FHE Lesson - Achieving Goals - (How Heber J. Grant Did It)
Every year when I get ready to make New Year's Resolutions, I can't help but remember the living and past prophets and the influence they have had on my life. One of the past prophets, Heber J. Grant, was especially known for his ability to set goals and achieve them.
For a Family Home Evening lesson with the grandchildren, it would be worthwhile to tell a few of the stories of Heber J. Grant and his accomplishments. This is not only motivational, but helps us learn a little more about this prophet. President Heber J. Grant often quoted the following statement, which is sometimes attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson:
"That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do. Not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our ability to do has increased”.
The following stories that President Heber J. Grant or others have recorded about his youth illustrates his determination to overcome obstacles:
Learning to Pitch A Baseball
“Being an only child, my mother reared me very carefully. Indeed, I grew more or less on the principle of a hothouse plant, the growth of which is ‘long and lanky’ but not substantial. I learned to sweep, and to wash and wipe dishes, but did little stone throwing and little indulging in those sports which are interesting and attractive to boys, and which develop their physical frames. Therefore, when I joined a baseball club, the boys of my own age and a little older played in the first nine; those younger than I played in the second, and those still younger in the third, and I played with them.
“One of the reasons for this was that I could not throw the ball from one base to the other. Another reason was that I lacked physical strength to run or bat well. When I picked up a ball, the boys would generally shout:
“‘Throw it here, sissy!’
“So much fun was engendered on my account by my youthful companions that I solemnly vowed that I would play baseball in the nine that would win the championship of the Territory of Utah.
“My mother was keeping boarders at the time for a living, and I shined their boots until I saved a dollar which I invested in a baseball. I spent hours and hours throwing the ball at Bishop Edwin D. Woolley’s barn, which caused him to refer to me as the laziest boy in the Thirteenth Ward. Often my arm would ache so that I could scarcely go to sleep at night. But I kept on practicing and finally succeeded in getting into the second nine of our club. Subsequently I joined a better club, and eventually played in the nine that won the championship of the territory and beat the nine that had won the championship for California, Colorado, and Wyoming. Having thus made good my promise to myself, I retired from the baseball arena” (Gospel Standards, comp. G. Homer Durham [1969], 342–43).
Reading the Book of Mormon
President Heber J. Grant wrote about his experience in first reading the Book of Mormon:
“I can remember very distinctly when Uncle Anthony Ivins . . . said to me and to his son, Anthony C. Ivins:
“‘Heber, Anthony, have you read the Book of Mormon?’
“We answered, ‘No.’
“He said, ‘I want you to read it. I want you to pledge to me that you will not skip a word, and to the one who reads it first, I will give a pair of ten dollar buckskin gloves with beaver tops.’
“Any boy of fourteen who had a pair of those gloves thought he was ‘it.’ I remember that my mother had urged me to read systematically the Book of Mormon, but I had not done it. I determined to read the book, say, twenty-five pages a day and get the benefit of its contents. I believed its contents were true because my mother and many others had told me so; and because of the testimony of the teacher of the class that Richard W. Young and I attended, I thought that to win the gloves I would have to read the book so rapidly that I would get no benefit; and therefore decided to let Anthony win the gloves.
“I met my cousin, Anthony C., the next morning, and he asked, ‘How many pages have you read?’
“I said: ‘I have read twenty-five pages.’
“He said: ‘I have read over one hundred and fifty. I sat up until after midnight.’
“I said: ‘Good-bye gloves.’
“I went on reading twenty-five pages a day and occasionally I got so interested that I read fifty or seventy-five pages, and, lo and behold, I got through first and got the gloves. He got such a good start he did not bother to read any more until after I got through with the book” (Gospel Standards, 350–51).
Learning How To Be A Fine Penman
“At the beginning his penmanship was so poor that when two of his chums were looking at it one said to the other, ‘That writing looks like hen tracks.’ ‘No,’ said the other, ‘it looks as if lightning had struck an ink bottle.’ This touched Heber’s pride and, bringing his fist down on his desk, he said, ‘I’ll some day be able to give you fellows lessons in penmanship.’ . . .
“He secured a position as bookkeeper and policy clerk in an insurance office at fifteen. About this he said: ‘I wrote a very nice hand, and that was all that was needed to satisfactorily fill the position which I then had. Yet I was not fully satisfied but continued to dream and scribble when not otherwise occupied. . . . I learned to write well, so well, that I often made more before and after office hours by writing cards, invitations, and making maps than the amount of my regular salary. At nineteen I was keeping books and acting as policy clerk for Henry Wadsworth, the agent of Wells Fargo and Company. My time was not fully employed, and I was not working for the company but for the agent personally. I did the same as I had done in Mr. White’s bank, volunteered to file a lot of bank letters, etc., and kept a set of books for the Sandy Smelting Company, which Mr. Wadsworth was doing personally. My actions so pleased Mr. Wadsworth that he employed me to do the collecting for Wells Fargo and Company and paid me $20.00 a month for this work in addition to my regular compensation of $75.00 from the insurance business. Thus I was in the employ of Wells Fargo and Company and one of my day-dreams had become a reality’” (Bryant S. Hinckley, Heber J. Grant: Highlights in the Life of a Great Leader [1951], 39–42).
“When Heber, still in his teens, was working as a policy clerk in the office of H. R. Mann and Co., he was offered three times his salary to go to San Francisco as a penman. He later became teacher of penmanship and bookkeeping at the University of Deseret (University of Utah). . . .
“At one of the territorial fairs in which he had not competed, he noticed the exhibits of four professional penmen. He remarked to the man in charge of the art department that he could write better than that before he was seventeen years of age. The man in charge laughed and said that nobody but a cheeky insurance agent would make such a remark. He handed the gentleman three dollars which was the fee necessary to compete for a diploma and sent for the specimen which he had written before he was seventeen and hung it up with the remark, ‘If you judges know good penmanship, when you see it, I will get the diploma.’ He walked away with a diploma for the best penmanship in the territory. He encouraged the art of good penmanship among the youth of Zion and offered many prizes for the best specimens” (Hinckley, Heber J. Grant, 40–41).
Teaching Himself How to Sing
As with baseball and penmanship, Heber J. Grant was determined to learn to sing, despite the negative opinions of others. Years of practicing brought moderate success. He wrote:
“My mother tried to teach me when I was a small child to sing but failed because of my inability to carry a tune.
“Upon joining a singing class taught by Professor Charles J. Thomas, he tried and tried in vain to teach me when ten years of age to run the scale or carry a simple tune and finally gave up in despair. He said that I could never, in this world, learn to sing. Perhaps he thought I might learn the divine art in another world. Ever since this attempt, I have frequently tried to sing when riding alone many miles from anyone who might hear me, but on such occasions could never succeed in carrying the tune of one of our familiar hymns for a single verse, and quite frequently not for a single line.
“When I was about twenty-five years of age, Professor Sims informed me that I could sing, but added, ‘I would like to be at least forty miles away while you are doing it.’ . . .
“Upon my recent trip to Arizona, I asked Elders Rudger Clawson and J. Golden Kimball if they had any objections to my singing one hundred hymns that day. They took it as a joke and assured me that they would be delighted. We were on the way from Holbrook to St. Johns, a distance of about sixty miles. After I had sung about forty tunes, they assured me that if I sang the remaining sixty they would be sure to have nervous prostration. I paid no attention whatever to their appeal, but held them to their bargain and sang the full one hundred. One hundred and fifteen songs in one day, and four hundred in four days, is the largest amount of practicing I ever did.
“Today [1900] my musical deafness is disappearing, and by sitting down to a piano and playing the lead notes, I can learn a song in less than one-tenth the time required when I first commenced to practice” (Gospel Standards, 351–52, 354).
Gaining A Burning Testimony
“Before I was twenty-four I was made the president of the Tooele Stake of Zion. I announced in a speech that lasted seven and a half minutes that I would ask no man in Tooele to be a more honest tithe payer than I would be; that I would ask no man to give more of his means in proportion to what he had than I would give; I would ask no man to live the Word of Wisdom better than I would live it, and I would give the best that was in me for the benefit of the people in that stake of Zion.
“That night I heard in the dark a man say in a contemptuous way: ‘It is a pity if the General Authorities have to send a man out here to preside, . . . that they could not have sent one with sense enough to talk at least ten minutes; and that they had to send a boy to preside over us.’
“When I heard this, I remember thinking: ‘The boy is the only one who has any right to complain.’ . . . However, I was not able during the next three or four Sundays to talk as long as I did the first one. I ran out of ideas in five, six, and six and a half minutes.
“At the lunch table after my first short speech which lasted seven and a half minutes, President Smith said: ‘Heber, you said you believe the gospel with all your heart, and propose to live it, but you did not bear your testimony that you know it is true. Don’t you know absolutely that this gospel is true?’
“I answered: ‘I do not.’
“‘What, you! a president of a stake?’ said President Joseph F. Smith.
“‘That is what I said.’
“‘President [John] Taylor, I am in favor of undoing this afternoon what we did this morning. I do not think any man should preside over a stake who has not a perfect and abiding knowledge of the divinity of this work.’
“I said: ‘I am not going to complain.’
“Brother Taylor had a habit, when something pleased him excessively, of shaking his body and laughing. He said, ‘Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, he knows it just as well as you do. The only thing that he does not know is that he does know it. It will be but a short time until he does know it. He leans over backwards. You do not need to worry.’
“I went to the little town of Vernon in Tooele County, took two others with me to do the preaching, and I got up to say a few words and spoke for forty-five minutes with perfect ease under the inspiration of the Lord. That night I shed tears of gratitude to the Lord for the abiding, perfect, and absolute testimony that came into my life of the divinity of this work.
“The next Sunday after speaking at Vernon, I was at Grantsville. I told the Lord I would like to talk forty-five minutes. I got up to speak and ran out of ideas in five minutes, and I was sweating.
“After the meeting I walked out past the farthest house in the west part of Grantsville, I am sure nearly three miles, and I got down behind a haystack and I shed some more tears. But they were tears of humiliation. I made a pledge to God there upon that occasion that never again in my life would I stand up before an audience with the feeling that all I needed to do was just stand up and talk; but that I would get up upon all occasions with a desire to say something that might be of benefit to the people to whom I spoke, and not with the spirit of pride, such as I had that day when I stood up in Grantsville. And I have never failed from that day until now—fifty-odd years ago—to have any desire in my heart when speaking except that I might say or read something that would be of lasting benefit to those who listened to my voice” (Gospel Standards, 191–93).
Activity:
1. Have each child tell one of the Heber J. Grant stories.
2. Play the name game of the Latter Day Prophets:
(Draw A Line Between the First Name and the Last Name of Each of the 15 Prophets of this Dispensation.)
John | Smith | ||
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