In the book  Women’s Voices, the authors, Kenneth and Audrey Godfrey and Jill Derr, talk about three well known women in Mormon history.  They have searched their diaries and made them human before us.  I was fascinated to read their ups and downs and their personal marvelings of their growth within the gospel.

Brigham Young is quoted as saying, “We believe that women are useful, not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but that they should stand behind the counter, study law or physics, or become good bookkeepers and be able to do the business in any counting house, and all this to enlarge their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large.”  These women have demonstrated this in their own little ways.

In the late 1800’s Relief Societies, meeting during the week, would build their own halls, with their own money, to meet in.  Mary Jane Tanner records how the women would gather “at private residences”, because they had no hall to meet in.  They would gather weekly to quilt, sew carpet rags, discuss church history and doctrine, and share testimonies.”  They met to organize and conduct business for the Retrenchment societies and the Primary Associations, which the Relief Society would “mother”.

Many Relief Society meetings focused on a specific work that needed to be done:  various home industry projects;  “indignation meetings” that would later become suffragette meetings; organizing the women into presidencies, for the other associations (looking after the younger children); grain meetings, and organizing visits to care for the poor and the sick.

Eliza R. Snow, one time presidentess of all three associations (RS, YW, and Primary), declared, “We are women of God,–women filling high and responsible positions”.  She rallied the sisters to serve diligently and faithfully in callings in these various organizations, as well as getting involved in the antipolygamy campaigns, the local suffragette meetings, and national women’s associations.

These women found themselves doing things they never thought they could do.

Mary Jane Mount Tanner spent her life dividing her time between raising her family and fulfilling her Relief Society responsibilities.   She gave birth to nine children, only six surviving.  She was Relief Society President for twenty-two years.  She wrote life sketches of the female descendants of the ruling houses of Europe, as well as published works of poetry.  She records in her journal, “I attended a meeting today for electing delegates to the County Convention.  Political meetings are something new to me.   There were several ladies present, and we said [aye] sometimes by way of exercising our rights, and went home feeling the importance of our positions.”  She was eventually elected president of the Provo Woman’s Suffrage Association.

Emmeline B. Wells, was abandoned by her first husband.  She gave birth to six children, losing a baby.  At the age of forty-six, she began writing for the Women’s Exponent, eventually becoming its editor.  She published a book of poetry that became so popular, another edition had to be printed.  At eighty-two years of age, she was called to serve as the fifth General Relief Society President.  She writes in her journal, “I went to the Eleventh Ward to a Retrenchment meeting; Sister E.R. Snow and Zina D. Young were there also Bishop McRea and his Counselors.  It was a very good meeting I rose and tried to speak for a few minutes, the first time in my life that I ever spoke in public before men.”  She would later travel east to defend the cause of Mormon women before Congress and the US President.

Susa Young Gates, the daughter of Brigham Young, was a divorced young mother of two, trying to go to school.  She was keenly interested in education having studied stenography, baking, and literature.   She directed the school choir, taught piano and voice, and helped establish the music and domestic science departments.  She also spent much time serving in the temple and doing family history work.  She would later write a course in genealogy research and teach it in the Lion House for ten years.  She was the editor of the Young Women’s Journal, as well as the Relief Society Magazine.  She wrote several novels, poems and stories.  She served seven terms as delegate to the national and International Councils of Women.  She eventually remarried and had eleven more children, only four growing to maturity.

Susa Young Gates sensed as did these other women that she had “a destiny in this church to fulfill”.  I hope we all feel we have our own destiny to fulfill in this church.  Some things will be new to us, many things will be scary, but the Lord needs us to move His work forward, even more than what these great women have already accomplished.