauer of Salt Lake Catholic Diocese Photo by Gary McKellar, Deseret Morning News. This photo is a copy; the original was shot by DesNews photographer who covered the installation ceremony. Deseret News Archives

President Thomas S. Monson gives his wife, Frances, a kiss at their 60th wedding anniversary celebration at the Lion House in Salt Lake City on Oct. 6, 2008. Tom Smart, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; his wife, Frances, center, and their daughter, Sister Ann M. Dibb, second counselor in the Young Women general presidency of the LDS Church, walk out of the temple on the last day of the Draper Utah Temple dedication services Sunday, March 22, 2009. Gerry Avant, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson waves after a press conference where it was announced that he was named Monday morning as the 16th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints along with President Henry B. Eyring (no shown) and President Dieter F. Uchtdorf (background) as first and second counselors, respectively, in the First Presidency in Salt Lake City, Utah, Feb. 04, 2008. Tom Smart, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson, center right, and his wife, Sister Frances J. Monson, center left, as well as their daughter, Ann M. Dibb, talk with Ira Fulton, a big supporter of Utah Valley University. They got together after President and Sister Monson received honorary degrees at UVU's commencement ceremonies Friday, May 1, 2009. Stuart Johnson, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson pulls the "devil's tail" on the replica of the Gutenberg press as Lou Crandall (left), CEO of the Crandall Historical Printing Museum watches, at the opening of the museum, Tuesday, April 21, 2009,in Provo, Utah. Tom Smart, Deseret News Tom Smart, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson laughs after talking with Utah Governor Gary Herbert after receiving the "Service Above Self" Award from Salt Lake City Rotary Club at their awards ceremony Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011 Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

In the middle of President Thomas S. Monson's remarks at the new eight-story Zions Bank Financial Center on University Avenue in Provo, he stops to give his wife, Frances, a kiss on the cheek. His remarks Friday, May, 14, 2010, included a story about cheek kisses. Deseret News archives

President Thomas Monson laughs with his wife, Frances, before speaking to Women's Conference attendees at Brigham Young University in Provo, May 2, 2008. Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson speaks during the priesthood session of the 185th Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Salt Lake City. Tom Smart, Deseret News

President Thomas S. Monson and his wife, Frances, wave to the crowd watching the Days of ’47 parade in Salt Lake City on July 24, 2008. Laura Seitz, Deseret News

Elder Thomas S. Monson and his wife, Frances, are shown with their three children: Thomas Lee, Clark Spencer and Ann Frances, in 1963. Deseret News Archives

President Thomas S. Monson attends the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square's Music for a Summer Evening at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Conference Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, July 17, 2015. Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

Elder Thomas S. Monson and his wife, Frances, in 1965. Desert News archives

President Thomas S. Monson and his wife, Frances, in front of the Salt Lake Temple. LDS Church

Thomas S. Monson graduated cum laude from the University of Utah in 1948. LDS Church

Elder Holland believes that President Monson, born on Aug. 21, 1927, in Salt Lake City, had a special gift for personal, one-on-one ministration that he honed throughout his life.

"I think," Elder Holland said, "that is probably the single-most startling and admirable characteristic in a very admirable life."

A large, faithful, energetic, gregarious, intelligent man with a prodigious recall that allowed him to memorize talks and remember everyone he met, President Monson shot through the ranks of church leadership, as a bishop at age 22 and president of the faith's Canadian Mission at 31. He was unthinkably young, just 36, when he was ordained a modern apostle of Jesus Christ on Oct. 4, 1963. No one younger has been called as an LDS apostle in more than a century. The last younger apostle, Joseph Fielding Smith, was ordained at age 33 in 1910; he also lived to become church president.

The senior quorums of the LDS Church are vaults of institutional memory. New apostles are trained by the quorum's senior apostles. As a new apostle in 1963, President Monson joined a quorum with a handful of men who knew or were raised by Latter-day Saint pioneers who crossed the plains in 1847. They could speak from experience about the church before the Manifesto that ended polygamy in 1890.

By the time of his death, his past relationships in the quorum made President Monson unique among living LDS senior leadership. He was the final prophet to have served in the Twelve with church leaders who had known men who knew the first, Joseph Smith.

President Monson also was the final living apostle called to the Twelve by late church President David O. McKay. He was the last apostle alive who had served with President McKay's immediate successors at the head of the church, Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee. The man expected to succeed President Monson, President Russell M. Nelson, is 93, but he was ordained an apostle more than 20 years after President Monson, in 1984.

President Monson spent more than three decades in the First Presidency. He spent a total of 54 years as an apostle. Only four men in LDS history served longer in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve — President McKay, Heber J. Grant, Joseph Fielding Smith and Wilford Woodruff.

"History and feeling a part of that continuity is a wonderful part of this ministry," said Elder Holland, who knew President Monson for 49 years, in a 2015 Deseret News interview that has not been published before.

To the rescue

One Sunday while still a young bishop, President Monson noticed a teenage boy missing from priesthood meeting. This time, he left his meeting. He went to the boy's home. His mother said her son was working at the West Temple Garage in Salt Lake City. President Monson drove to the garage and searched until he noticed two eyes shining up out of a grease pit.

"You found me, Bishop!" said the boy, who later said he decided that Sunday morning, as he looked up at his bishop from a grease pit, that he would serve a church mission.

"There was a bishop on a rescue mission for someone who it would be easy to see as a nameless, faceless young man," Elder Holland said, "but he wasn't nameless or faceless to Thomas Monson. It's a great story. We've all loved it."

President Monson shared that experience in a 1997 general conference talk about what he called "the importance of building a bridge to the heart of a person."

He was the final bridge to a vital moment in church history, as the last man alive who was present in June 1978 when church leaders received the revelation giving the priesthood to all worthy men.

Seven years earlier, he and then-Elders Gordon B. Hinckley and Boyd K. Packer set apart three black men to lead the Genesis Group for African-American Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. In March 1972 he wrote in his journal: "I am very impressed with these three black brethren who comprise the presidency of this group. Certainly they have been subjected to a lot of injustice and long for the day when they may be able to hold the priesthood. I can honestly say that I have no racial prejudice whatsoever toward such individuals and join with them in a desire that their request might one day be granted by the Lord."

In 1978, he gave President Spencer W. Kimball a written opinion that favored petitioning the Lord again with a plea to extend the priesthood to all worthy men. He called the announcement of the revelation "a moment of exultation." As chairman of the Missionary Executive Committee, he assigned the first black missionary. He performed the first sealing for a black family in an LDS temple. And he attended the first Genesis Group meeting where the sacrament was served, administered and passed by black members with the priesthood.

Three pools

Grid View LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson gestures to onlookers as he walks to return to dedication services in the Kyiv Ukraine Temple after the cornerstone ceremony. He is joined Sunday, Aug. 28, 2010, in Kiev, Ukraine, by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the First Presidency. Scott Taylor, Deseret News

LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson pretends to lead the music as the choir sings at the close of the cornerstone ceremony at the Kyiv Ukraine Temple dedication services Sunday, Aug. 28, 2010, in Kiev, Ukraine.. Also watching are President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the First Presidency, and Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Scott Taylor, Deseret News

LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson stands with 8-year-old Sasha Maltoseva of Sakhalin, Russia, after she was invited among several children and others to apply mortar around the cornerstone of the Kyiv Ukraine Temple during the cornerstone ceremony at the Kyiv Ukraine Temple dedication services Sunday, Aug. 28, 2010, in Kiev, Ukraine. Scott Taylor, Deseret News

Elder Holland said President Monson was an example of someone who refined and magnified a spiritual gift. He did not simply remember the lesson learned as a 23-year-old bishop; he developed it.

"He's pursued that gift," Elder Holland said, "and he's been conscientious about it."

One afternoon while still a young apostle, President Monson gazed at the ceiling of the old Deseret Gym, where the church's Conference Center now sits, as he swam the first of what were to be several laps of backstrokes. Again came a spiritual prompting. This time he felt he should go visit a seriously ill friend experiencing paralysis.

President Monson cut short his exercise, dressed and hurried to bring that figurative pool of Bethesda imagined by his biographer Heidi Swinton in "To the Rescue" with him to University Hospital in Salt Lake City. He found his friend slumped in a wheelchair at the far end of the facility's therapy pool. He walked down and greeted the man, wheeled the chair around and took him back to his room. He didn't know the man had been contemplating a way to propel the wheelchair into the pool.

"President Monson didn't know that," Elder Holland said. "He just went down and greeted him with that enthusiastic, hail-fellow-well-met attitude of his. For the rest of his life, that brother testified of that crucial moment. Who's to say if President Monson had finished another 10 laps and taken his time to get up to the hospital or waited until after work that night to go up, I don't know, but there might not have been a friend there to receive him. All history will say is: He was there at the right time, at the right moment, for the right reason, and that again is so characteristic of his life."

"Never," President Monson said when telling the story, "never, never postpone following a prompting."

He also reminded church members that it wasn't the waters of Bethesda’s pool that healed the man in the New Testament. "Rather," President Monson said, "his blessing came through the touch of the Master’s hand."

Stories that matter

Another prompting led him to fly abruptly to East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain, to give a blessing to a woman with pneumonia. He also was famous for giving away his suits. Elder Holland emotionally described one such instance during an October 2014 general conference talk.

"The image of him I will cherish until I die is of him flying home from then–economically devastated East Germany in his house slippers because he had given away not only his second suit and his extra shirts but the very shoes from off his feet."

President Monson shuffled in those slippers through a terminal in Chicago's famed O'Hare Airport.

"It seemed so characteristic," Elder Holland told the Deseret News. "I confess I probably would have been a little self-conscious about that, but there's absolutely no evidence in the telling of the story that he was. It's just so uniquely him."

Ann Monson Dibb, one of three children born to President Monson and his wife, Frances — who died in May 2013 after 64 years of marriage — once said her father lived three scriptures from the Book of James.

"First, James 1:22: 'Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.' Second, James 1:25: 'A doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.' And third, James 1:27: 'Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.' No matter what their trial or sorrow may be, (my father) extends his hand. He lifts them, steadies them and supports them as they apply their own faith and trust in their Savior, Jesus Christ."

The humanity of the story of the 23-year-old bishop who failed to promptly follow a prompting but learned a life lesson illustrates the reason President Monson was such a powerful and popular speaker, Elder Holland said. Stories from his personal ministry resonate with people.

"We either identify with being the recipient of such a gift," Elder Holland said, "or we might hope and dream that some day we might be good enough to do that ourselves. The church is large, a lot of things about the church can be institutional, congregations are massive, we put 21,000 in that Conference Center. Everything's big now, and so be it. I'm glad. We need a lot more people, and we need to go to a lot more places. But somehow we all respond — I think every one of us identifies — when a story comes down that cuts through all the institutional framework and all the numbers of the congregations and all the complexity of structure and gets down to, 'That could have been my wife or my daughter in that hospital or my son or my nephew in that grease pit or my dad at that swimming pool.'"