pilot. Due to an agreement between the West German and US governments, Uchtdorf trained as a fighter pilot in Big Spring, Texas, where he excelled, earning the coveted Commander's Trophy (USAF) for being the best student pilot in his class. After earning wings from both the German and US air forces, he served for six years as a fighter pilot in West Germany, leaving in 1965 to join Lufthansa. By 1970, at 29 years of age, Uchtdorf had reached the rank of captain with Lufthansa. He was appointed in 1975 as head of Lufthansa's new Arizona Training School in the US, and in 1980 he was made head chief pilot of cockpit crews, followed by appointment to senior vice president of flight operations in 1982. He left Lufthansa in 1996, two years after being called as an LDS Church general authority. LDS Church service Uchtdorf served twice as a stake president in the LDS Church, presiding over the Frankfurt and the Mannheim stakes. Uchtdorf was called as a general authority and member of the church's Second Quorum of the Seventy on 2 April 1994. On 7 April 1996, he was transferred to the First Quorum of Seventy. Uchtdorf became a member of the church's Presidency of the Seventy on 15 August 2002. Apostle Uchtdorf was sustained a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on 2 October 2004. He was ordained an apostle on 7 October 2004 by church president Gordon B. Hinckley. Uchtdorf and David A. Bednar were called to fill the vacancies created by the July 2004 deaths of quorum members David B. Haight and Neal A. Maxwell. Uchtdorf was the first church apostle ordained in the 21st century. As an apostle, Uchtdorf is accepted by the church as a prophet, seer, and revelator. Uchtdorf is the eleventh apostle of the LDS Church to be born outside the United States. He is the first German apostle in church history and was the first born outside of North America since the death of John A. Widtsoe in 1952. While in Slovakia on 12 May 2006, Uchtdorf offered a prayer dedicating the land "for the preaching of the gospel", an LDS Church leadership custom usually observed at the time missionaries arrive in a new country. Although missionaries had been in what is now Slovakia for over a century, since the split with the Czech Republic, this dedication was specific