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I'd like to welcome you to the Church History Library's Men and Women of Faith lecture series. Tonight's lecture is entitled Faith of Latter-day Sisters, a Personal Perspective presented by Sister Julie Beck, the former Relief Society general president. Our next couple of lectures coming up, on April 11, we have Joseph Fielding McConkie. He'll be speaking on Bruce R. McConkie, A Special Witness. And then on May 9, we have Sister Debbie J Christensen. She'll be speaking on Julia and Emily Hill, Sisters in Zion. We are really excited this year to be able to hold our lectures here in this historic Assembly Hall. In the original design for the Assembly Hall there have been several unique items that have either been removed or changed a little bit over the years. Topping the spire on the cupola was a weather vane in the form of an angel blowing a trumpet, a design that was similar to the weather vane that topped the pinnacle on the original Nauvoo Temple. That has since been removed, but it was there originally. And there are some photographs that show that a flying angel on the top of the spire there. Now everyone is aware that there are many spires on this building, but some of you might not be aware that there are two pinnacles-- one on the north side and one on the south side-- that do not have a spire. They're flat topped. These pinnacles are the location of the original chimneys that were used for the two boilers for the heating system. And in the early 1980s, the building was remodeled due to deterioration over the years, a new roof was added, the cupola was replaced, and the pinnacles were capped with new white fiberglass spires, molded exactly as the originals. During the remodeling, it was determined to preserve the original appearance in detail, even if not in function. So the flat top pinnacles remain and are there today.

This evening we are extremely pleased to be able to have sister Beck speak with us. Julie Bangerter Beck was born in Granger, Utah to William Grant and Geraldine Hamlin Bangerter. She experienced the blessing of working toward personal and family goals as the fifth of 11 children in their family. Along with her family, she became deeply involved in Church service at a young age when her father was called to preside over the Brazilian mission in Sao Paulo, Brazil for five years. She graduated from American Fork High School after her family moved to a small farm in Alpine, Utah. Following high school, she graduated from Dixie College and later received a Bachelor of Science degree from Brigham Young University. In the Church, she has served in primary, young women, Sunday School, young single adults, Relief Society, and scouting. She and her husband also served at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah for several years. Sister Beck served at Church headquarters for nearly 15 years, first on the Young Women General Board, then as First Counselor in the Young Women General Presidency, and finally, as the Relief Society general president. In addition to her worldwide assignments as Relief Society general president, Sister Beck was asked to direct the writing and publication of Daughters in my Kingdom, the History and Work of the Relief Society. She also served on the executive and general counsels for Church welfare, on the executive and general boards of Church education, the boards of Trustees of Church schools and universities, the LDS Family Services Board, the Perpetual Education Fund, the Women's Endowment Fund, the Temple Clothing and Design subcommittee, and various other general Church councils and committees. Following her release from general church service, sister Beck accepted an appointment from Governor Gary Herbert to serve on the Board of Trustees of Dixie State College, (now University), in St. George, Utah. She and her husband, Raman P. Beck have 3 children and 15 grandchildren. As a couple, they have been active in family, city, school, and community efforts. They love to spend time with their siblings and extended family at family functions and the annual Bangerter family campout in the Uintas. She loves music, reading, going on walks, and having sleepovers with her grandchildren. She's a great seamstress and loves to cook for her family. She loves and is devoted to spending time with her mother. We are pleased this evening to be able to have sister Beck speak with us to take the time from her busy schedule to be with us this evening. Sister Beck.

Thank you, April. I don't know where she got all that. [LAUGHTER] But it was fun to hear.

And I only accepted this invitation because I didn't think anybody would come. [LAUGHTER] So I thought that's OK. I can speak to an empty room and feel very happy about that. But it is so sweet to be here with you and have already greeted so many of our loved ones, family members, and friends and people we've worked with over the years. And it brings back many memories to see many of you and then to greet new friends who've been here-- have arrived tonight. It's wonderful. Thank you all for the spirit you've brought tonight. It is my desire that the Spirit will be our guide in this meeting. I've thought many times and many ways about how to approach this opportunity and what should be said, and have sought the Lord's direction. But most of all, I think we all need to feel the Spirit. We come with questions in our daily lives. Life is tough for most people. And we get so many interesting experiences. And so the questions keep coming throughout our lives. And those questions draw us closer to the Lord Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Father, and get us into the scriptures and into our covenants and-- and continually keep us on a journey of discovery about who we are and what we're supposed to be. This lecture was billed as something where I would talk about the faith of Latter-day sisters and my perspective. And because this is a Church History event, I've decided to take a little bit of a historical approach. It was my blessing as a Relief Society President to have a monthly meeting with the Church historian. And the Church historian during my tenure of service was Elder Marlin Jensen. And he brought with him brother Richard Turley, his assistant, and also brother Nielsen, who's the managing director of the Church History Department. And every month we would have an agenda of wonderful and important things to talk about regarding Church History and Relief Society's role and responsibility, and where we connected and supported each other in that. And I gained such an appreciation for how careful the Church has been in collecting and sharing its history, and how open and honest and sweet that experience has been throughout time. I appreciated that sincerity and how we received so much support from the Church History Department. So made it difficult to say no to this invitation. I've just been spending the last year-- much of it-- in reviewing the opportunity I had to serve as Relief Society General President, and going back in some aspects to things that we worked on when I was in the Young Women presidency and on the board. When you become a general officer of the Church, there's this wonderful little agreement we have with Church leaders. And that is that everything we work on during our term of service then becomes part of the Church archive. So during this year, we've collected up everything. It's a wonderful housecleaning opportunity. And it's great, because I didn't have a house big enough to store all the papers and things that accumulate. And it's pretty staggering to think of what accumulates in a life and in a term of service in just five years in terms of papers and documents. And also, now that we have computers, what goes on to electronic files is pretty amazing. To review all of that has been a journey. We've had four wonderful women who've helped us with collecting and preparing an executive summary for the Church History Department. So I've read all my journals for the last 10 years, and I've reviewed talks and messages and the long list of what those were, and then helped summarize this administration of the Relief Society Presidency. And as I, just a couple of weeks ago, finished up my part of that, I sat back in front of my computer and noticed I was trembling with amazement really, of the Lord's hand in our lives and what He had us accomplish, and was overwhelmed by that evidence of this being His work. I could see that the history of the Church and Heavenly Father's children is unfolding still, and that I had been blessed to have to be a participant in that. So that's sort of the backdrop for what I've been doing. I've also been thinking about the times we're in, and how difficult they are, how they've been described in 2 Nephi Chapter 28 as a day when people feel anger and discontentment about good things, and how the Satan stirs people up. And all across the board in the media and in politics and in movies-- and there's a discontentment against things that should be good, but an unhappiness in the world and this idea of apathy that has grown up that the adversary promotes that it doesn't really matter, and we shouldn't care about things. And we see that in evidence. And we see also this idea of entitlement that comes from the adversary where he flatters us and says everything's OK and you deserve things. And when we all know from King Benjamin and other prophets that we're all beggars, really, and dependent on the Lord for every breath. And we're given this wonderful gift of life. And we also see the Antichrist predominance that is taught in Alma Chapter 30. And it's that type that that continues on today where we're taught all the brightest and the smartest and the fastest and the fittest get ahead and everybody else is a loser. And we see that in so many aspects of our lives. It's in the faces of our young people and our families. And again, it promotes discouragement. It kills-- all these things kill faith and hope and charity. And we live in this world where the adversary is becoming better and better at what he does. And yet, we see the miracle of the unfolding the gospel of Jesus Christ and how the Lord is doing his strange act in the world, this juxtaposition of things. So tonight I'd like to share some of my reflections and some of the opportunities that we had. When we began as a Relief Society Presidency-- and I'll focus on that term-- we started with a blank slate. No one gave us to-do list. Yes, we were assigned to some service on committees and so on, but we were given a blank slate. And I'd like to focus on some of those opportunities and some of the lessons learned. And then, because tonight's focus was on faith, I'd like to use the word alignment. And I'll use that frequently because it's come to my understanding that faith is really an alignment, alignment of our will with our Heavenly Father's will; an alignment of our life's purpose with our Heavenly Father's purpose; an alignment of the things we prioritize and do with the things that would be a priority to our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. It takes great faith to align ourselves in these ways. And when we're misaligned, then faith is absent. So that's been something that I've learned and discovered in these recent years. One of the first things we were invited to do was to undergo an exercise in determining who we worked for, basically, as a Relief Society Presidency, who we served, and what those who we serve needed to do. And that took a long time for my counselors and I to discuss. We took several weeks. We searched the scriptures. We went to our knees. We wanted to be aligned and know perfectly about that service and who we serve, because we could go down any road and help all kinds of people. We were the Relief Society Presidency of the Church. And of course, we wanted to go about doing good. But which good should we focus on? And where what our work matter most? And I think it was one of the greatest blessings of our presidency that we determined that we serve the Lord, our Heavenly Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ. And then we focused in on their purpose: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of their children. And then we determined that we were here to assist Prophets, seers, and revelators, the First Presidency and the Council the Twelve Apostles. And we searched the scriptures to learn what their responsibilities were. To establish the Church, to regulate and govern the Church worldwide. And we knew that we needed to seek their vision and where the Lord was pushing them to take his gospel throughout the world. We knew if we were aligned with the Lord and with the prophets that we'd be OK, and if we got off of that track that we could get lost and wander down strange paths. That was one of the greatest things we did, I think. We knew that we couldn't do everything. We had to focus on the essential things, and we had to help the First Presidency in that. We then underwent an exercise, which I think every General Relief Society Presidency goes through to understand their purpose. Because the Lord calls people who are unqualified. And then he begins to qualify them and to teach them. But we knew through our visits with the First Presidency in the Council of the Twelve that they wanted us to focus in on core principles of Relief Society and why it existed and what it meant in this century and in this dispensation as we're going forward. So we began studying the history of Relief Society. We were given a history of Relief Society to look at. It was one that had been prepared a couple of decades ago. And it was a wonderful summary of the administrations of the various Relief Society presidents. You could see the Lord's inspiration running through the lines of each presidency and how he had worked with them through the times and seasons they had, through wars and pestilence and diseases and changes in policies and politics, and all the global changes going from a Utah church where the Relief Society President could get to every ward and branch and state, to then an expanding global Church where it was not anticipated that any Church leader would get to every place in the world unless it was through some kind of electronic transmission like General Conference. So with the Church expanding and new opportunities, you could see Relief Society Presidencies begin to learn to how to articulate what they had to do. But in every presidency, I could see this theme of alignment that every President wanted to align herself with the Prophet of God and what he was doing and that great desire that was in her heart. I studied and thought much about Doctrine and Covenants section one, and the purpose of the Church, and why it was established. And when you think of what the Lord was doing, we wanted to be aligned with that. In this section the Lord said He called-- "knowing the calamity that would come in these days, He called upon His servant Joseph Smith, Jr. And He gave him instructions and spoke to him from heaven, and gave commandments" to others. And we learn about that the "weak things of the world would come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones, that man would not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh." So we knew we were the weak things of the world, that we needed to not trust in ourselves, but to trust in man. But we knew that this Church was established, as it says in verse 20, that "every man might speak in the name of God, the Lord, even the Savior of the world that faith also might increase in the Earth, that mine an everlasting covenant might be established, that the fullness of my gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple unto the ends of the world before kings and rulers." So we knew this purpose of the Church. But the Covenant was to be established, and that faith needed to increase in the Earth. We needed to be part of that as a Presidency and that Relief Society, from its very beginnings, had been aligned down that same path. So we knew that that alignment had been there, but we needed some kind of clarity, because now we have a global Church where we're in 175 nations and over 80 languages. And that just keeps growing. Every day that expands and will continue to expand. And the numbers of people in those nations will continue to expand as the Church goes forward. And so we needed to be able to articulate the purposes of Relief Society and with such clarity and such simplicity that it would transcend cultures, languages, opportunities, education, economies, and experience, and traditions, and all those things that come with a worldwide Church. We'd been invited to think globally and futuristically. And so how to articulate something that would be in primary terms that would be uncomplicated to translate and be simple enough really, to carry around in heads so that it wouldn't have to be on some-- in a big book. And we came up through councils with our priesthood leaders with three simple words that are easy to remember that Relief Society is about faith and about family and about providing relief. So those three words are simple enough that they could be translated into all languages and be interpreted in all kinds of ways. And so then that was put onto a bookmark and a poster which says that we are here to increase faith and personal righteousness. That's what the Lord said. He wanted to increase faith in the Earth, to strengthen families and homes. That's the establishing of His covenant. And then seek out and help those who are in need. It's always been a definition of the Lord's people from His times and the biblical times that His people are identified by being those who seek out and help those who are in need. You can recognize the Lord's people if they are doing good things to help His children on the Earth. So those words were accepted through the councils of the Church and approved as being the simple-- simplest form that could then be taught this to the Church and particularly to the Sisters of the Church, wherever we went in the world, if they can understand those three things, faith and family and relief, and be aligned with those purposes, that they'd be all right, no matter their circumstances, no matter their difficulties. They'd know what they were supposed to do. Soon after that, we were invited to work on the handbook. And that's a unique opportunity that doesn't come around every day. It's a massive work to redo a Church handbook. And in my term at General Church headquarters, I was able to see that creation twice. So in that time of preparing this new handbook, we saw this new emerging focus about the councils of the Church and having everybody be a participant in helping build the Church. And so then we thought about how we should approach creation of the handbook as a Relief Society Presidency. Should we take the great work that had been done by previous presidents and work with editors and simplify the words? Or should we take a new approach? And at the time, we didn't know how it was going to turn out. But one thing that was impressed upon my mind, as I was studying the history of Relief Society, was this thought of Eliza R. Snow and her Relief Society Minute book that Eliza captured, to the best of her ability, the words and teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and the instructions to the sisters. And then, when the Saints had been expelled from Nauvoo, and they'd had this migration to the West in this time of turmoil, and now they're going to re-establish and get the wards and the stakes strong again, Brigham Young said, "Eliza, I need your help. I need you to go out in the Church and establish Relief Society again." What did she have? She just had this little book of instructions from decades before. So she carried that with her and she called it her constitution, and followed that in principle and teaching. And what was that minute book about? It was teaching the sisters about faith and about family and about relief, and all that it took to carry out those three purposes. So we started thinking, what we really need in Relief Society is the equivalent of Eliza's minute book. That's what the Handbook of Instructions is. It's the basic principles that were captured in that book. So we looked at simple principles and what would be applicable in a global Church across cultures and economies and traditions, and all those things, and how much was needed with those kinds of applications. How would it work in Africa? How would a handbook be accepted in India? How would it be used in the Latin Church in South America? How would it be used in China, if it was needed to go into China? And so if we're thinking of this idea of alignment, then it was a wonderful exercise to look at the Church handbook of instructions with a clarity of purpose, and then all the great work that had been done before, and what were the parts and pieces that were essential to be maintained in that handbook, not giving too much, but enough. I don't know if it was perfect, but we did the best we could. And we were guided and blessed, and again, worked in wonderful Church councils. But all along, the Lord was teaching us and instructing us and helping us to understand some things. And what did we discover? We discovered that visiting teaching and home teaching were then included in more than 10 chapters of the handbook, and mentioned a couple of dozen times, so that it was infused in activation, in temple work, in missionary work, and in reaching out and caring for the poor and the needy. And all across the handbook was this thread of ministering to the one, and all at a time when we have President Monson saying we've got to rescue and reach out and help one by one. And that watch care was there. So then we saw Relief Society being in all the work of the Church throughout the handbook. We heard President Monson tell us in a meeting that the job of the Bishop was to magnify a Relief Society President. And as he magnified his Relief Society President, she would magnify him, and he would be able to take care of his flock. And we learned about President Monson's understanding of this unity and partnership of working together, that it wasn't a competition or one or the other, but they had to have one heart and one mind in taking care of the Lord's people. And President Monson's stories about being a Bishop and helping the poor and the needy are legendary. And we got that testimony from him. We saw how it was infused in the missionary work, Relief Society was. And then now when we see this announcement with new Relief Society sisters having the opportunity to serve missions, we see the wisdom of that. All the things that went into the creation of the handbook, we didn't understand. But we had that idea that it's got to be that equivalent of the minute book, and have the principles, and be infused with the Lord's work throughout. I saw evidence of this once when I was down in Peru. I went to visit a place that had been leveled by a terrible earthquake. And this was a city in Pisco where several hundred people were killed in a cathedral that collapsed. And basically, the whole city was leveled, and there wasn't a person there who hadn't lost a loved one. And when that happened, the stake Relief Society President worked in harmony with the stake President, and went into action. She was asked to organize rescue efforts. About the only building left standing in that town was our chapel, which was a pretty new chapel. So she organized all the cooking for all the people, which was massive. A tent city was put up there in the parking lot. And many people descended on the building. But she worked on feeding people and organizing people and getting them going. And then when they got that initial rescue taken care of, then she and her counselors in an inspired way went about helping people mend their lives and get put back together. And so they started teaching skills and how to cook with the food and supplies that the Church sent down, and getting them organized in that way. And then she said, well, we've got to reach out to the greater community. So she organized the sisters. And they learned that every baby in that city had lost everything. So they, with all the supplies some people sent here, they made blankets. And they made a baby blanket for every baby in that city. And then she said, well, everybody lost their livelihood and way to make an income. So she looked around at everything that had been sent. And they started little home industries and ways to sell things and get back on their feet. Well, now I'm visiting her several months later, when the houses are being rebuilt, you could still see rubble in the streets, but there was this wonderful animation. And as I met her at the Church, she came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder and cried and cried and cried.

And then she cried some more and she couldn't speak.

And I felt strength going out of me into her. After about five minutes, she raised up her head and squared her shoulders, and I said, "Oh, sister, are you OK and can I help you?" And she said, "I'm just fine. I just needed someplace to cry." And I recognized that she had this tremendous strength for months and months. And my job was just to go and provide the shoulder. But she had known through revelation and through a few simple principles how to go into action. I didn't need to be there. The Lord was already with her. She had her stake president. She had her counsels. And Relief Society was alive and well, even in the midst of that disaster. So we learned that that was-- those policies were important. We were asked by the First Presidency to look at the idea of Relief Society meetings. Should we continue to have them? Should we change the name? We'd had these extra meetings. They'd been called work meetings. They'd been called Homemaking meetings. They'd been called Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment meetings. And all with the intent to strengthen and bolster the sisters in their practical responsibilities, and strengthening their faith and their family and their ability to provide relief. But as the Church was expanding, you think of those words, Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment in 85 languages, and how that translates. It doesn't translate all the time. And so what should the name be called? Did we still need the meeting? Was it important? And I was given one weekend to think about it and provide back to them the policy that should come. So my councilors-- I called them together as soon as I was given the assignment. And we all had assignments out of town that weekend. So about two hours after that assignment was given, I got on a plane and went back East for four days. And my councilors and I just all of us left with this prayer in our heart that the Lord would provide for us. But it was amazing through that weekend how a phrase here, a thought there, a piece here, a piece there-- it just started coming. And then I happened to have my administrative assistant with me on that trip, which was the one and only time she went with me. We didn't know that assignment was coming when it was determined she would go with me. But there she was to pull together these bits and pieces. And it was a week before the general Relief Society meeting. I already had my talk turned in and translated. But I knew that if the policy was accepted, that it was my responsibility to talk about it in the Relief Society meeting. So simultaneous with giving talks and doing trainings and a whole busy weekend, we were writing a proposal for the First Presidency, a policy for the handbook, and rewriting the Relief Society talk. And Anne Marie says, "what if it's not accepted?" I said, "well, we'll use the old talk and we're just going to assume it will be accepted and write a new talk and see what comes out." But the Lord provides and blesses us. It was a miraculous weekend. And I realized that the Lord really wanted that to happen. So then fast forward a couple of years later. And I find myself in Lubumbashi Democratic Republic of Congo. So take your finger and put it right in the middle of Africa. And there we have a couple of stakes of wonderful faithful saints. But they can't get Church materials in there very much. To get anything from Kinshasa, which is where everything is mailed by the Church, to Lubumbashi, is the same as getting something from Boston to Kansas City, only it's on the Pony Express trail without a horse.

So they're lucky if they have a set of scriptures per family or a manual per class. And they get very little of Church materials. It all has to be flown in. It's expensive. And it's all in French. So I go and I visit Relief Society. And I talk to these sisters. And I see a Relief Society meeting. And there it is, all just going exactly like it's supposed to be with policy. Everything just perfect. And I said to this sister, "how did you know how to take care of this?" And she reached down into her little bag and she pulled out a handbook and a Liahona. And she opened the Liahona to the little summary we'd given about Relief Society meetings, and she said "we just read this." Now imagine when the Lord wants alignment and clarity, he can get it into Lubumbashi Congo where nobody has a car and there's no sidewalks and no strollers and people carry their babies on their backs. And most families plan on losing half of their children to whatever, where appendicitis is fatal, and oftentimes, a bug bite can be fatal. So they are aligning themselves with the policies of the Church. And it works. It just works when the Lord's hand is in it. Then there came the day when I was called in to meet with our advisor from the Twelve. And he handed me a minute entry from the First Presidency and the Twelve saying that that day in their temple meeting, it was determined that our Presidency would be assigned the responsibility to prepare a history of Relief Society for the Church to use. So it wasn't to be a historian's history. It wasn't to be a private history. It was now a history for the world. And I took that little paperback and called my counselors together and said, "look what we've got. How are we going to go about this?" And again, we were prayerful and fasted and thought carefully about that approach. And we were blessed that the Lord knew Sister Susan Tanner, and we were able to recommend her name as the principal writer of that. And then to be in the supporting role of that and pulling it together to continue to have the responsibility for that assignment. Throughout, the designers worked with us and the editors worked with us, and Sister Tanner worked with us, and what did we know as a presidency about creating a history of the Church? We weren't experts on that, but the Lord was. And as timelines and deadlines would come, sometimes people would panic. And the Lord created a calm feeling around us. And I just say just keep working. It'll all work. It will all work. And it was amazing to see that from the day the assignment came to the day we pushed print to start the printing of that book was 23 months. That's unprecedented. When I was released as General Relief Society President, I spoke to my daughter who had been working on my mother's history for 10 years, and said let's work really hard this year and get mama's history done. And so we finally printed it a couple of weeks ago. But we couldn't get it done in 23 months. And we had total control over that as a family. We didn't have to work with anybody but the people we chose. So this was an unprecedented miracle. But again, it provided a global alignment when you think of what the Lord needs to do. By having this history now, Daughters in My Kingdom, we have what it looks like, feels like, smells like, tastes like, to be a Latter-day Saint woman all around the world. This is an alignment of faith behind the original purposes of our Heavenly Father for His daughters. It's alignment behind the Lord Jesus Christ's work in the world today. It dispels the myths. I don't know if you're familiar with many of the myths that are out there regarding Latter-day Saint women. Some still believe and speak about Latter-day Saint women as being second class citizens, or that all the stories are about men, or that women will never be enough, no matter what they do, no matter how busy they are. Many of these kinds of things that are myths in the Church that Latter-day Saints women are sweet, but mostly uninformed. And those things keep being out there. But this dispels all of that. It talks about the significance of Heavenly Father's daughters in His whole Plan of Happiness, and of significant and important work in the world today. It goes back to the idea in Luke Chapter 10, which was something the Lord guided me to. As we got this assignment, I kept thinking, "why do we need a history?" I needed all the questions answered in my mind. "What's this for? What did the Lord want to accomplish?" If I couldn't get a vision of what the Lord wanted, then anything we did would just be something. It had to be what He wanted. But I can see this pattern in Luke of the Lord Jesus Christ enlisting helpers. Where in Luke 10, it talks about the Seventy being called, which was after the Twelve were called. And they were told what would happen when they had the power of the priesthood their lives and they could go out minister on the Lord's behalf. And then following that, we have this wonderful story of the good Samaritan, which basically tells the Lord's purpose of those who work for him, that you go out and rescue the people who have needs and help them with their short term needs and get them on their feet with long term preparedness. And so right after that-- and it's not a random thing to me-- I learned in the scriptures there was a story about Martha and Mary, and the Lord approaching them and saying, "there is something more you can do if you want to participate in my work, that I'm going to make you part of this good part, which won't be taken from you." And you see that thread after in the Lord's ministry New Testament of Martha and Mary then becoming great disciples and taking care of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were aligned with His purposes. And I can see that. The Lord was opening that up. He showed me that this was a Restoration of an ancient pattern. And the Lord gave a revelation to Emma Smith through Joseph about her work, and called her to help. And she was the first female leader of the Church. So there that is, section 25, the Doctrine and Covenants. It isn't random that she was called to be part of that. Joseph Smith said at the time Relief Society was formally organized, I'm going to set apart your counselors. But Emma had already received her blessing years before at that time. So this was this Restoration of an ancient pattern. And we needed to be aligned behind that prophetic vision. I needed to know what the importance of a history was. I was directed over and over again in the Book of Mormon to the importance of history, that Nephi-- we learn from Nephi that the Lord wanted him to get the history. He wanted him to study the history. He wanted him to learn from the history and apply that history throughout his teaching. And then to keep track of his own history. So I started to see these patterns with the Lord's prophets. OK, if that is what he wanted Nephi to do, then of course, that's what we've been doing. And then you read in Alma 37 this great description of why we've kept the history. And it says, "and who knoweth what they will be the means of bringing many thousands of people and to the knowledge of their Redeemer? Now these mysteries are not yet fully made known unto me. Therefore, I shall forbear. And it suffice if I only to say they are preserved for a wise purpose, which purpose is known unto God." And I knew that if we could preserve the right history that the Lord would know what to do with it. We didn't have to know everything. But the purpose of this book is known unto God. And I don't think we know all the purpose yet of what it's for. But we know it's a tremendous gift. The day we pushed print at the Church press began an amazing process for the members of the Church when they were able to have this book. And that printing, the initial printing in English took six months. So you think of the finest printing press in the world printing at 25 miles per hour, 24 hours a day for six months to provide enough copies to be given as a gift to all the sisters in the Church without cost. That was the initial release. That's how hard people worked and what the Lord wanted to do. So what is it used for? I think of my friend Sharon, who is a beautiful Chinese young woman. She's almost 30, but she was raised on a goat farm in Northern China. Her parents scraped together enough money by selling their goats to send her to Australia as a teenager to go to school. There, she met the missionaries and joined the Church and served a mission of her own and converted her brother, who then went to Australia and was able to be baptized and became a missionary and so on. And then Sharon went to BYU-Hawaii and received a degree there and stayed as long as her visa would allow. I talked to her just the week before her visa was expiring. And she was going back to China, back to this little town. There's no organized Latter-day Saint Church there. But she says "I know who I am. I know what my purpose is. I know I can live the gospel. I know the Lord has a plan for me." And I thought, "the Lord doesn't raise up a woman like that just to drop her back into obscurity." I'm interested to know what happens to Sharon in the years ahead. I thought of the ward in California who said they get ten sisters-- new sister members a month. Now that's overwhelming. So that's 120 new Relief Society sisters a year. And being able to keep them strong in the faith is a real challenge. They said they have one-- one counselor is called with some sisters in their ward to go visit every sister who's receiving the discussions, and give them a copy of Daughters in My Kingdom. And this is their training manual for new Latter-day Saint sisters. They said, "if they can read this, they'll know how to be a member of the Church. They'll know about faith. They'll know about family. They'll know about how to provide relief. They'll know how to be a visiting teacher. They'll know how to serve in other capacities of the Church." So this is their tool. And I thought of a Bishop I talked to recently who said he'd had a number of men in his ward come forward with struggles with pornography. And he said "I wrestled with how to help them." He said, "in the end, I gave them each a copy of this book. This is their required reading." He said, "if they can catch a vision of what Heavenly Father and the Savior Jesus Christ understand about their daughters, I believe they won't have any more desire to participate in that activity." And he says it's working. It's helping. I thought of our own grandchildren. We have a grandson who's about to turn 12. And my husband says we've got to help him prepare for the priesthood. So we got him his own book and put his name in it. And we open it up to Chapter 8 and we started teaching him about what the priesthood was and what that would mean in his life. And so many things like this. It's a great gift. And like other gifts given as a gift, some people know what to do with it and use it and appreciate it. And others are still waiting to know what they do with it. But the Lord understands. Last week I went to Church in Beijing, China. We have a couple of branches there of expatriate Americans, for the most part. There are some Australians, some people from Argentina, and so on. But they're people who live and work in China. I went in to Relief Society and what were they using that day as their instruction manual? They had Daughters in My Kingdom and were learning about that. I thought all those wonderful young mothers who were there with their families far away from home, and they're learning how to be daughters in the Lord's kingdom in far away China and in other places throughout the world. So what are some of the lessons that I think I've learned? I've learned through this and many experiences and reviewing my own opportunities that Heavenly Father's daughters are essential to his plan. President Hinckley said in this book, "without you, sisters, the plan would fail." And we know that we're equal halves of a divine pair in the Lord's plan. We know that they need to know what their identity is. We live in a world that's selling all kinds of identities and people are buying them. But this idea of alignment, when they're aligned, faith grows, hope grows, charity grows, families are strengthened. We know that Relief Society was an essential part of the Restoration. It's not a subset of a department or other kind of work. It's an organized discipleship, and under the direction of prophets, seers, and revelators. And it always has been. And the prophets have respected that calling and it's essentiality in the work. It's a living, breathing work. It's not a program. It is this discipleship. And it's global now. And the alignment gives it power. I've seen that its capacity is growing and expanding in its importance in the world. It's an amazing miracle. Last year, I was invited by the Church to go back to the United Nations and meet with the woman who is the head of UN Women. This is a new United Nations department, which consolidates all efforts regarding women and children. They have many millions of dollars for their budget. I arrived there just as she was setting up her office. She didn't even have all of her staff organized. This is a talented woman. She's a medical doctor. She's been the president of a country. She's been a defense minister. She has vast experience in leadership. As we sat down, I could tell that she had a great feeling about her new office and its importance and the good that she thought she could do. She told us about initiatives she wanted to carry out, and her challenge to be able to get into many countries and to get into grassroots work where she could help individuals that it wouldn't all be top heavy, and so on. And then, kind of as a courtesy at the very end of our visit, she said, "I've met some of the men in your Church when I was the president of my country. But what do you do?" I said, "well, I lead an organization-- a small organization of 6 million women.

And we're in 175 countries. We have 33,000 at least, grassroots groups, each of them led by a president and some people who assist her." And she's, "33,000?" And she started to write. "In 175 countries?" "Yes, 33,000 in 175 countries." "And so what do they do?" And I said, "well, we're a religion. We're a faith-based group. So we work to increase their faith, their faith in their God, and their faith in themselves. And we help to increase faith in the world. And we work to strengthen families and homes." You see how those simple words transcend cultures and experience? "So we know that the homes of this world need to be strengthened and the families are struggling. And so that's what we're about. And then wherever we need to, we seek out those who are in need and we provide relief. And we organize around that." "Well, how do you do that?" I said, "Well, we just have a few simple guidelines. We give them-- and it's called the Church Handbook of Instructions and all that." But I said "we have a few simple guidelines and we send them out. And they all have it. And they know how to organize. And mostly, I just travel around and tell them they're doing a great job." [LAUGHTER] But I could see she just was puzzled by how could we be in so many places doing so many things? And I described some of the simple and essential work we did. And it reminded me of another meeting. I had with women from about-- there were about 18 women from Central African nations. These were cabinet level ministers and important women in their countries. They were here at the invitation of the State Department learning about some things in the United States. And they'd come to Salt Lake City. Now they were having lunch with us. They were quite skeptical, I thought, and described their skepticism. They said we've had all kinds of religions come to our countries. And they bring in goods and they dump them off and then they leave. And they create a dependency. And what we need is some independence for our people. We're trying to help strengthen our women from their core. So, what do you do? Again, this question, what can you do for Africa? and I just was praying hard. Help me be able to describe this in a way that will mean something. I said, well, one of the important things we do is we establish a buddy system. [LAUGHTER] We have a system of watch care that we organize in all the places where we are. So we have women who are assigned to look after each other. And they just go to each other's homes and they visit. And they learn how they're doing. And they go with the idea that they're going to strengthen each other's faith. And so keep in mind, around this table there were Islamic women. One of them was fasting. She wasn't eating lunch. It was Ramadan. And numerous other religions and faiths, some of them tribal, some of them Christian. But I said we are increasing faith in these families. And then we want to strengthen their families and their homes. And so we see what they need. And so they'll come back and they'll report. They give us a report to their leader. And they say this one has a child who needs a pencil to go to school, and this one doesn't have paper, and that one needs rice, and this one is going to have a baby, and she needs some help, and another one is sick. And so the women gather together and they discuss these needs. And they say in our group can we provide the resources to help each other? And so they do. One of them has a pencil, and somebody has rice, and one goes to help the one who's having a baby. And they just disseminate all the resource that they have. And if they need more-- if they can't handle it, then they go to their pastor and they work with him. And they try and get a little more need. But most the time, they can handle it all themselves, what they need. And as we're talking like this, these women just start nodding their heads and agreeing. These women who are in different cultures, and religions, and languages are nodding their heads. And one of them said, "that is a model that would work for Africa." Sometimes we forget the beauty of the Lord's simple programs, His simple way of doing things, His simple discipleship, and how we've been organized in this way. So I learned some of those lessons as I met with global leaders. When the Lord says you'll meet with kings and rulers, the weak and the simple, we'll meet with them. But I had the words. And we had worked with our priesthood leaders on the alignment. And it made it so simple to be able to talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ and how it's going throughout the world, and how it expands, and how it works, and it adapts wherever we are. What I've learned is that the Lord knows His people. He knows who they are. He knows what they need. And He moves them around and He helps them. And when they have these few simple principles, He can guide them. I've learned that the blessings of the priesthood are there for all Heavenly Father's children, that He's blessed us all with the gifts and the blessings that come with the ordinances and covenants of the priesthood, as is talked about in section 84 of the Doctrine and Covenants. I've learned that, like Adam and Eve, as is described in Moses, that we're all here for an experience, a mortal experience. And I'm glad, like Eve is, to have this experience, where she says I'm glad that we had seed. And I stopped and thought, "Oh." All of Eve's children weren't perfect. But she was glad to have that experience and that covenant in her life. She was glad for the promise of eternal life. She was glad to know about the difference between good and evil. And that's what we're having. We're all having an interesting mortal experience. And it varies from person to person. And we all need support and relief from time to time. And sometimes we're able to be the strong ones. And sometimes we need someone to lift up our arms that are hanging down. And that cycle goes on and around the world over and over again from generation to generation. I've learned that Relief Society, this organized discipleship, builds people. As I said, we've been working on my mother's history. And I loved watching how Relief Society had helped build and strengthen her as an individual throughout her life, and how as she went down to South America as the wife of a mission president, and then seeing more than 40 branches who were organized in a sort of different ways, that she was given the assignment to organize Relief Society. And it's with a standard approach all across the mission. And how would she do that? This mother who had, eventually, 10 children, but she had three babies in those five years. So that was a lot of mothering, besides all the missionaries, besides all those branches, and how to do it. But this little newsletter she wrote every month that was to create an alignment with those sisters, work on this principle. Work on being nice to each other. These were women who'd never cooked in a kitchen with another woman in their life. Now they had to provide service together and work together. These were women who'd never gone out visiting. And they were timid. They'd never given talks before. They never taught lessons before. And how do you encourage a growing Church to be able to do that? And I loved her letters. Everyone signed at the bottom, we will grow to create that vision. We will grow. We may be small today, but we will grow. And then to see over the years, those women who were built-- the Lord built them-- into tremendous leaders of great capacity who are now great-grandmothers, many of them, who have prepared a generation of missionaries or two generations of missionaries, that are now filling this mission force in Brazil so that we can have seven new missions announced just like that. And where did those missionaries come from? They came from this heritage. We will grow. They came from an alignment behind faith, and family, and providing relief. I want to bear you my testimony that I know this is the true Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know and testify that Joseph Smith went into a grove of trees and saw Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, and he was given instructions and that blessing and understanding of knowing how to establish the Lord's Church step by step the best he knew being an inexperienced mortal leader. I've seen and experienced mortal leaders over and over and over again establishing the Lord's Church. None of them are perfect. But when they're aligned behind the Savior Jesus Christ, and our Heavenly Father, and Their work, they become powerful individuals. I bear you my testimony that this work is led today by a prophet of God. It continues forward. He speaks for the Lord. And he is aligned with Him. And I know that as we align ourselves behind those same purposes and that same simplicity and that same beauty of the gospel, that we will continue to be blessed. Yes, we'll have a mortal experience. We'll experience challenges and opposition. But the Lord is with us and that refining will build us. I leave you my testimony and my love and appreciation for all you've contributed to the building of the Lord's kingdom and what you've lifted and done to me, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Amen.