At BYU, Pres. Thomas Monson relates how Harvard's Clayton Christensen got Book of Mormon testimony

PROVO — LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson pinned a large portion of his devotional address at BYU on Tuesday on the story of how Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen received his testimony of the Book of Mormon while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

Below, we provide the striking full story President Monson told. It underscored his advice that students should anchor their lives in the gospel so their lights may shine as examples to the world.

A year ago, President Monson told a college basketball story about Christensen during the October 2010 General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Christensen decided, while playing for the Oxford basketball team, not to play ball in a championship game that fell on the Sabbath. President Monson used the story to illustrate one of what he described in his title as "The Three Rs of Choice." That story is also provided below.

Both stories are based on a devotional address Christensen gave at BYU-Idaho on June 8, 2004, titled "Decisions for Which I've Been Grateful." Read it here. Find an audio version here.

For more about Christensen, a member of the Deseret News Editorial Advisory Board, see the links provided below the stories.

President Monson on Christensen's hard-won testimony:

May I share with you the experience of Brother Clayton M. Christensen as he sought to know for himself. Brother Christensen has served in many positions of leadership in the Church, including as an Area Seventy. He has received far too many academic awards for me to mention here. He is currently the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He is also an alumnus of Brigham Young University, and I believe his son Spencer and daughter Catherine are currently students here.

When Brother Christensen finished his schooling at Brigham Young University, he received a scholarship to go to Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar. When he arrived at Oxford, he realized that it would be somewhat challenging to be an active member of the Church in Oxford. The Rhodes Scholarship Trust that had given him his scholarship had a lot of activities for the recipients of the scholarship, and if he were going to be active in the Church it would be difficult for him to participate in those activities. He intended to obtain in just two years a degree in applied econometrics — a program which took most students three years to complete.