Shortly after being reassigned to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Middle East/North African Area Presidency, Alvin Meredith III went back to his office where he received a phone call from Brook Hales who serves in the First Presidency’s office.

“He said ‘The First Presidency would like to meet with you and Sister Meredith in three weeks’,” Alvin Meredith recalled. “That is such a long time. I wondered ‘What in the world does the First Presidency want?’”

Three weeks later Alvin and his wife, Jennifer, met with church President Russell M. Nelson, President Dallin H. Oaks and President Henry B. Eyring.

“President Nelson told us to sit next together on the couch and act like we loved each other,” Alvin Meredith said. “He explained my assignment had been changed. He would like for me to serve as the president of BYU-Idaho. We were certainly shocked. We were very humbled.”

Meredith replaced former president Henry J. Eyring who is also the son of the First Presidency’s Henry B. Eyring.

“We’re well aware of the legacy of leaders who preceded us. It’s an illustrious consecrated group of men,” he said.

Whenever Meredith starts thinking of those men who came before him as BYU-Idaho presidents, he feels overwhelmed. Whenever he has those feelings, he thinks about the conversation he had with the First Presidency.

“If you know that the Lord called you, you can have confidence that he will qualify you,” he said. “It gives me all the hope I need to press forward.”

While serving as the BYU-Idaho president, Meredith will continue serving as a General Authority Seventy which he has served as since April 3, 2021.

“I was in the Middle East Africa North Presidency,” he said. “It’s the only international based presidency outside of Salt Lake. I was living in Salt Lake and making periodic trips over to the Middle East.”

Meredith said he was never worried about visiting the Middle East that often has a reputation for being a dangerous place.

“When you’re sent on the Lord’s errand, you have faith all will be well,” he said. “I never felt unsafe.”

The people Meredith worked with were often of the Muslim faith.

“I just learned that they were such good-hearted people,” he said.

It’s just a small minority that give Muslims a bad rap, Meredith said.

“There are extremists in their faith tradition that cause some of us to paint the rest of them with a broad brush which is really unfair,” he said.

Prior to serving in the Middle East, the Merediths and their six children lived in Hong Kong and Singapore.

“We’ve learned that people who look different than us and talk different than us and believe different than us, can still be really good, genuine people,” he said.

The Meredith children attended American schools while living overseas. Living in a foreign county proved to be a huge blessing for the youth, Meredith said.

“We took all the kids overseas,” he said. “With my work responsibilities and callings, I have drug them all over the face of the earth. They’re better for all of it, but the thing that warms my heart is that they’ve just been so patient and willing and have never complained.”

The three oldest children have served in foreign missions with one son going to Madagascar, another to Chili while a daughter served in Sweden. Those three children all attend Brigham Young University in Provo.

“We like to think of (BYU) as our sister school instead of our competitor,” Meredith said.

Meredith attended that sister school where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology. At BYU, he met Jennifer, a returned missionary from Argentina, on a blind date. About 16 months later, the pair married.

“We were older when we got married,” he said. “I was almost 28, and she was 26. We have some of our returned missionaries who say that takes a lot of pressure off of them because their missionary presidents were ‘so old’ when they got married.”

Around 2017, the church called the Merediths to be mission presidents in the Salt Lake City Mission. Alvin Meredith was familiar with the mission as he served there as a young missionary from Tennessee.