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John Kauwe’s immune system was failing. The combined destructive forces of rectal cancer and chemotherapy were breaking down the BYU-Hawaii president’s body.
He was suffering, said his wife, Monica. His doctors placed him in isolation.
In the middle of that awful spiral, while he was sitting in the oncology infusion center in Honolulu, his cellphone rang. The caller was Elder Ronald A. Rasband, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Elder Rasband asked if Kauwe had some time to talk. The debilitating chemotherapy treatment ahead of him would take three hours.
“I had all the time in the world,” Kauwe said.
Elder Rasband had just left a meeting with the three members of the church’s First Presidency, who double as the leading officers of BYU-Hawaii’s board of trustees.
They had just placed Kauwe on medical leave, effective immediately.
Elder Rasband asked Kauwe how he felt about that.
“I don’t like it,” he said. His instinct was to push through the pain. He didn’t know how to set down the work he loved.
That was the point of the leave. The First Presidency knew how Kauwe would react. They knew he would want to keep working.
“That was precisely why they needed me to stop,” Kauwe said. “Elder Rasband said that they needed me to rest. They needed me to heal. … That forceful direction finally made it feel that it was OK for me to rest.”
He now calls the intervention “a beautiful example of Christlike leadership.”
“Elder Rasband kindly and firmly helped me understand how and why I needed to change to have a better future,” he said. “I love him and I am grateful for his example.”
But as Kauwe embraced a blessing he had received and focused on healing and rest, he couldn’t help but feel bereft at times while in forced isolation on the intimate BYU-Hawaii campus.
“I was just sitting at the house,” he told the university’s 3,000 students last week, “with all of you in the dorms, watching graduations happen. Students that I had known and loved moved on without me being there to celebrate with them.”
Kauwe’s in-laws have an inside joke when someone says they had an off day or an off week. “Well,” another family will say, “I’m having an off year.”
“I would say that I’ve had a little bit of an off year,” Kauwe said.
The president returned to his office in July, and at a campus devotional last week he told students “the physical healing that I’ve experienced has been miraculous.”
Here are the lessons he shared from his “off year”:
- Knowing you are a child of God, a child of the covenant and a disciple of Jesus Christ brings great comfort, peace and confidence.
- Life is full of challenges and you do not have to figure out everything alone. Counsel with family, other righteous mentors and ecclesiastical leaders.
- Don’t wait for a crisis to learn how to take care of your body and mind. Build healthy habits now. Taking care of yourself and building resilience allows you to look outward and make a difference in the lives of others.
- Challenge yourself and have the courage to lead. The experiences you have and the skills you develop will prepare you to lead and lift others throughout your lives.
Kauwe said the BYU-Hawaii experience rests on five pillars — faith, intellect, self-reliance, resilience and leadership.
BYU-Hawaii’s mission is to train leaders who bless their families, communities, professions and the church along the Pacific Rim.
“Leadership is the outward expression of the other four pillars,” he said. “Your faith, intellect, self-reliance and resilience are not being developed only for your own benefit. Leadership means using what you have become and what you have learned to bless other people.
“Jesus Christ is the perfect example of leadership. He loved and served others, and he helped the people become more than they could have become on their own.
“He called humble fishermen and helped them become powerful leaders. He can do the same for us.”
My recent stories
Church of Jesus Christ opposes abortion measure in a second state (Sept. 21)
Women fuel record as church reaches 90,000 missionaries (Sept. 18)
Latter-day Saint leaders join other faiths to oppose Idaho abortion vote (Sept. 17)
About the church
President Dallin H. Oaks gave a landmark speech at the National Cathedral last week on civility, religious liberty and what the Constitution requires of us. He prayed at the end “that we will all seek to be peacemakers.”
Here is one major highlight from his talk: “As a practical basis for unity, all of us should accept the reality that we are fellow citizens who need each other,” he said. “This requires all of us to obey some laws we dislike and to live peacefully with some persons whose values differ from our own. We should make every effort to understand the experiences and concerns of others, especially when they differ from our own. We should be especially careful not to seek total dominance for all of our own positions.”
A Jewish-atheist observer who dedicated a chapter in a book to what he called President Oaks’ civic theology wrote a commentary for the Deseret News about what President Oaks said last week: “Consider it official,” Jonathan Rauch began. “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has exited the culture war, repudiated Christian nationalism and embraced a wiser alternative: Christian constitutionalism.”
Elder Alexander Dushku gave this week’s BYU devotional and asked students to “choose Christ over everything. … Now is the time to decide to be all in for the Lord.”
In addition to my story on the major new Pew Research Center report about Latter-day Saints, be sure to scroll through the 10 points in this story about how Latter-day Saints “demonstrate counterintuitive thriving in the faith despite a secularizing American landscape.”
The first Latter-day Saint temple in Kansas is now open for tours.
One of our more popular stories over the last week was about the expanded Gospel Library tools for musical worship.
Early bird registration for RootsTech 2027 is now open.
What I’m reading
Delightful to read and watch: “They ate all summer. Now millions will judge them for it.”
Behind the scenes
