President Hinckley remembered by family, friends, church leaders

With millions of Latter-day Saints worldwide watching and listening live, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley was eulogized Saturday — his red chair on the Conference Center dais empty and his casket resting in front of the pulpit handcrafted from a tree he planted decades ago.

To members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it seemed only fitting that the "house President Hinckley built" was the site for his funeral, the first to be held there since its completion in 2000. He was remembered by his daughter and fellow general authorities as a giant of a man who built large on a legacy of faith that spans generations for his family.

Thousands braved the cold downtown before 9 a.m. to get tickets for the service after a two-day viewing in which nearly 58,000 people filed through the Conference Center's Hall of the Prophets. The last person in line passed the casket at 11:25 p.m. Friday, waiting between four to five hours to say farewell.

Virginia Hinckley Pearce told those assembled her father felt deeply the hand of ancestral faith, with three generations of forbears who had sacrificed and lived for their faith, and three generations now living who look to his legacy as part of their own.

Quoting him, she said he realized "the tremendous obligation that was mine to pass on all that I had received as an inheritance from my forbears to the generations who have now come after me."

With five children, 25 grandchildren and 62 great-grandchildren, President Hinckley realized his love and legacy "wasn't just about our little family," she said. "Because, as President Hinckley often told us, we are all one great family — some 13 million strong — sharing an inheritance of faith and enjoying a covenant relationship with God the Father and His son Jesus Christ, with responsibilities to help one another along the way."

Underscoring the feeling church members have for him, she said, "Our father was adorable. And he was a marvel to watch. Disciplined and courageous, with an unbelievable capacity for work, he believed in growth."

Such continual growth "is the story of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that he loved to tell, as well as the story of his own life. That kind of growth requires faith, courage, discipline and hard work — partnered with the gracious hand of the Lord."

The family watched that growth deepen for him during the past four years, "the capstone years of his life. Following the death of mother, his grief was almost overwhelming. Characteristically he acknowledged it — felt it, wept and mourned deeply. He went to the Lord with his tears, thus allowing the loss to carve out an even deeper place in his heart for compassion and dig an even deeper well of faith and trust in God.

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