Service to others is what really matters, according to Elder Lance B. Wickman, addressing thousands of members of the American Legion on Sunday.

Elder Wickman, a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was keynote speaker at a patriotic religious service for the Legion, held in the church's Conference Center. The Legion's 88th national convention is meeting in Salt Lake City through Thursday.

The service included songs by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra, reading of scriptures, prayers, silent meditation for service members who are missing, and presentations of memorial wreathes.

Elder Wickman extended the church's welcome to the group, delivering the "greeting and warmest best wishes to you" on behalf of church President Gordon B. Hinckley, who did not attend.

A Vietnam veteran, Elder Wickman noted that those who served in America's armed forces "share a unique and special brotherhood. We are all comrades in arms."

But the sense of kinship extends beyond personal experiences, he said. "Some 6,000 Utah National Guardsmen have served or are now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. ... In addition, Utah has its share of young men and women, regular and reservists, on active duty for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps."

With Utah's population significantly comprised of LDS Church members, he added, "it is evident that the Mormon people are very much engaged with other Americans in the defense of our nation."

Naming battles from the 20th and 21st centuries, he said LDS people have fought and died in defense of the country.

"For us such service is not only a patriotic duty," Elder Wickman said. "It can be a sacred duty."

He lauded the American Legion's work for peace, service and charity. These efforts are shared by the LDS Church, he said, citing such examples as help with relief from hurricanes that devastated parts of the East and the tsunami that swept sections of Asia.

Just as the Legion, the church also is associated "with those same principles of goodness, charity and helping hands," he said.

"We live in perhaps the most self-absorbed of ages," Elder Wickman noted. But for members of the American Legion and for those in the church, "service is what really matters.

"Service is what makes life satisfying."

Looking a tombstones in a cemetery, he noticed that on the monuments to World War II veterans were records of their service during that war. Even though they may have died many decades later, "that was how they wished to be remembered."

That was on the tombstones, not college degrees or civilian occupations or bank accounts. "It was their service that really mattered."