Grandma inspired me to serve a mission

Information about my grandmother, Hazel Jane Lee Batt Pledger (1894–1993), written in the spring of 2005 as I was preparing my missionary journal for publication. This picture of Grandma was probably taken in the mid to late 1950s, about the time she served with her husband, William B Batt( 1888-1959), as a full-time missionary.


The twenty-seven months I served as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints clearly became one of the water­shed events of my life. My mission has been a blessing to my family and me ever since.

My mother’s parents had as much to do with my going on a mission as anyone in my life. When I was just a child, not yet eight years old, Grandma and Grandpa Batt went on a mis­sion to New England. Two years later, on what would have been the final day of their mis­sion, Grandpa died in his sleep.

Just the day before Grandpa had sent a letter to his mission presi­dent say­ing yes, they would be happy to ex­tend an extra two months. The Lord had other plans, however, and, according to the revelations, Grandpa was trans­fer­red in­stead to labor in the spirit world.

“I beheld,” wrote President Joseph F. Smith in his vision of the redemption of the dead, “that the faithful elders of this dispensation, when they depart from mortal life, con­tinue their labors in the preaching of the gospel of repentance and redemption, through the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son of God, among those who are in darkness and under the bondage of sin in the great world of the spirits of the dead” (D&C 138:57).

Grandma returned home to Idaho, where she buried her husband and moved on with life. My memories of the funeral on that cold Feb­ruary day are sketchy but include a choir singing a great missionary anthem as one of the musical num­bers, a hymn that has been one of my favorites ever since:

Israel, Israel, God is calling,
Calling thee from lands of woe:
Babylon the great is falling.
God shall all her towers o’erthrow.
Come to Zion, come to Zion
Ere his floods of anger flow.
Come to Zion, come to Zion!
Ere his floods of anger flow.

Israel, Israel, God is speaking;
Hear your great Deliverer’s voice!
Now a glorious morn is breaking
For the people of his choice.
Come to Zion, come to Zion,
And within her walls rejoice.
Come to Zion, come to Zion!
And within her walls rejoice.

Israel, angels are descending
From celestial worlds on high,
And to man their power extending,
That the Saints may homeward fly.
Come to Zion, come to Zion,
For your coming Lord is nigh.
Come to Zion, come to Zion,
For your coming Lord is nigh.

Israel! Israel! Canst thou linger
Still in error’s gloomy ways?
Mark how judgment’s pointing finger
Justifies no vain delays.
Come to Zion, come to Zion!
Zion’s walls shall ring with praise.
Come to Zion, come to Zion!
Zion’s walls shall ring with praise.
— Richard Smyth, Hymns [1948], no. 81

During the following years I loved going to visit Grandma Batt, who lived next door to our Palmer cousins in Grantsville. She would often talk of her missionary experiences and, more than any­one else, in­still­ed in me a desire to be a missionary myself someday. She also in­spired me to read the Book of Mormon for the first time, which I com­pleted the year I was twelve.

Many years later I would write: “Just a few months ago, at a time when I had been newly called to serve as a bishop, I was think­ing about the people along the way—besides my wife and parents—who had most influ­enced me during my life. . . . [Among them was] Hazel Batt, my grandmother, who as a returned mis­sionary her­self inspired in me my earliest desires to read the Book of Mormon, understand the gospel, and some­day serve as a mis­sion­ary” (from a letter to Hal R. Johnson, June 17, 1996).

During the years I was a teenager, probably sometime in the mid-1960s, Grandma used to come live with us in Nampa for weeks at a time. I relished those extended visits. Grandma was one of my favorite people in all the world.

On one such visit, I talked to Grandma about her childhood in eastern Idaho. My brother Jerry just recently sent me the handwritten notes I had made of her responses. I wish I had developed the notes into a story she could have reviewed during her lifetime. What follows in the next blog is my interpre­tation of those notes some forty or so years after I made them.