Andrew returned home March 3, 1897, after 10 weeks, during which time he traveled 6,200 miles by train, about 150 miles on foot, and 150 by team. He conducted 88 meetings with missionaries, members, and investigators.139
Home again in Salt Lake after the long mission tour, Andrew reported his travels to the First Presidency both orally and in writing.140 He had previously communicated his willingness to be released as mission president and recommended his friend William T. Jack to replace him. With the addition of Texas, the mission was now too large to be handled by a part-time president. When Andrew learned, on March 25, of his official release and William T. Jack’s calling to replace him Andrew felt, of course, immense relief but also a certain emptiness, “It semed quite a trial to give up the [calling] I had been performing for 12 years.”141 He also recorded a few months later: “I stated [in a Seventies’ meeting] that I was practically laid on the shelf in speaking of missionary work. Bro. Lyman reproved me by saying the Authorities did not lay a man on the shelf but he laid himself away. He was not willing to believe even that, for, saith he, ‘bro. K. is always busy where ever I see him, doing good to the cause.’”142
We go back now ten years to April 1887, when Andrew returned to Salt Lake City from his two-year mission to find work and rejoin his family in civilian life. He was able to find employment in a grocery store to start in a week. He used that week to fix up the house they had rented out for the previous two years and now reoccupied.
The next year Andrew and Ollie built their own neat, little red-brick home on the corner at 376 West 500 North, property inherited from his mother.143 Andrew and Ollie borrowed $1,500 from the Building and Loan Association for the construction, and Andrew did much of the work himself.144 He also planted an orchard and some flowers and kept chickens and pigs. In 1890 they built a small rental house at 520 North 400 West, immediately north of their home. They rented the front part to one tenant for $4 and the back to another for $5. Years later, after they moved to Arizona, they sold both houses.145
As soon as Andrew returned from his mission, his local Church activities began again. Before his mission Andrew had been made one of the presidents of his seventies quorum; he resumed that responsibility. He received a new calling to be a stake home missionary, with a responsibility to visit wards throughout the Salt Lake Valley nearly every Sunday and speak.146 Having no horse, Andrew bought a high-wheel bicycle for $75.147 After practicing for several days he rode it all the way to East Mill Creek to visit his brother Dan.148 He rode it also to home missionary assignments.149 He later gave up the big wheel and bought a standard bicycle.150 A few months later the bishop called him to be president of the ward Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association (YMMIA)151 and the teacher of the theological class in Sunday School.152
In October 1888 he organized an unofficial theological class to meet in his home weekly.153 When his ward was divided, Andrew was called, at age twenty-nine, to be first counselor to Alfred Solomon, bishop of the new Twenty-Second Ward.154 When Andrew explained that he still had charge of the Indian Territory Mission, Church leaders asked him to serve as “acting” counselor for two months until another man could be called.155
Even without the bishopric calling, Andrew carried a heavy load. Probably at Andrew’s suggestion, his brother-in-law Joseph F. Smith, counselor in the First Presidency, wrote a letter to Andrew’s bishop:
I am informed that he is required to act as Ward-teacher, Sunday School Teacher, President of the M. Improvement Association, one of the building committee of the Ward house, a member of the Ward Ecclesiastical Board, President of the Political Club, School trustee, Home missionary, as well being called by the Presidency to take watch care over the Indian Territory Mission. Of course he has his bread to win in addition to all this, which makes a little too much, I think, to require of one man, in the position which bro. Andrew is in. Now I would respectfully recommend that you and the Ward relieve him of some of these duties, and place them upon other young men, thereby giving them a chance. I would suggest that he be relieved of the duty of Ward Teacher, also of the Presidency of the Y.M.M.I.A. and of the Building Committee—and let him carry the rest.156
The Sabbath was a busy day. For example, on August 7, 1887, a fairly typical Sunday, he attended Sunday School and spoke during sacrament meeting, then he spoke to the theological class, went to the public afternoon meeting on Temple Square, participated in his prayer circle, and attended the night sacrament meeting in his ward.157
Church activities also took up much time on other days of the week: a monthly Thursday afternoon fast and testimony meeting, a weekly adult class for the study of theology, visits to the homes of ward members as a block teacher, a monthly report meeting on block teaching, weekly YMMIA meetings, and meetings of the elders quorum (and later of the seventies quorum).158 Aside from dutifully carrying organizational responsibilities, Andrew had a deep spiritual desire to do right: “I am determined to try and live my religion from now on, as nearly as possible by the Aid of God my Father. My Prayer is that He will aid me so to do. He knows my weaknesses and I hope he will be charitable towards me.”159
Deeply involved in Church himself, he felt great disappointment when a few years later his sister Sarah left the Church. Andrew wrote, “Took dinner at Sarah’s, after which she informed me that she had made up her mind to join the Christian Science denomination, and wanted me to take the necessary steps to have her name taken off the records. I felt very bad. I labored with her for a long time to try and get her to give up her foolish ideas.”160
Andrew did not write much in his journal about his feelings, but on one occasion he recorded that, as he traveled to a speaking appointment, “on my way over the hill I stopped up on the top and prayed to God. I felt to be thankful for his many kindnesses unto me.”161
On Heber C. Kimball’s June 14 birth date in 1887, Heber’s family gathered for the first time in the twenty-one years since his death. Andrew helped organize the occasion. The men held a business meeting and authorized the publication of a biography of their father by Orson F. Whitney, a grandson of Heber’s. Heber’s sons appointed Andrew to be the administrator of the little remaining estate, a mark of trust in and regard for him, one of the younger sons.162 Later, Andrew wrote each of his brothers about how much the family owed the State Bank of Utah for the cost of a portrait of their father that hung in the temple.163 At her death, Andrew’s mother’s name had not been engraved on the large monument in the Kimball cemetery. It was now decided to add her name and to move her grave a few feet so that it was partially under the monument.164
Andrew resumed political activity as a member of the People’s Party nominating convention in 1887.165 The convention agreed to let the Liberals have four seats on the city council, rather than have the Mormons win every municipal office, as they could have done.166 Andrew frequently busied himself with political matters. Among other things he organized two marching clubs and had them enliven the party’s meetings and rallies.167 He also procured band instruments for the boys and even attended practices.168
Andrew qualified as an election judge because he could swear that he did not practice or encourage polygamy.169 He also signed onto the bail bond for a Brother Griggs of the Fifteenth Ward.170 Prosecutions for plural marriage continued to be disruptive to the community, with federal marshals becoming ever more aggressive. Much of the Mormon political activity in the territory was of necessity left to young men like him who were not yet involved in plural marriage. Thousands of men in polygamous marriages had been disfranchised by antipolygamy legislation. The prosecutions focused attention on the political struggle over who would govern Utah.
