Lloyd P. George

Lloyd P. George was sustained as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy on October 1988. He was released in October 1994. He also served in the Church as a bishop, stake president, regional representative and as president of the Arizona Tempe Mission. He also served as a missionary to the Piute Indians on the Kanosh Indian Reservation.

George was born on September 17, 1920, in Kanosh, Utah. He and his wife, Leola, were the parents of three children. His education at Brigham Young University was discontinued due to the outbreak of World War II and he enlisted in the US Air Force. During his career, he had a grocery business, a mercantile business, and a cattle enterprise. later he was a real estate broker.

George died on May 13, 1996.

The Ensign magazine shares a compelling story of an affliction George was healed of due to faith in his patriarchal blessing:

“I stammered and stuttered terribly in my youth,” he said. “Up until the time I went on my mission I had never given a talk. I couldn’t participate when called upon in school. People would ask my name, and I couldn’t answer.

His parents, Preal and Artimissia, sent him to speech teachers and therapists, but they couldn’t help him. Then, when he was eleven years old, he was given a patriarchal blessing in the hope that it would provide him encouragement.

“My patriarchal blessing noted my problem and said, ‘Know this, that the Lord loves you and wants you to be happy.’ The patriarch then said, ‘I rebuke this condition and say unto you that you will go out into the world and preach the gospel with force to a waiting world.’”

In time, Elder George accepted a call to the Southern States Mission. Still suffering from his affliction, he couldn’t speak when he tried to present the gospel. His companion had to take over for him. His mission president later admitted that he’d thought, “Unless the Lord comes to the rescue of that young man, he won’t be any good to me, and I’ll have to send him home.”

After a month of being unable to communicate with those he visited, he prayed, “Lord, it’s now or never. Help me now, or I go back home.” Then he fasted.

His speech began to improve. “We had been holding weekly cottage meetings with five elderly women,” Elder George said. “At the next meeting I was able to speak fairly well. Afterward my companion said, ‘What happened to you tonight? Ordinarily I couldn’t turn you on, and tonight I couldn’t turn you off.’ . . .

“I was transferred out of the area, and about six months later when I could really speak and preach, I went back and visited those five elderly investigators at another cottage meeting,” he recalled. “They sat through that meeting and just cried and cried.”[1]