12 fascinating facts about the new Primary General Presidency

The new Primary General Presidency began their service on August 1, 2022. We are excited to learn from these inspiring women! Here are four facts about each member of the presidency.

1. President Porter has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Brigham Young University and was a lab assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
2. President Porter lived in both Frankfurt, Germany, and Moscow, Russia, and traveled throughout Eastern Europe with her late husband, Elder Bruce D. Porter, while he served as a member of the Seventy. In a Church News podcast, she shared that on her first Sunday in Moscow in 1995, they attended church in a rented building where no pictures were allowed to be hung on the walls. She went back years later and was amazed to see how things had changed: “[We] walked into a Young Women’s room that had beautiful pictures of the Savior [and] tears ran down my face to see how much they had grown in the gospel.”
3. President Porter’s husband battled kidney failure for 15 years, including two failed kidney transplants, before passing away in December 2016. President Porter credits the Spirit for helping her through that difficult time. She said, “When I was eight years old, and I was baptized and hands were laid on my head and I was invited to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, never in my life had that meant more to me than at that time when my husband passed away. I felt literally the strength of that gift. I felt I was being held up in the loving hands of our Heavenly Father through that gift of the Holy Ghost.”
4. Before being called as President, Sister Porter was the First Counselor in the Primary General Presidency. She said that while in that calling, there was one sentence in the Church’s General Handbook that she shared with wards as she traveled that opened members’ eyes: “Any baptized member of the Church may offer a prayer in a Church meeting.” President Porter went on, “We’ve had the blessing of seeing bishoprics inviting 10-year-olds to pray in a sacrament meeting … This has just elevated our Primary children, helping them realize ‘I can contribute, and I am part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.’”

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1. Sister Wright graduated with a bachelor of science degree in human development and family studies from the University of Utah in 1998. She later worked at Marquette University in Wisconsin in the College of Communications, where she helped facilitate an urban journalism camp for inner city youth.
2. Sister Wright grew up in South Ogden, Utah, with a twin brother, an older brother, and a younger brother and later had three sons. After being raised in a family of boys and having three sons, she was happy to be called to the Young Women general advisory council in 2018. She said, “You can imagine how excited I was to be called to serve on the Young Women general advisory council because now I have had, for the last couple of years, over 500,000 daughters that I get to pray for every single day.”
3. Sister Wright was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer in 2015 and was told she’d only have about four months to live. When her cancer treatments felt like they were too much to bear, her husband suggested they find someone to serve. On one occasion, the family made care kits for other patients in the hospital—a kit that saved one patient’s life by serving as a reminder that she was loved, which then changed her mind about her previous decision to stop her treatments. Read the full story here.
4. When Sister Wright was battling cancer, a friend asked her, “When you die, what is the thing you will miss most about having a physical body?” In a Facebook post, Sister Wright shared her thoughts on the question, explaining that there were many things she would miss—like the taste of a peach and the sound of crunching leaves. But in the end, she decided that what she would miss most was holding her husband’s hand. She wrote, “We have been through a lot together, and I know that we have many more trials to come. But as long as we are holding hands, united in the cause of Christ, there is no mountain we cannot move, or at the very least climb together.”

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1. Sister Tracy Yeulande Browning was born in New Rochelle, New York, on Oct. 9, 1976. She lived in Jamaica until she was eleven years old and then lived in New Jersey and New York. She was introduced to the gospel after her mother saw a Latter-day Saint advertisement offering a free copy of the Book of Mormon on a late-night television infomercial and requested one. Sister Browning was baptized at age 16. She told Church News that the scripture verse Enos 1:6, “And I, Enos, knew that God could not lie,” had a profound impact on her and was instrumental in her conversion.
2. Sister Browning and her husband, Brady Browning, had a long-distance relationship between Utah and New York for months before he proposed. They were married in the Salt Lake Temple on May 2, 1997.
3. Sister Browning has two children. Her oldest, a daughter named Morgan, was born prematurely. Sister Browning told Church News that she remembers feeling overwhelmed as a new mother who had to leave her baby at the hospital for a time, then faced more stressful situations in bringing their daughter home. “We did a lot of praying and relying on the Lord to answer moment-to-moment questions and help us navigate decisions,” Sister Browning said. Some years later, the Brownings felt prompted to adopt a child and brought home a son named Cameron. “We fiercely love our children,” she said. “They are most precious to us and feel like gifts from God.”
4. At the time of her call to the Primary General Presidency, Sister Browning was working in the publishing services department of the Church and served on the Relief Society general advisory council. In her calling on the Relief Society general advisory council, Sister Browning sought to understand the concerns of members of the Church who feel marginalized. She said in a podcast interview, “If I belong to the Savior, I belong in the Savior’s church. And how can we ensure that all of the members of the Church, regardless of their circumstances, regardless of their unique needs, still feel like they belong here? … I can tell you that when I became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I knew that I was at home … and I want people to feel that. I want [it] to feel like you belong here, and this is your home, because you belong to Christ, and this is Christ’s church.”

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