When Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf was a child growing up in West Germany he did not always get along with his English studies. A native German speaker, he had enjoyed success learning Russian — but "my mouth was not made for English."
Even as his language struggles were frustrating his parents and English teachers alike, young Dieter was making almost daily bike rides to the Frankfurt airport. He'd watch the jets coming in and imagine himself in the cockpit of one of those big birds. Becoming a pilot was his dream.
Then he learned he needed to know English to captain a commercial aircraft.
"Overnight my mouth changed," said Elder Uchtdorf in his address at the LDS Business College commencement exercises May 6 in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square. "I was able to learn English. Why? Because of the right motivation." He would go on to become a pilot and, eventually, the president of flight operations and chief pilot of Lufthansa German Airlines.
The college's class of 2004 can enjoy its own success if motivated by a testimony of Christ, His Church and His prophet, said Elder Uchtdorf of the Presidency of the Seventy.
LDS Business College awarded 337 associate degrees and 536 one-year certificates in accounting, business, office and information technology and several other fields during its 117th commencement exercises. Thirty-three percent of this year's graduating class — which includes students from several states and countries — are first-generation college attendees.
Graduation exercises mark a happy time of celebration, "but it is also a time of commencing, an act or process of beginning," Elder Uchtdorf said. Those leaving LDS Business College are commencing a new phase of life. While not everyone needs to go on and claim a Ph.D., he said, each graduate should continue to enrich his or her education.
"Stretch yourself — learn as much as you can," Elder Uchtdorf said.
Through correct choices, LDS Business College graduates can apply their knowledge wisely because their education includes character and Christlike attributes, he added.
College president Stephen K. Woodhouse told the graduates their formal training at the school has been rich with spiritual application.
"We have openly mixed talk about faith and values while we have discussed pharmacology and finance, technology and textiles," President Woodhouse said. "The hope is that you would see that true learning comes 'by study and also by faith' (Doctrine and Covenants 88:118).
"We also hope that you have seen that the true learner does not draw a line neatly between so-called secular and spiritual topics."
Jill W. Larsen, a 1968 office technology graduate, received the college's Distinguished Alumnus Award. Sister Larsen is the personal secretary to Elder Monte J. Brough of the Seventy.
Graduates Jennifer Lyn Burnell and Victoria Diane Crocker were student speakers at the commencement exercises.
E-mail to: jswensen@desnews.com