PROVO, Utah — Elder Ronald A. Rasband remembers participating in flag ceremonies as a young Boy Scout. “We took the assignment seriously, and we drilled to get it just right,” he said. His mother would wash and press his uniform so that as a guard, a flag bearer or the color guard commander, “I took the part and would learn the part of a patriot.”
Now a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder Rasband recalls saluting the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
“‘One nation, under God,’” he repeated in the Marriott Center on the campus of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, on Sunday, June 28. “Those words have stayed in my heart and my soul for all these years.” Elder Rasband was the keynote speaker in the 2026 Patriotic Service of America’s Freedom Festival.
To read the full story, visit TheChurchNews.com.