The following biographical sketch is adapted from
the "News of the Church: Elder Robert E. Wells of the First Quorum of
Seventy" published in the Ensign for November 1976 on the occasion
of Elder Wells' call to the First Quorum of the Seventy.
Though he was born and raised in Nevada, Elder Robert
E. Wells has spent half his life in Latin America. He first learned Spanish
as a missionary in Argentina. Armed with a degree in accounting and an
excellent command of the Spanish language, he accepted an offer from First
National City Bank to return to South America. Only four months after his
release from his mission, he and his bride, Meryl Leavitt Wells, launched
themselves on a career in international banking that has taken Elder Wells
to Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Ecuador.
From his earliest years, Elder Wells has felt—and
followed—the influence of the Lord in his life. When he left the navy a
few years after World War II, he was all set to finish his engineering
degree at Berkeley—when he felt prompted by the Spirit to return to BYU
and “learn the science of money.” When his new in-laws wondered whether
he should leave the United States so soon after his mission, he pointed
out that his patriarchal blessing promised him that he would serve the
Lord “among the nations of the world.”
Years later, after the tragic death of his first
wife in an airplane accident, the Spirit again guided him in a crucial
decision. He had been a widower for two years, and he knew he should marry
again. But to whom? As he prayed he was clearly told, “Marry a woman who
will make a mission president’s wife.”
Other promptings led him back to the United States
to look for a wife. He listed all the things his wife would need to be:
a “mission mother” type, gentle and loving; a Golden Gleaner; a college
graduate; a returned lady missionary, preferably with a background in Spanish;
a musician—and many other things. He found her, too—Helen Walser Wells.
He proposed to her seven days after he met her, but not before the Spirit
had informed him in a profound spiritual experience that she was the right
one. Thirty days after they met they were married, and, he says, “We’ve
been happy ever since.”
He followed the promptings of the Spirit again in
1971, when, after serving as president of the Mexico Monterrey Mission,
he turned down a chance to return to a prominent position in international
banking in order to accept a less prestigious post in
the Church Central Purchasing Department. Now, with his new calling,
he and his wife understand what the Lord had in mind.
Elder and Sister Wells have seven children, ranging
in age from twenty-four to nine. They also have one grandchild and another
on the way. Elder Wells feels that the Lord’s guidance in his life not
only has helped him and his wife to choose the right path at the “spiritual
crossroads” of their life, but also has helped his children to realize
that their father acts, not by whim, but by the word of the Lord. Perhaps
it is because he is such a spiritual leader in his home that he is now
able to fill his new calling as a spiritual leader in the Church.
Now that he is back in the United States, Elder Wells
sometimes misses the Latin-American people. He has had many chances to
visit them, however, as a Regional Representative in Mexico, Ecuador, and
Colombia.
But even after a quarter century in Latin America,
Elder Wells has not forgotten his upbringing on a farm in Logandale, Nevada,
sixty miles from Las Vegas, where he was born in 1927. His warm smile seems
to fit right in, as much in a rural American town as among international
business leaders. Perhaps it is a measure of the man that he is at home
in either setting, able to listen, able to understand, and able to share
the Spirit that has guided his life.
Elder Wells served faithfully and well in the First
Quorum of the Seventy for a period of twenty-one years until he was given
emeritus status on October 4, 1997. However, the Lord was not yet through with Elder Wells. At the age of 70, Elder Wells was called as president of the Santiago Chile Temple, succeeding Pres. Eduardo Ayala. Elder Wells' wife, Helen Walser Wells, was called to serve as temple matron.
