It was winter in Salt Lake City. Sleighing and cutter riding were excellent. As the sleighs went by, one small adventuresome six-year-old delighted in waiting in front of his house to grab onto passing sleighs. And then, after riding a block or two, jumping off and running home. This particular night he caught the sleigh belonging to President Brigham Young, who had a fine team of horses and liked to drive quite rapidly. The boy soon found himself skimming along so fast in the cold that he didn't dare jump off. Finally, President Young caught sight of his young passenger. He stopped the sleigh and took the boy in, tucking the warm robes around him. Thus began a friendship between the prophet Brigham Young and a boy named Heber Jeddy Grant, future prophet of God. Heber spent many happy hours in the home of Brigham Young, since both a son and a grandson of the president were his friends. He says of Brigham Young, "I learned to love him with an affection I imagine I would have felt for my own father." His own father, Jedediah M. Grant, the first mayor of Salt Lake City, had died of pneumonia just a few days after Heber was born. Heber's mother, Rachel Ivans Grant, required high standards of conduct from her son, knowing that a great destiny awaited him. When he was a small child, Eliza R. Snow, sister of Lorenzo Snow, had prophesied that he should one day become a great man in the Church and an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. Although Heber enjoyed the usual boyish pursuits, his business sense began to develop early in life. With the marbles he won, he hired his friends to do his daily chores. His enterprise also gained him admittance to performances at the Salt Lake Theater. Having no money to pay for tickets, he gained entrance by carrying drinking water in a new five-gallon coal oil can to people in the third balcony. He said later he often wished the people had filled up on water before they came to the theater. Still he enjoyed many performances as he supplied their need. His personal credo, borrowed from Ralph Waldo Emerson, was "That which we persist in doing becomes easy to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but that our power to do has increased." Many times during his life he proved the truth of that philosophy. Physically weak as a boy, he was unable to throw a baseball from one base to another, and he lacked the skill to bat well. When his friends ridiculed him, he solemnly vowed that someday he would play as a starter on the championship team of the Territory of Utah. He spent hours throwing a ball against the side of a neighbor's barn, and spent many a sleepless night nursing his aching arm. His persistence finally earned him a place on the starting team that won the championship in Utah, California, Colorado, and Wyoming. He aspired to the position of bookkeeper with Wells Fargo Bank at a time when his main source of income was shining boots for his mother's borders at $.05 a pair. Accounts and records at that time were all written in pen, and Heber's handwriting had been described as hen scratches. He toiled at improving his penmanship, later recalling, "I learned to write so well that I often earn more after office hours by writing cards and invitations and making maps than the amount of my regular salary." At 19, he reached his goal. He was hired as bookkeeper for the Wells Fargo Bank and eventually became the first president of the State Bank of Utah. His inability to carry a tune in his youth caused a singing teacher to exclaim in despair that Heber would never in this world learn to sing. Years later, his friend Horace S. Ensign, a fine singer, encouraged him by saying that anyone could learn to sing who had a reasonably good voice, who possessed perseverance, and who was willing to practice. Heber's response was that he had an abundance of voice and plenty of perseverance.

At the end of three months, he was able to sing three hymns. He said, "I tried to sing in the big tabernacle as an object lesson to young people. I made a failure, getting off key in nearly every verse. And instead of my efforts encouraging them, I fear it tended to discourage them." Eventually, with his strong, mellow voice, he became an acceptable singer and performed at every opportunity. Another factor in his accomplishments was an organized life. He recalled, "As a boy of 17, I dreamed about my future life, what I was going to do until I became 35, planned it, and worked for it. We do not accomplish things without having a plan. No architect ever draws a building who has not had an idea of what he is hoping to draw. From the time I was 17 until I was 24, I accomplished every one of the things I had planned to do and dreamed about and worked for." One of those things he planned to do was to be married at 21. Lucy Stringham became his first wife just before his 21st birthday. He wrote later, "I shall always be grateful to the day of my death that I took the trouble to travel all the way from Utah County to St. George to be married in the St. George Temple. My friends advised me not to go. They told me to have the stake president marry us and then be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple when it was completed. Why did I not listen to them? Because I wanted to be married for time and all eternity, and I wanted to start life right. Later, I had cause to rejoice greatly because of my determination to be married in the temple, because my wife died before the Salt Lake Temple was completed." At the age of 24, his life plans were changed. He moved to this home in the small town of Tooele, Utah, leaving a promising business career in Salt Lake City, because he had been called as president of Tooele Stake. He says of his first address as stake president, "I remember preaching and telling everything I could think of, and some of it over twice, and ran out of ideas in seven and a half minutes by the watch. The next four Sundays were no better. "Then I went to the little town of Vernon, took two others with me to do the preaching, I got up to say a few words and spoke for 45 minutes with perfect ease under the inspiration of the Lord. The next Sunday I was in Grantsville. I told the Lord I would like to talk for 45 minutes. I got up to speak and ran out of words in five minutes. "After the meeting, I walked several miles away from the Church out into the fields. I got down behind a haystack and shed some more tears. They were tears of humiliation. I made a pledge with God then that never again would I stand up with a feeling that all I needed to do was stand up and talk, but that I would get up on all occasions with a desire to say something that might be of benefit to the people, and not with the spirit of pride, such as I had that day in Grantsville." Only two years later, not quite 26 years of age, Heber J. Grant was ordained an Apostle and served in the Council of the Twelve for many years. "I could not help but feel," he said later, "that the calling was far beyond my desires or any ability which I possessed." He was riding through the Navajo Indian Reservation several months later, still uncomfortable about his ordination and feeling very blue and depressed when he seemed to be witnessing a scene in heaven concerning two vacancies in the Council of the Twelve, which had existed for several months. Many years later in general conference, he described his experience: "I seemed to hear the words which were spoken. I listened to the discussion with a great deal of interest. In this Council, the Savior was present. My father was there, and the Prophet Joseph Smith was there. It was given to me that the Prophet Joseph Smith and my father mentioned me and requested that I be called to that position. It was given to me that because of their faithful labors that I was called, and not because of anything I had done of myself or any great thing that I had accomplished. It was also given to me that that was all these men, the prophet and my father, could do for me. From that day, it depended upon me and upon me alone as to whether I made a success of my life or a failure." The call to the apostleship changed the trend of his life from business to spiritual matters, yet his only interest in the accumulation of money had always been the good he could do with it. In his lifetime, he gave away literally thousands of dollars of his own money. He anonymously paid off mortgages from the homes of widows, then helped their children find jobs, saw that people who needed medical attention received it, and helped others to become financially independent. His concern for others was but a reflection of the devotion he demonstrated throughout his life to his family, which included 12 children. His wife Augusta raised most of them after the death of his first wife, Lucy, and his second wife, Emily. In 1901 he was called to open and preside over the Japanese Mission. Three missionaries accompanied him to Japan--Elders Horace S. Ensign, Alma O. Taylor, and Louis Kelsch. They were present when he dedicated that land for the reception of the gospel. The mission did not immediately flourish partly because of cultural differences and communication barriers. President Grant quipped that he learned the Japanese language, but the people couldn't understand their own language when he spoke it. In spite of these difficulties, the Book of Mormon was translated into Japanese and a few converts were made. The seeds of the gospel planted at that time in adverse conditions remained almost dormant for 50 years, and then began to bear abundant fruit. In the meantime, Heber J. Grant had become President of the Church, taking office within days of the 1918 Armistice ending World War I. In 1922, he became the first Church President to give a gospel message over the radio. Two years later, general conference was broadcast regularly. And in 1929, weekly broadcasts of the Tabernacle Choir were initiated. Within 10 years, they had become the oldest continuing program on radio.

The institute program began during his administration. The first institute being established in Moscow, Idaho, to provide weekday religious education to Church members of college age. In 1930, a pageant was presented in Salt Lake City during the entire month of April to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of the organization of the Church. President Grant dedicated many monuments to Church history.

He dedicated three temples--the Hawaiian Temple, the Alberta Temple, and the Arizona Temple. Frequent games of golf helped him keep fit and deal with daily pressures. "There is no question about it," he wrote, "golf does take one's mind off everything else and refreshes the body and the mind." He also exercised faithfully every morning. His favorite theme for sermons was keep the commandments. He also was noted for his talks on the Word of Wisdom and tithing. Some people, he observed, when they get 10 apples, they eat 9 of them and then cut the other apple in two and eat up half of it, and then hold up the other half and ask the Lord to take a bite. Each year President Grant personally autographed thousands of Christmas cards and booklets, which he sent out to friends, acquaintances, and workers in the temple and the Church offices. His friendship with prominent and influential people of the nation opened many doors to the Church after years of hostility and persecution. Joseph Anderson, his secretary for many years and later a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, said of him, "He is truly the greatest ambassador of friendship and goodwill to the professional and businessman that the Church ever had. No one can begin to estimate the amount of good he's done for the Church in allaying prejudice in the minds of influential people." His business genius contributed to the financial stability of the Church, particularly during the dark days of the Great Depression, which followed the stock market crash of 1929. This led directly to the establishment of the Church welfare program in 1936. President Grant died near the end of World War II, after presiding for 27 years, the length of his administration second only to Brigham Young's. As a true prophet, he bore fervent witness of the Savior and the Restoration of His gospel: "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt of the divinity of this work in which we are engaged. It is one of the joys of my life at home and abroad, in private and in public, to testify that I know as well as I know that I live that God lives, that He hears and answers our prayers. He's heard and answered mine from childhood until the present day. "He heard and answered the prayers of that beloved mother of mine. Under the inspiration of the living God, she planted in my heart a love of truth, a love of God, a love of the Prophet Joseph. Her description of that man was that he was one of the finest, one of the most wonderful men that she ever laid eyes upon. I pray God for you, one and all, to love this gospel, to think of it as of more value than anything else in all the world, and that's what it is. I pray God to bless each and every one of us, and I ask it in the name of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, amen."