Each document has been meticulously transcribed and is placed in historical context with an introduction and annotation. Taken together, the accounts featured here allow readers to study this founding period in Latter-day Saint women's history and to situate it within broader themes in nineteenth-century American religious history.
In the first meeting of the Relief Society, Sister Emma Smith said, “We are going to do something extraordinary.” She was right. The history of Relief Society is filled with examples of ordinary women who have accomplished extraordinary things as they have exercised faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Relief Society was established to help prepare daughters of God for the blessings of eternal life. The purposes of Relief Society are to increase faith and personal righteousness, strengthen families and homes, and provide relief by seeking out and helping those in need. Women fulfill these purposes as they seek, receive, and act on personal revelation in their callings and in their personal lives. This book is not a chronological history, nor is it an attempt to provide a comprehensive view of all that the Relief Society has accomplished. Instead, it provides a historical view of the grand scope of the work of the Relief Society. Through historical accounts, personal experiences, scriptures, and words of latter-day prophets and Relief Society leaders, this book teaches about the responsibilities and opportunities Latter-day Saint women are given in Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness.
U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.
This groundbreaking series recounts the lives of women of faith and dedication in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Often in their own words, they share their trials, triumphs, and testimonies.This fourth volume features women born between 1872 and 1900 whose stories explore a comparatively untapped era in Mormon history. This generation of Latter-day Saint women experienced firsthand the challenges of the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and World War II. They also witnessed the unprecedented global expansion of the Church and the first young women to serve as proselytizing missionaries.You will become reacquainted not only with such well-known figures as general Relief Society president Belle S. Spafford and Camilla Eyring Kimball, wife of President Spencer W. Kimball, but will also meet Kasimira Viktoria Cwiklinski Wurscher, who led the Relief Society in communist East Germany for more than twenty years; Edith Papworth Weenig Tanner, a British spy during World War I; and Maria Guadalupe Monroy Mera, who endured deep persecution, including the martyrdom of her brother, for her family's acceptance of the restored gospel in Mexico.The faith these women exhibited as they rejoiced in blessings and dealt with struggles provides a model for us today in facing our own challenges as we too strive to build lives of faith.
