Try Again

This wonderful story was told by our brother, Jim in his Grandpa's Stories book.  It contains a wonderful mantra.  I share it with his permission.  These are his words. Alex is his adorable grandson who has Down Syndrome.

Alex was 11 years old when these events occurred. It was at the Prescott Arizona Stake conference in August 2017 that this story unfolded. Our son Matthew, as a counselor in the stake presidency, spoke in the Saturday evening session of the conference. His topic was on the importance of personal and family scripture study. In his remarks, Matt acknowledged that for many people, keeping to a daily scripture study routine was a challenge, but his message was to not get discouraged if we falter but to keep at it and not give up. He illustrated this by telling about his son Alex, who, because he has Down syndrome, can find challenging many experiences that are ordinary for most of us. He has trouble verbalizing and doing tasks that, for most people, are quite easy. As Alex has grown up, he is always being encouraged to keep trying at these tasks he finds difficult. He has heard that two-word directive “try again” so often that he eventually adopted it. Whenever he observed his parents or his siblings, being unsuccessful at something, he will speak up and say, “Try again! Try again!” That encouragement, coming from this little fellow and symbolizing his struggle in life, was just a sweet thing to hear and act on. At this stake conference, Matt’s encouragement to the members of the stake regarding daily scripture study was to not give up but to always “try again.” Matt’s remarks were well received by the congregation and the visiting authority, Elder Carlos Villarreal of the Seventy. After the Sunday morning conference session, Elder Villarreal, who we were informed, has experience with Down syndrome children, went into the departing congregation to meet Alex and to take his picture. In the weeks that followed, it became clear that the principal takeaway from the conference was Alex’s motto, “Try again.” Some weeks after the conference, we had Alex over to our home. At one point he asked to go jump on the trampoline, and when he asks that, he expects that my wife and I will go jump with him. Consequently, we dutifully trooped down to the trampoline. Alex climbed on, and as he bounced around, he began calling for us septuagenarians, to take off our shoes and join him. We protested at first, saying we were too old for trampoline jumping, but he was insistent; so, reluctantly, both of us took off our shoes and climbed up. There we were, the three of us, bouncing up and down on the trampoline. At some point, Alex stopped jumping and declared that he wanted to show us something. It turned out to be a handstand. He had learned how to do a handstand, and he wanted to demonstrate it on the trampoline. So we watched as Alex leaned forward, placed both hands on the fabric, and then kicked with his feet so that they rose in the air, momentarily holding a handstand pose before toppling onto the trampoline. We were impressed and applauded his effort. He demonstrated it for us again and again. Then he said, “You do it!” Leslie and I looked at each other in disbelief. Surely he wasn’t asking his seventy-year-old grandparents to try to do a handstand! But, yes, he was. And he was insistent. We just had to do it. So I got down on my hands and knees and then tried to kick my legs into the air to imitate what he had done in performing a handstand. All I managed was to flip, head over heels, in a somersault. I thought that pretty good for a 74-year-old, but Alex was not impressed. “No, no,” he said. “Try again. Try again!” There were those words again. My wife then made a similarly unsuccessful effort, and I tried once again; but this attempt, too, turned once more into a somersault. That was just not good enough for Alex and his cries of “Try again!” kept ringing in our ears. Finally, exhausted, and now sitting on the trampoline, I looked up at Alex and protested, “Alex, we are trying. We are!” Yes we were,  but we had not yet been successful in executing a handstand, but only in doubling over with laughter as he continued to encourage us. A month or so after this, my wife received a Facebook notice from a woman who had lived in Prescott many years before when she was a young adult. We hadn’t heard from her in twenty years, but suddenly here was this notice from her. She said she lived in Arkansas and had just come from a stake conference where a member of the Seventy, Elder Villarreal, had spoken. He told the story of an Alex Hinton in Arizona, who was encouraging people to “try again” when being unsuccessful in facing difficult things. She wanted to know if we knew of this Alex and if by chance he was related to us. We shared our Alex story with our family, and Sean, who was stake president in the Peoria Arizona North Stake at the time, picked up on it and shared the story in his own stake conference. He said that the reaction he got from his stake members was unbelievable. Afterward, everybody was talking about Alex Hinton and “Try again!” Of all the talks, all the messages, and all that was preached, the one thing folks came away from his conference repeating was “Try Again”!  At Christmas time, when we unwrapped our presents, the gift we received from the Sean/Micole family was a large wooden plaque stained with the phrase “Try Again!” Those words are now implanted in our memories, displayed on the wall of our home, and immortalized in the folklore of our Hinton family. No defeat is final; just Try Again!