Jacob de Jager

Jacob de Jager was a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1976 to 1993. He was granted emeritus status on October 2, 1993. A month later he was called to serve as bishop of the Canyon Road Ward in Salt Lake City.

He was born on January 16, 1923, in The Hague, Netherlands. To escape slave labor in Germany during the Nazi occupation of Holland during World War II, De Jager went into hiding for more than two years. It was during that time that he studied various languages; he was fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Malaysian, as well as his native Dutch.

De Jager served as an interpreter with the Canadian Army in Europe. Later he was assigned to the Dutch East-Indies (now Indonesia) as a welfare officer with Dutch Expeditionary Forces. He was awarded the Royal "For Peace and Order Medal." He met and married his wife, Bea Lim, who was Dutch-Chinese, in Indonesia; they were later sealed in the Bern Switzerland Temple. They were the parents of two children. He moved his family to Toronto, Canada, where he was baptized in 1960. There he served in an elders quorum presidency. Later he served as Sunday School Superintendent in Mexico City, as branch president in Nijmegen, the Netherlands; as counselor in the presidency of the Netherlands Mission; and as Regional Representative to the Netherlands, Spain, and France.

He worked for 26 years with Philips International Electronics Industries and traveled all over the world. He served on the National Advisory Council of the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University.

De Jager died on February 25, 2004.