Willingly consecrating their lives to the Lord, Elder Richard H. Winkel and his wife, Karen, have served wherever and whenever they have been called.

Sister Winkel has often taken upon herself extra responsibilities with their family of nine children while her husband fulfilled various priesthood leadership callings. And when Elder Winkel was called as president of the Spain Madrid Mission in 1994, they obediently accepted the assignment and moved their family from their home in northern California to Spain for three years.

Now, after being sustained to the Second Quorum of the Seventy during April general conference, Elder Winkel, 57, begins an era of Church service as a General Authority.

Such diligent commitment to the Kingdom of God seems to require a lot of sacrifice, but when asked during a Church News interview why they have been willing to sacrifice so much, Sister Winkel looked surprised. Then she responded: "I always stop and think when I hear that word in connection with the gospel, because I really can't think of any sacrifices that we've made. We've just loved the gospel and received blessings. I just can't think of any sacrifices."

Blessings, however, came quickly to their minds, and for the most part, those blessings are centered on the family.

Karen Hart first caught the eye of Richard Winkel when she was giving a talk in Church in their BYU ward. Their first date was a family home evening with their roommates at the university. "I was more excited about the possibilities than she was at first," Elder Winkel said. After that first date, he declared to his roommates, "That's the girl I'm going to marry."

Sister Winkel spent her early years in Bountiful, Utah, but moved at age 6 with her parents — Leo and Ruby Hart — and siblings to a farm in Caldwell, Idaho. The farm's primary crops were onions and sugar beets. That is where Elder Winkel went to meet the parents of the woman he had recently asked to marry him.

He recalled: "We got up there in the early evening, and her father shook hands with me for the first time with his right hand and then he placed a hoe in my other hand and said, 'I'll see you in the morning to see if you're worth your salt,' and put me out pulling weeds in the onion fields.

"He had never met me before, so he wanted to know if I was a good worker. I think that was important in his mind and, luckily, all my life I've worked in lumber yards and done physical work, so I could get out there and work hard. But as far as being productive, I don't know. I was probably chopping up as many onion plants as I was weeds."

However, Elder Winkel passed the test and has been rewarded with a loving wife, cherished in-laws and nine children — seven daughters and two sons.

Winning his wife has been the highlight of his life, Elder Winkel said. "I can see in our family — and you could ask any of our children — even though I have been a bishop, stake president and mission president, she's the stronger one spiritually and is the great example."

Then Sister Winkel said: "Richard may have been gone a lot, but he was the one who made things happen. He always made sure that the kids had opportunities in sports and different activities and was always behind them and supported them and supported me."

Elder Winkel and his brother were athletic and set goals when they were young to marry girls 6 feet tall so they would have tall sons to make up their own basketball team. "But to show you how the Lord tempers us, between the two of us, we have 11 daughters," he said, adding that he loves his daughters who are talented in music and also enjoy sports.

After they were married, Elder and Sister Winkel moved to northern California to continue working in the family business.

"We were always remanufacturers of upper-grade lumber," Elder Winkel said. "We made mouldings and sidings and beautiful millwork. . . . I've always enjoyed lumber and it's been good to our family."

Since selling the business, the Winkels have moved to Provo, Utah, and Elder Winkel has been teaching a missionary preparation class at BYU.

A family heritage grounded in gospel principles has given Elder Winkel a firm foundation his entire life. His grandparents, Hendrik and Everdena Van Ojen Winkel, were converted to the Church in Holland shortly after the turn of the century and set an example of valiant service.

Elder Winkel noted that his grandparents returned to Holland in their later years as a missionary couple and that his parents served a mission together to the St. George Temple visitors center. So when he and his wife served in Spain, they were the third generation in their family to serve as couple missionaries.

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, Elder Winkel's life was shaped by his family's faithfulness in the gospel and the family lumber business where he learned about hard work. When the time came, he was prepared to serve a mission in Chile.

In 1965, after his mission, he went with a friend to study at the University of Madrid in Spain. The Church wasn't officially recognized in Spain at the time and the only Church unit was a military branch, he said.

"We lived in a boarding house with 12 to 14 other students and we used to talk to them about religion late at night. They would always appreciate knowing about the Church, but in the end, they would say, 'Your Church could never succeed in Spain.'

"And yet I came back some 30 years later when I was called as a mission president to find 25,000 members of the Church and a temple under construction. We later went back to Spain for the temple dedication; it was a dream come true. I'd like to have seen a few of those people that I had those late-night discussions with."

Elder Winkel concluded: "We've always known the gospel is true and we make covenants in the temple to consecrate our time and talents to the building of the Kingdom and we've always tried to do whatever we've been called to do. We're happy, of course, to receive this calling, although overwhelmed and a little anxious to learn our responsibilities."