SALT LAKE CITY — Ryan Hill suspected the worst Sunday
morning when his father, an LDS Church mission president in Ghana,
phoned and asked him to hold while he added Ryan's siblings to the call.
Ryan thought there may have been a death in the
family, but it didn't cross his mind that it could be his mother, Sister
Raelene B. Hill, 64, who unexpectedly died on Sunday in South Africa
from complications following a routine medical procedure.
Sister Hill, a native of Ogden, Utah, had been serving in Ghana since July 2013 with her husband,
President Norman C. Hill, president of the Ghana Accra West Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"One of our ancestors is Rebecca Burdick Winters, who
died as a pioneer in 1852 and whose grave is marked on the Mormon
Trail," Ryan Hill said. "I've thought today about how my mom is like
that. Our family has always been willing to sacrifice whatever the Lord
would ask. She went on this mission because she knew it was important
and the call came from the Lord."
Sister Hill traveled from Ghana to South Africa for a procedure to remove kidney stones and died when complications developed.
"(The Hills) are deeply loved by their family, church
leaders and their missionaries," LDS Church spokesman Eric Hawkins
said. "We pray for each of them at this difficult time and extend our
love to President Hill and his family."
The Hills were members of the Klein Texas LDS Stake
before leaving on their mission. Sister Hill was a former Texas Mother
of the Year and a past president of American Mothers.
Sister Hill regularly taught the missionaries serving
in Ghana that they could do hard things. Ryan Hill said she asked Elder
David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to confirm to the
missionaries that they could do hard things when he visited the mission
last year.
"I perceive you know a lot about that, don't you, Sister Hill?" Elder Bednar said.
She did.
"It wasn't necessarily easy for her to leave on a mission," her son said.
For one, she had to leave behind grandchildren; she
now has 12, with two more are on the way. She worried about her parents,
Neal and Faye Ball, who still live in Ogden and now are in their 90s.
Returning to West Africa, where President Hill had
worked in business for five years, also was a sacrifice, in part because
she suffered from several health issues that she managed privately and
that caused her pain.
Sister Hill was born in Ogden. She and President Hill
were Ogden High School sweethearts. She waited for him while he served
an LDS mission, then for another year as he fulfilled the promise his
mission president required of every missionary to wait one year before
marriage.
They married in the Ogden LDS Temple, which she had
helped raised money to build. She attended Weber State and BYU, where
she studied home economics and education. She taught at Tintic High
School in Eureka, Utah, before focusing on raising four children. A
fifth died at birth.
"She dedicated her life to her kids and our interests," Ryan Hill said.
Sister Hill's previous church service experience
included time as a stake public affairs committee member, ward Relief
Society president and stake Young Women president, according to a
February 2013 LDS Church News
article.
The Hills' mission has been
noteworthy.
After the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the evacuation of the
missionaries from the Sierra Leone Freetown Mission, President Hill
doubled for a year as president of that mission, too. He wrote an
article
for the Ensign, a LDS Church magazine, about how church members in
Sierra Leone dealt with Ebola, isolation and the lingering aftermath of
the war.
Their missionaries also helped Accra recover from the effects of major flooding in June, when more than 160 people died.
Sister Hill helped one missionary shed his initial reluctance to help people who had badmouthed the LDS Church.
"Sister Hill, our mission president’s wife, is always saying ‘we can do hard things,’"
said Elder Victor Uzoho of Aba, Nigeria,
"so I soon stopped complaining in my mind and instead saw how much good
we were doing. I think they see us differently now because we were
willing to get dirty by cleaning out gutters and washing walls alongside
them."
