This is an outline I drafted a while ago suggesting the enormous contributions John A. Widtsoe made to the Church as a whole and members in Europe in particular, during his five years as the president of the European Mission (1928-1933). Widtsoe seems to have been one of the first to recognize that retention of members was at least as important as conversion of new members, and he analyzed what opportunities needed to be expanded from the stakes to the missions in order for that retention to occur — and once the opportunity was extended, the Saints in Europe embraced it and demonstrated — as if any proof really were needed — that they could serve in and benefit by the Church every bit as much as Saints in the stakes of the west. You’ll recognize the embedded story of Hettie Hilda Harper, perhaps, from an earlier Keepa post, but quite possibly much of the rest of this post is new.

Late in 1928, John A. Widtsoe, accompanied by his wife Leah, arrived in Liverpool, England to begin his service as president of the European Mission. It was an important assignment for the Norwegian-born man, who had been a member of the Quorum of the Twelve since 1921: the European Mission President not only directed the Church in the British Isles, but also supervised missions throughout Europe and as far away as South Africa and the Middle East. For the next five years, Elder Widtsoe would travel among those missions, training local leaders, getting to know local members, and working to bring the full blessings of the gospel to members far from the center stakes of Zion.

Elder Widtsoe made his first tour of the branches in England in February 1928. That single, short visit with members helped him understand the needs of European members in a new way: “Our membership needs first attention,” he wrote to Heber J. Grant. “We are not holding our members well; they are inactive, or if active, too many are contentious and faultfinding.” In earlier days, he realized, converts looked forward to emigrating to Utah where they could live among other members and go to the temple. This constant emigration left English branches composed largely of new, enthusiastic converts. But changes in the immigration policy of the United States in recent years and made it much more difficult for converts to go to Utah. Converts now expected to remain at home, a tiny minority within their native countries.

“We are a small and unpopular group,” Elder Widtsoe noted. “After the enthusiasm of the new convert has grown into the routine of daily living, … the members look … to the church for interests and activities to satisfy at least their social and spiritual needs. The demand felt [in the stakes of the western United States] for recreational and auxiliary opportunities is felt even more here. Our success will be measured by our power to hold our converts.”

Another problem he identified was the shallow teaching of missionaries who led most of the branches. The primary role of missionaries was, as always, to teach the first principles of the gospel to people who were not Latter-day Saints; that teaching was necessarily simplified for the understanding of those who were unfamiliar with even basic gospel teachings. But “our members are ‘fed up’ on the constant repetition in every meeting of the few elementary facts of Church history and doctrine” taught by the missionaries, Elder Widtsoe learned. “They probably love the Gospel as well as ever; but need variety in treatment to whet their appetites. Their interest must be stirred. They hunger to be put to work,” he said. “The way out would seem to be, first, to use more of the Saints in official positions, and, second, to employ more vigorously … our auxiliaries.”

Elder Widtsoe, with significant help from Leah Widtsoe, began to work earnestly to enrich Church life for members throughout Europe, setting the pattern for expanding opportunities for Church members throughout the world.

They stressed auxiliary work to “bring our members into more general and vigorous Church activity.” Sister Widtsoe rewrote lesson manuals to be more suitable to European conditions: lessons originally written for an American membership were edited to replace American culture and history with examples drawn from European culture – the beginning of a cultural sensitivity that is still developing. The Widtsoes published these modified lessons in the Millennial Star and furnished copies to non-English speaking missions for translation into local languages.

Some European members, however, didn’t wait for Elder Widtsoe to adapt the auxiliaries to suit European conditions. With the same inspiration that had inspired the creation of auxiliaries in earlier years, some European members simply went where the Spirit led them.

Hettie Hilda Harper of Dudley Port, England, was 18 years old when her mother died, leaving her to help her father raise Hettie’s two small sisters. “Having a very strong testimony of the Gospel,” she later wrote, “with the Lord’s help, I commenced to teach them the beautiful truths which made life worth living after Mother’s death.” Without realizing that she was, in essence, inventing Primary anew, Hettie began holding classes with her sisters and two of their best friends in the afternoons, after school. “We commenced our classes as the grown-ups with hymn and prayer, then another hymn, followed by the lesson. … I taught them to pray vocally and to take part of the lesson.” The girls studied the Word of Wisdom, the Articles of Faith, and a few missionary tracts. They loved their “little lesson,” as they called it, so well that Hettie taught them nearly every afternoon.

At the same time, missionaries held cottage meetings at the Harper home once every two weeks. Despite Hettie’s best efforts to encourage her own friends to come to the cottage meetings, few came regularly. “Most of my former friends deserted me and persecuted me because I tried to teach them the Gospel,” Hettie remembered. “My life would not have been worth living had it not been for my father and the few children, for at that time when all was against us, we would gather in our little kitchen away from the world and sing and praise our maker for the knowledge we had of the restored gospel.”

The little girls spoke of their lessons with other friends, who asked if they could come, too. At first Hettie told them no, “for I was not fond of lots of children, and especially those living around for they appeared very ragged, dirty and ill mannered. Many times I had heard them swearing and fighting and I didn’t desire them in my home.”

But as the children clamored to come, Hettie’s own friends grew more distant. One day, as Hettie read the Bible for comfort, she “commenced reading of the man who invited his choicest friends to his wedding feast. I read how all his friends made excuses and how the man sent his servants to the by ways and hedges to gather in anyone who would come, that the house could be filled. Suddenly I thought of the rough children who pleaded to come in my home; then I thought of those whom I had been most desirous of sharing my treasures with – yet they wouldn’t come and partake.

“Then an idea came to me; I thought I’ll do as the man spoken of in the Bible. I’ll let anyone come to our feast who would like, that my house can be filled.

“As soon as my sisters told their school friends I had given them permission to come, the result was amazing, for they flocked to our house in droves. I was bewildered and didn’t know what on earth to do with them. We were used to peace and quiet, and here was about fifty children, shouting, swearing and laughing, and all determined to get inside.

“I never remember seeing so many children wanting to go in a house at one time and I almost was terrified at the sight. There were boys and girls of all sizes and ages. … All were dirty and untidy, with rough hair and very bold faces. Some were eating great thick chunks of bread and jam.”

Hettie found seats for the children on the floor, the table, the hearth, and her sewing machine. With great difficulty she quieted the children and managed to teach them two songs during that first meeting; the children begged to come back, and soon she was holding classes for them on most nights of the week. Attendance increased until seventy children were attending. She tried to hold two meetings each evening, one for girls and one for boys – but all the children insisted on coming to both meetings.

Hettie’s Primary faced opposition in the community. “Everything has been done to stop the Primary … Our windows and doors have been broken in many times.” But Hettie persevered.

“With the Lord’s help, I taught them the story of Joseph Smith and the restored Gospel, and those children took to the message as naturally as ducks take to water and soon they knew it as well as me and taught it to their parents and friends.” The Dudley Port Primary was formally organized in 1928, with Hettie as its president. And the Primary grew into a branch as the children asked for baptism and converted their parents. By 1932, the Dudley Port Branch was holding the full range of Church meetings in their own rented hall, with Hettie serving in Primary, MIA, and Relief Society.

“Primary is the most wonderful organization in the world,” Hettie insisted. “All we have accomplished has been through the Lord; without Him we could have done nothing. It was His will that Primary should exist in Dudley Port.”

Elder Widtsoe closely followed Hettie’s work in Dudley Port. “I am proud of Hettie and her work, and only hope that things may so turn that she can find even a greater opportunity for the exercising of her talents and her gifts,” he confided to local priesthood leaders. The Widtsoes encouraged other branches to establish Primaries, both for Latter-day Saint children and to introduce the Church to non-member families. “You might look up in past issues of the “Star” for the little article printed by Miss Hettie Harper. Her experiences may guide you a little in this regards,” Leah Widtsoe recommended to one branch. This encouragement to form local auxiliaries, Elder Widtsoe reported to Church leaders, “led to the discovery of an astonishingly great amount of high talent among our people. Those who embrace the Gospel usually possess much talent and power.”

Mission leaders gave attention to other auxiliaries. Sunday Schools, which had originated in Great Britain in the 1840s and had been exported to Utah, flourished. The classes, which had previously focused almost entirely on the Bible, were expanded in the late 1920s by adoption of the materials on Church history and latter-day scripture used in the American stakes. By the end of his mission, Elder Widtsoe could report that “Suitable study courses were prepared … for the other auxiliaries, and published in the various languages. These have become very popular with the saints.” Sister Widtsoe prepared a European edition of the Beehive manual, and a new hymn book was planned, with printing plates prepared in such a way that the same engraved music could be used for multiple language editions.

Sister Widtsoe gave special attention to the Relief Societies of Europe. She found some difficult conditions early in her service: “In some of the missions [Relief Society] was merely a name for another theological class which women were permitted to attend – the men act[ed] as class leaders and [lead] in all discussions.” This was a longstanding problem in some missions – in Norway, 20 years before, “dear old Brother [Andrew] Jenson used to thunder at the men that ‘the Prophet Joseph founded a Female (not a male) Relief Society! and it was intended to be for the benefit of the women of the church.” The problem was finally solved when separate study courses were prepared for both Priesthood and Relief Society, allowing each group to function separately.

As the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Church’s founding approached in 1930, the European Mission office prepared a series of “Centennial Lessons” for sisters in mission Relief Societies. These lessons gave the sisters a summary of early Church history; because they were published in the Millennial Star for easy access by all sisters, they may also have been studied informally by men and youth, as well. Such lessons, as well as in-depth articles on the Word of Wisdom and other topics, made available through the mission newspapers in many of the individual European missions, helped to fill the needs of maturing members of the Church who needed more than missionaries typically offered to investigators and new converts.

In addition to this Church history, missionaries worked with local members to translate other Church works into more languages: by 1933, James E. Talmage’s Articles of Faith was published in French, Swedish, and Danish. The Swedish edition of the Book of Mormon was revised and published, and the Book of Mormon was published for the first time in the Czech language. Smaller books and pamphlets, many of them written by John A. Widtsoe to meet the specific needs of the European Mission, were translated and published. Still, it was not enough. “The Scandinavian Mission have considerably less Church literature available … than they had sixty years ago. … The Netherlands Mission is only slightly better off than the Scandinavian Mission. One of the real handicaps of the French Mission is that it does not have a systematic exposition of Gospel principles to place in the hands of members and friends. … It is a wonder that the old, faithful saints in Belgium have held on so long and faithfully, considering that they have had no access to spiritual food, beyond the broken offerings of our young elders. Perhaps this condition is one factor in our failure to hold our members better than we are doing.” Following a visit to the Armenian Mission, Elder Widtsoe discovered that “the paucity of printed matter was appalling. … There are perhaps four or five [brief] tracts in Armenian or Turkish.” Even the Book of Mormon was available only in Turkish, when the current generation had abandoned Turkish for Armenian – none of the younger members in the mission there could read that scripture.

Another opportunity Elder Widtsoe sought to bring to the Saints in Europe was that of receiving patriarchal blessings. Patriarchs normally serve only within organized stakes; because the European missions were not yet large enough, with adequate local priesthood leadership, for the formation of stakes, and because few Church members expected to emigrate to the western United States where they could receive blessings from patriarchs, few European members had ever received such blessings. Many of the Saints were worthy of those blessings, Elder Widtsoe said. “Sister Grint, a fine-fibered, keenly-intelligent woman has been president of the Relief Society in this branch for the last fifteen years. Her tact and gentleness, he reported, had kept dissension and ill-will that disturbed so many branches from affecting her own. “Why can’t we, who live in this Mission and have no opportunity to go to Zion, have the privilege of receiving our patriarchal blessings?” she asked. “They would comfort us, and we need the comfort.” There were many such worthy members, Elder Widtsoe knew – what about the elderly Charles Harper, newly retired on an inadequate pension, who paid his tithing within a few hours of receiving his pension? “Such faithful souls are entitled, it seems to me, to a participation in all the good gifts that the Gospel provides for those who accept it.”

After much discussion among Church leaders in Salt Lake City, John H. Wallis, a patriarch living in Utah – a man who had been born in London and had served a mission in England – was called to the European Mission to bless the members there.

Accompanied by his wife, Patriarch Wallis traveled throughout the British Isles, the first patriarch to give blessings there since the 1840s – by the end of his mission, he would give more than 1,400 patriarchal blessings. After only a few months service, Elder Widtsoe was able to write that

Brother Wallis’ work as a Patriarch … has been so well done and received as to confirm the inspiration that led to his ordination and call to Europe. He has the spirit of his calling to a large degree; yet is wise and careful, never going beyond legitimate bounds. And the people who receive his blessings! I wish I could describe to you the gladness that fills their hearts! Each candidate comes recommended by his branch president, approved by the mission president. Renewed efforts are being made by hundreds of our people to cleanse themselves so as to be worthy of a recommend. The blessings are received in the right spirit; and Brother Wallis, under inspiration, has looked into the hearts of many, and has been able to help them. My heart has been touched by the appreciation of our faithful saints, far from many of the blessings available in the Stakes, for the gift of a patriarchal blessing.

May not the other, foreign-speaking, European Saints, have the same privilege? I plead for them. …

I wish we had a dozen Wallises in these missions.

The most urgent need of the Saints in the missions, though, was for local leaders who could direct the work of local branches. When American missionaries had had to leave most of the European missions during World War I, local branches had been placed under the direction of local men. They, with the help of the women of the Relief Society, who had successfully guided the European branches through the war years with little contact from Church headquarters. But soon after the war, as missionaries from North American returned to Europe, old patterns had returned. Missionaries assumed direction of local branches, leaving little opportunity for Latter-day Saint men to develop as leaders and learn to exercise their priesthood.

This situation had begun to create serious problems in the missions by the early 1930s. Some of those problems were caused by unwise and inexperienced young missionaries. Elder Widtsoe reported to President Grant that one young elder, presiding over a German branch whose size, tithing record, and activity was “comparable to a first class ward in a stake,” had told him that “these people need to be ruled with an iron hand.” Another young missionary, presiding over a prosperous branch informed Elder Widtsoe that he “was going to reorganize the whole branch ‘to show them who runs this Church.’”

Understandably, local members, especially brethren, were distressed by such treatment. They “fret under inactivity. They hope that long, faithful membership may entitle them to larger participation in branch affairs, and perhaps to advancement in the Priesthood. They weary of being governed always by youths from a strange country, of frequent changes, of hearing the mother tongue murdered most awfully, of being disciplined by those who cannot catch the native point of view.”

Elder Widtsoe worked with mission presidents and missionaries to convert them to the necessity for local leadership. His suggestions “have not always been received whole heartedly,” he admitted. “Some of the mission presidents have been the slowest to express willingness to trust the people who are brought into the Church. Many of the missionaries are inclined to look upon the Church members as an inferior class, who must be led by the wiser ones from America.” Member frustration over such conditions had led “a many a good man [to] let this resentment take him out of the Church,” and his respect deepened for the “faithful, tithe paying, Word of wisdom-keeping men and women, twenty or thirty years in the Church, who sit patiently from year to year under the changing, blundering language-murdering presidency of young men, just learning the Gospel.”

In 1931, a year after first confessing his struggles to teach the principle of local leadership, Elder Widtsoe reported some success. “The program for Priesthood activity has had to be modified, somewhat, because of the smaller branches, but it is headed towards full conformity with the Church programs. Nothing has given me more happiness this year than to observe the eager, hungry, united response of the Priesthood of these missions to the program of study ad activities outlined for them.” Still later, in 1933, he could report that “The European Saints respond readily to leadership; and whether rich or poor, develop rapidly under the influence of the Church and its activities.” “More and more, the branches, with their auxiliaries, have been placed under local leadership, unto today (September 1933), three-fourths or more of the branches are presided over by local members … In the mission field, as elsewhere, spiritual growth is a direct result of activity in the Church.”

Late in 1933, Elder Widtsoe noted a new reason for preparing members to govern their own branches and strengthen their spirituality: “The political changes in Germany and elsewhere have demonstrated the wisdom of the policy of self-government.” The time was coming again when the Saints of the individual missions would be cut off from direct contact with Church leaders; they would need to rely on the Lord and their experience in directing their own affairs. And they would succeed.