Preparation
Rachel Ivins Grant gave birth to her only child, a son named Heber. Heber's father, Jedediah, died nine days later.
Rachel's determination and discipline shaped Heber's approach to life.
Rachel Ivins Grant often reminded her son to be faithful, because she had heard Eliza R. Snow and Zina Young prophesy that he would become an apostle someday. Rachel Ivins Grant served as a ward Relief Society president for 30 years. “I grew up as a little boy in the Relief Society meetings,” Heber recalled. His testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith came in part from the testimonies of the “fine, lovely, intelligent, wonderful women” who led the Relief Society in Utah and had known Joseph Smith in Nauvoo.
Preparation of Heber J. Grant: Persistence and Tenacity “More, I believe, than the influence of my friends," said Grant, "Nephi has made an impression upon my heart and my soul and has been one of the guiding stars of my life.”
Preparation of Heber J. Grant: A Young Stake President Learns Humility
Heber attributed much of his early financial success to his first wife Lucy's "business foresight and judgment." Grant was the first prophet born in Utah and the last to have practiced plural marriage.
Augusta Winters gave birth to one daughter. She helped raise nine other children after the deaths of Lucy in 1893 and Emily in 1908. 
In their teens, Heber and Emily were involved in the Wasatch Literary Association together.
Ministry
Heber J. Grant was ordained an apostle following a written revelation through President John Taylor.
Some people worried that the young Apostle was too business-minded. But the Lord would use his abilities to bring the Church through difficult times.
Preparation of Heber J. Grant: A Revelation of His Apostleship As an Apostle, Grant served missions in the southwestern United States, opened a mission in Japan, and led a mission in Europe.
Grant worried he had failed to magnify his calling in Japan. “I have not been able to feel in my heart,” he wrote, “that I have done all that I might have done.” 
Ministry of Heber J. Grant: A Missionary in Japan
Ministry of Heber J. Grant: He Brought Financial Stability to the Church During the panic of 1893, Grant secured loans that saved the Church from default and many members from serious financial problems.
Grant’s close friend Heber M. Wells would later remember the financial negotiations of 1893 as the time when “we fought and bled and nearly died together.”
Heber J. Grant became President of the Church. “The thought of the responsibility that rested upon me was overwhelming,” he said.
Grant was not sustained in general conference until June 1919 because of concerns about large public meetings during the flu pandemic. 
After decades of struggles with anxiety, Grant found ways to manage the pressures on him and live a balanced life.
During Grant’s time as President of the Church, Latter-day Saint communities outside the Rocky Mountain region became more established and visible.
El Paso’s famous Douglas Street Chapel, which Grant dedicated in 1931, is now honored as a historic landmark by Texas. 
In 1933, Grant dedicated the beautiful Washington Chapel in the U.S. Capitol, with Mormon-themed stained glass windows and an angel Moroni statue on its spire.
Perhaps more than any prior Church President, Grant worked to improve relations with people outside the Church. He spoke often at civic and business gatherings and was attentive to the feelings of others. By the time the Church Welfare Plan was introduced in 1936, many people saw the Mormon community as a model rather than a threat.
Grant visited Switzerland during his 1937 tour of Europe. “As near as I could judge not a single article was written during our entire trip but what was intended to give a fair, honorable and splendid report of our people,” he said. “I rejoice in these things.”
Born before the railroad reached Utah, Grant lived to lead the Saints through the Great Depression and Second World War. He died in 1945.
“I am going to take as long as I want, you know,” said Grant in the October 1941 conference, “and if anybody gets tired and wants to go out he or she has my permission. Being an insurance agent I am not easily offended.” 
Heber’s daughter Lucy Grant Cannon served as the Young Women’s General President in the last eight years of his presidency
Teachings
Teachings of Heber J. Grant: A Yearning to Improve "There are two spirits striving with us always, one telling us to continue our labor for good, and one telling us that with the faults and failings of our nature we are unworthy.”
Teachings of Heber J. Grant: Compassion for the Less Fortunate “I will ask no man to be more liberal with his means than I am with mine. . . . I will ask no man to observe the Word of Wisdom any more closely than I will observe it. I will ask no man to be more conscientious and prompt in the payment of his tithes and his offerings than I will be. I will ask no man to be more ready and willing to come early and to go late, and to labor with full power of mind and body, than I will labor."
The first LDS institute was dedicated in Moscow, Idaho in 1928. Grant was a vocal advocate of the institute system and supported its expansion. Pictured here is the Pocatello Institute ca. 1929. "Man is, as we all know, a triple being; there is the spirit first and foremost, then the mind or intellect, and lastly the body. Unless the spirit is properly educated, our education is not complete and we have a lop-sided individual."
“No matter in what land we may dwell the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ makes us brothers and sisters, interested in each other, eager to understand and know each other.”
An entire branch of the Church made an exodus, led by Moses Hindoian and J.W. Booth, from Turkey to Syria early in Grant’s presidency. 
Peter Vlam was imprisoned by German occupiers during WWII and later supported a Dutch church welfare project to benefit German members. “We pray that the spirit now raging in men's hearts, of hate, of exploitation, of a desire to dominate, may be supplanted by the spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness.”
"I sympathize with our young people because of the temptations that beset them. I urge them, as I always have, to live the gospel of Jesus Christ fully. In that way they will have health and happiness and will meet with success in this life and will have an eternity of joy in store for them in the life to come. I bless them with courage to meet the problems that lie ahead."
President Grant and wife Augusta at a family celebration in 1938.
Testimony
“I leave with you my testimony that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph Smith was and is a prophet of God. . . . How do I know it? I know it as well as I know that I stand before you tonight. I know heat; I know cold; I know joy, and I know sorrow; and I say to you that in the hour of sorrow, in the hour of affliction, in the hour of death, God has heard and answered my prayers, and I know that He lives.”
"I am thankful beyond expression that I did read [the Book of Mormon] in my boyhood days and that the assurance came into my heart that it was in very deed the truth, and that I fell in love with the character of Nephi." “I do not have the language at my command to express the gratitude to God for this knowledge that I possess. Time and time again my heart has been melted, my eyes have wept tears of gratitude for the knowledge that He lives and that this gospel called Mormonism is in very deed the plan of life and salvation, that it is in very deed the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
( Conference Report, Apr. 1945, 10. )
"I pray God to bless each and every soul on the face of the earth that believes in God, and for those who do not, I pray that God may help them to obtain a testimony that he lives [and] that he is the Father of our spirits." 
Testimony of Heber J. Grant "God help you and me and every Latter-day Saint to prove to the Lord by our lives, that our testimony of the divinity of this work is not merely lip service."
Further Readings
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Heber J. Grant (2002)
Bryant S. Hinckley, Heber J. Grant: Highlights in the Life of a Great Leader (1951).
Heber J. Grant "Practice Makes Possible" Improvement Era, vol. 3, 1900, 886.
Heber J. Grant "The Nobility of Labor" Improvement Era, 1899, 81-86.
Ron Walker, Qualities That Count: Heber J. Grant as Business, Missionary, and Apostle, 2003.
