The following is excerpted from LDS Living. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.

Heber Grant received a patriarchal blessing that promised he would be called to the ministry in his youth. He knew that Church President Joseph F. Smith and Elder Erastus Snow of the Twelve had been called on missions as teens, so he anticipated that he would be called to serve a full-time mission as a very young man. In his day, young people did not submit papers for a mission but rather waited to receive notice of a call. He waited and waited and grew disturbed when, by age twenty-three, he had received no call. The lack of a mission call prompted self-doubt and personal anguish.

He grew concerned about his status in the Church, about the patriarch’s lack of inspiration, and about the truth of the Church itself. As he reflected, “he realized that there could be no doubt about the reality of God and the truthfulness of the revelations given to the Prophet Joseph Smith. There was too much evidence; he had received too many personal confirmations to doubt.” So he reasoned that the patriarch had simply made a mistake. But that conclusion brought no peace. He did not tell anyone of his trouble, though the questions strained his faith. One day these thoughts flooded his mind as he walked alone down Main Street in Salt Lake City. Suddenly, he stopped walking, turned around, and said aloud, “Mr. Devil, shut up. I don’t care if every patriarch in the Church has made a mistake in a blessing, and told a lie, I believe with all my heart and soul that the gospel is true and I will not allow my faith to be upset.”

The negative thoughts about the promise never again returned. A few weeks later, the twenty-three-year-old was called to be the president of the Tooele Stake, the youngest stake president in the Church. Less than two years later he was called to the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. Though Heber had first fixated on the passing of time, he later gained a deeper understanding—that his blessing had promised a call to the ministry, not a call on a mission.1

To read the full article, CLICK HERE.