Grandpa Completes His Mission

A major winter storm hit the Moun­tain West the day we left Utah to drive to Idaho Falls for Grandpa Batt's funeral. We had been in Utah attending the funeral for my dad's brother Wayne, who had died the same week as Grandpa. The driving was treacherous, and in the blizzard we slid off the road and got stuck near the county line between Weber and Box Elder counties.

Grandpa's funeral was a full ten days after his death. He and Grand­ma had been serving a mission in New England. I don't speci­fi­cally remem­ber their mission call, but I would have been only seven then. Their mission president had asked them to extend their mission for a couple more months. They had just sent him the letter saying yes, they'd stay, they would be happy to serve an extra two months.

The Lord had other plans, however, and on the morning of the day they originally would have been re­leased, Grandpa passed away quietly in his sleep. No pain. No sickness. His mission was up, and he was trans­ferred to the other side. What a way to go, I thought, serving the Master he must have known and loved so well.

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 was left alone in a strange part of the country, and her son Bill had to get back to New England and make ar­range­ments and get her and the body back to Idaho—and all that took time. It must have been a long, lonely trip for Grandma from Rutland, Vermont, back to Ucon, Idaho.

The funeral was in Ucon in the ward from which they had left to go on their mission. One of Grandpa's favorite hymns (and since then one of my favorites) was sung that day:

Israel, Israel, God is calling,
Calling thee from lands of woe.
Babylon the great is falling;
God shall all her tow’rs 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 Deliv'rer'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 pow’r 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.

It was a cold, grey day at the Ucon Cemetery. The finality of it all final­ly hit me as I watched the casket being lowered into that dark hole in the frozen ground, and I began to cry.

I loved my grandparents. We used to visit them in their farm home in eastern Idaho before their mission. The picture that comes hazily to mind is like a Currier and Ives winter scene, where inside a warm old farmhouse there was plenty of love, the kind little boys thrive on. I'm sure we went there other than during the winter, but that's what I remember: snow over everything, the fields and roads, the mail­boxes and fence ­posts, the houses and barns, with windows steamed and icy from cooking in the old big kitchen.