Elder Bruce C. Hafen is a native of St. George, Utah, where he graduated from Dixie College. After serving a mission in West Germany, he graduated from Brigham Young University. He then earned a juris doctor degree from the University of Utah in 1967.
After practicing law four years in Salt Lake City, he became assistant to president Dallin H. Oaks of Brigham Young University where he assisted in the creation of the new J. Reuben Clark Law School and was a member of that school’s original faculty. From 1976-78, Elder Hafen was director of evaluation and research for the Correlation Department of the Church. He then served as president of Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, for seven years. He was dean of the Brigham Young University Law School from 1985-89. From 1989 until the time of his call as a General Authority, he served as the number two administrator, the Provost, at Brigham Young University.
Elder Hafen was sustained as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 6, 1996. From 1996 to 2000, he was in the Australia/New Zealand Area Presidency.
Marie K. Hafen was raised in Bountiful, Utah. She is married to Bruce C. Hafen and is the mother of seven children and 25-grandchildren. She obtained both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. She has served as a Relief Society president, Laurel adviser. She has written for the Relief Society general curriculum committee and has served on the Young Women General Board and the Board of Directors for the Deseret News.
She has taught religion, literature, and writing at both Brigham Young University-Idaho and Brigham Young University in Provo.
Bruce and Marie are co-authors of several books including their most recent book Faith Is Not Blind, The Contrite Spirit, and The Belonging Heart, which is the third book in A Trilogy of the Heart: Applying the Atonement to Life’s Experiences.”Bruce is the author of two additional books about the heart: The Believing Heart, and The Broken Heart.
