SALT LAKE CITY — The changes in LDS leadership continued Tuesday, three days after church members sustained three new members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

One of those new apostles was Elder Ronald A. Rasband, who had been serving as the senior president of the Quorums of the Seventy. The new senior president of the Seventy will be Elder L. Whitney Clayton, according to a news release issued late Tuesday afternoon by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The church has seven presidents of the Seventy, and Elder Clayton has been a member of that group since 2008.

That still left six presidents of the Seventy. To fill that vacancy, the church announced that Elder Gerrit W. Gong will now serve as a member of the Presidency of the Seventy. He has been a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy since 2010.

An attorney born in Utah, Elder Clayton, 65, has been a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy since 2001.

He previously served for six years as an Area Seventy. During his 14 years as a general authority of the church, he has served as a counselor in the South America South Area presidency and supervised the Africa Southeast, Africa West, Utah North, Utah Salt Lake City and Utah South areas.

Born in California and grandson of Chinese immigrants, Elder Gong, 61, was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and had a career in international relations before serving as an assitant to the president at Brigham Young University.

Elder Gong was the president of the church's Asia Area, a position he will retain briefly during a transition. He previously served as a member of the church's Fifth Quorum of the Seventy in the Utah South Area.

The LDS Church has eight quorums of the Seventy, which assist the faith's two highest governing bodies, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve.

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