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Magazine January 1967
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The Cover:
Frontispiece:
Art Layout:
Illustrations:
The word which characterizes the New Year is the word happy. "Happy New Year" rings out in joyous sound. Similar expressions are found in different languages in different countries. They contemplate the past year with its sunlight and shadows and wish for a new year of happiness.
This wish is extended by the General Board to every Relief Society member in the year 1967. As we extend this wish to you, we are mindful of the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith:
Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the com- mandments of God. But we cannot expect to know all, or more than we now know unless we comply with or keep those we have already received {DHC V: 134-135).
Each one to whom we offer this wish lives under different economic, social, and physical conditions, but each one has one great spiritual blessing. You each have the good tidings of great joy. You each have this blueprint for happiness. You each have the divine gift of a loving Heavenly Father to you his beloved daughter — The Relief Society.
Relief Society will assist you wondrously on your twelve- month pilgrimage on the path for happiness. As you persist, your burdens will drop from you. To each Relief Society member we send this message of love — "Happy New Year!"
General Presidency,
Relief Society Centennial Memorial Campanile
Transparency by Howard Barker
Lithographed in Full Color by Deseret News Press
Brook in Winter, Photograph by Leiand Van Wagoner
Dick Scopes
Mary Scopes
'/vm/[
For a year and a half I have received the wonderful Magazine as a gift from a Brigham Young University student, and nothing has added more joy to being a mother than this helpful pub- lication. I look forward to the whole- some stories, the inspirational edi- torials, poems, and special features, and delight in trying out the recipes and other household suggestions, i know of nothing else like the Magazine! Al- though I am not a Latter-day Saint, through the Magazine I have come to respect and understand the beliefs of the Church.
Mrs. W. Franklin Burditt
Briarcliff Manor
New York
Since June 1965 I have received a gift subscription of The Relief Society Magazine through the mission home in Buenos Aires, and I am so thankful for the monthly message of beauty, love, and virtue it brings to me. It is the most feminine magazine I have ever read, because it reflects the deep feelings, thoughts, and problems of good women of today.
Mrs. Liliana R. Riboldi Rosario, Argentina
When things of the earthly life which are not to my liking gather too closely around, I find that prayer and a story from the Magazine set me to a better way of meeting the moments.
Naomi Pollett Mountain View, Wyoming
I am very grateful for our wonderful Magazine which I have been receiving for the past four years. This little Mag- azine has played a great part in help- ing me progress in self-improvement ever since I became a member of the Church five years ago, and I have recommended it to everyone I meet, subscribing to it for members of my family and friends, from time to time.
Violet M. Tate Pennsauken, New Jersey
We love The Relief Society Magazine and are so grateful for the strength and support it gives to us in the im- portant work to help the sisters in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg to understand the purpose of this choice organization in helping them to serve the Lord as members of his Church and mothers in his kingdom. We are anxiously awaiting the day when it will come to us in French so that the full worth of the messages therein can reach into the hearts and homes in the Franco-Belgian Mission.
Helen H. Paramore, Supervisor Brussels, Belgium
I would like to thank you for the article "Surface Cleaning" by Dorothy C. Little (August 1966). Many mornings I had felt that cleaning and clearing up things around the house was just too much for me to cope with. But I've tried the methods suggested in the article, and they work.
Hope Moon Sugar City, Idaho
I have very much enjoyed the con- tinued story "Wheat for the Wise" (con- cluded in July) by Margery S. Stewart. I think i shall feel the same way about the story "Tell Me of Love" by Rosa Lee Lloyd (beginning July 1966). Nothing In the Magazine goes un- savored.
Ullie Hendricks Big Springs, Texas
I have read the editorial "A Pattern for the Daughters of Zion" by Vesta P. Crawford (July 1966) many times, and I have tried to visualize the time and the effort, which are put into the words that go straight to the hearts of the sisters. What lovely words of wis- dom you have put forth for the daughters of Zion.
Lorene P. Revill Spencer, Indiana
The Relief Society Magazine
Volume 54 January 1967 Number 1
Editor Marianne C. Sharp Associate Editor Vesta P. Crawford
General Manager Belle S. Spafford
Special Features
1 A New Year Wish General Presidency
4 The Role of Women in Building the Kingdom Harold B. Lee
14 Relief Society Memorial Bell Tower Belle S. Spafford
19 Award Winners — Relief Society Poem Contest
20 The Navajo Rug — First Prize Poem Barbara J. Warren
22 To the Grand Teton — Second Prize Poem Alice Morrey Bailey
24 Naomi to Ruth — Third Prize Poem Mabel Harmer
26 Award Winners — Relief Society Short Story Contest
27 Who Loves Here? — First Prize Story Myrna Clawson
37 Fight Birth Defects — Join the March of Dimes George P. Voss
Fiction
38 Christmas Begins With a Tree Marilyn McMeen Miller 47 Tell Me of Love — Chapter 7 Rosa Lee Lloyd
General Features
2 From Near and Far
33 Woman's Sphere Ramona W. Cannon
34 Editorial: The Joy of Volunteer Service Marianne C. Sharp 36 Notes to the Field: Bound Volumes of 1966 Magazines
Memorial Honor Funds Discontinued 53 Notes From the Field: Relief Society Activities 80 Birthday Congratulations
Tlie Home- inside and Out
43 Unwelcome Caller Nancy M. Armstrong
45 Sandwich Surprises Joyce B. Bailey
46 Agnes Kunz Dansie, Versatile Artist of Handicraft
Lesson Department
58 Spiritual Living — The Millennium Roy W. Doxey
64 Visiting Teacher Message — "As Oft As Thine Enemy Repenteth of the
Trespass . . ." Alice Colton Smith
65 Homemaking — Keeping Records Celestia J. Taylor
67 Social Relations — "When Ye Do What I Say" Alberta H. Christensen 73 Cultural Refinement — "Virtue Nourishes the Soul" Dr. Bruce B. Clark
Poetry
Waiting is Winter, Kathryn Kay 36; Beyond these Tears, Mabel Jones Gab- bott 37; Love's Magic, Leone W. Doxey 44; Nocturne, Gilean Douglas 72.
Published monthly by THE GENERAL BOARD OF RELIEF SOCIETY of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. © 1967 by the Relief Society General Board Association. Editorial and Business Office: 76 North Main Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111; Phone 364-2511; Subscription Price $2.00 a year; foreign, $2.00 a year; 20c a copy, payable in advance. The Magazine is not sent after subscription expires. No back numbers can be sup- plied. Renew promptly so that no copies will be missed. Report change of address at once, giving old and new address. Entered as second-class matter February 18, 1914, at the Post Office, Salt Lake City, Utah, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of Oc- tober 8, 1917, authorized June 29, 1918. Manuscripts will not be returned unless return postage is enclosed. Rejected manuscripts will be retained for six months only. The Magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manu- scripts. ;:,.::,~^..,,,..,, ,,..^«v-V'..-«>f-.«!S:-«<v,.;
The Role
of Women
in Building
the Kingdom
Elder Harold B. Lee Of the Council of the Twelve
[Address Delivered at the Stake
Board Session of the Relief Society
Annual General Conference,
September 29, 1966]
■ I would not have you think that my coming in late and not being able to hear my esteemed and beloved friend and brother, Gordon B. Hinckley of the Coun- cil of the Twelve, indicated any lack of respect. I would have wished to have been here. I know his great power of uplift; and I would have felt happy had I been here to have received it; and, also, it would relieve me of an anxiety that I might be repeating what he may have said to you al- ready in this session.
Before, or shortly after I be- came a member of the Council of the Twelve, I was called to the office of the President of the Church, and he said, "We have Brother Callis and Brother Can- non who are the Advisers to the Primary, and we have been thinking we need someone near the age of the Primary children as an Adviser." You can imagine my anxiety when I was told about about two years ago that I was being relieved of that re- sponsibility and was now being made an Adviser to the Relief Society. I don't know whether that has any significance or not, but at least it gave me a rather queer feeling.
Before I accepted this respon- sibility, I gave Sister Spafford a rather negative or evasive ans- wer. I had some other commit- ments that I thought might prevent my being here at this time, but after a little delibera- tion and a little shifting, she was called and was told that I would be able to accept the assignment. She replied, "Well, that's fine be- cause his name is already on the program." Now that's how we get assignments from Sister Spaf-
The Role of Women in Building the Kingdom.
ford. I thought you would be in- terested to know.
I want to say to you that those of us who work closely with Sis- ter Spafford and these counselors in welfare work, for more than thirty years as a matter of fact; Beehive Clothing Mills with the intricacies and the problems which you all know are tremen- dous as you meet the problems out in your wards and stakes; with the Correlation Committee; and the Advisory Board, which includes* the heads of all auxil- iaries and the Priesthood; and now as Adviser to Relief Society; and besides having the oppor- tunity to have traversed some of the territory where President Spafford has gone and meeting women of renown from all coun- tries, I want to say to you with all sincerity and with no attempt to "gild the lily,'' that I think we have had few women among us who have attained the world- wide stature and is so recognized as a power for good among the women of the earth as we have today in Sister Belle S. Spafford. If you knew what I know you'd know that I wasn't overshooting the mark by that statement.
I have been asked to speak on a particular subject, broad enough, I'm sure, that a series of talks would not be sufficient to exhaust the possibilities — "The Role of Women in Building the Kingdom." So I shall narrow what I say about this subject under four different headings, and then make a few conclusions so that, if you care to, you can bring it all together and add to it as many others as you wish. The Lord declares what his work and glory is. To Moses, he said.
"For behold, this is my work and my glory — to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39).
Since that profound declara- tion of Mother Eve in the Gar- den of Eden after the Fall, the exalted place of women in the plan of salvation was clearly de- fined.
These words that I will quote to you now are said by students of the scriptures to be the great- est short sermon ever delivered, delivered by a woman. Now note what she says:
. . . Were it not for our trans- gression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient (Moses 5:11).
Lehi explains and amplifies what Mother Eve said, when, apparently, his son Jacob asked for an explanation of the Fall and why evil was permitted in the world. Lehi made this ex- planation:
And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.
And they would have had no child- ren; wherefore they would have re- mained in a state of innocence, hav- ing no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.
But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who know- eth all things.
Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy (2 Nephi 2:22-25).
January 1967
If immortality, then, is the first step in the achievement of the Lord's work and his glory, it is readily to be understood that the process by which immortality is achieved is through the bearing of mortal offspring by mortal mothers in holy wedlock and sired by mortal fathers. Woman's role in God's eternal plan of sal- vation has here, then, been re- affirmed. Will you think of this, in this day of mass hysteria over birth control by artificial means? It might be well for ReHef So- ciety mothers to consider the role of woman in the great plan of salvation as the Lord has ex- plained it.
The woman's role involves a partnership, hopefully with a noble son of God. It was the apostle Paul who declared this interdependence between men and women to be achieved only in holy wedlock. Here are a few of his quotations: "Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman with- out the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God" (I Cor. 11: 11-12). ". . . but the woman is the glory of the man" (I Cor. 11: 7). "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. ... So ought men to love their wives £is their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth him- self" (Eph. 5:25, 28). "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh" (Matt. 19:5).
The sacred nature of this partnership is nowhere better ex- plained than by our own Pres-
ident David O. McKay, and is now quoted in our 1966 Mel- chizedek Priesthood Manual, if you want to check this when you get home, page 63. This is what we're teaching your husbands in their weekly Priesthood meet- ings.
I read this to my wife and she commented, "But why don't you teach this to the Priesthood rather than to the sisters?" Well, we want the sisters to know what their husbands are being taught, and if their husbands are not going to Priesthood meeting, they will see that they get there to hear these lessons taught in Priesthood meeting. Now this is what the President said, and you can understand what my wife meant:
"Love is the highest attribute of the human soul, and fidelity is love's noblest offspring." Most, if not all, of the virtues are the natural fruit of genuine love.
President McKay has given in- spired counsel regarding the physical dimension of the love relationship between a man and his wife. He said: "Let us instruct young people who come to us to know that a woman should be queen of her own body ....
"Second, let them remember that gentleness and consideration after the ceremony are just as appropriate and necessary and beautiful as gentleness and consideration before the wedding.
"... Chastity is the crown of beau- tiful womanhood, and self-control is the source of true manhood, if you will know it, not indulgence ....
"Let us teach our young men to enter into matrimony with the idea that each will be just as courteous and considerate of a wife after the ceremony as during courtship" (Mel- chidezek Priesthood Manual 1966, page 63).
Now you have companion les- sons to these in the Relief So-
The Role of Women in Building the Kingdom
ciety, don't you see? And you, having been schooled in the Re- lief Society, your husbands re- ceiving this kind of a lesson in the Priesthood, the meeting of the two lessons -brings an ideal Home Evening lesson, where fa- ther and mother, with their grow- ing-up sons and daughters, are taught these fundamental prin- ciples. The curse of infidelity is plainly set forth also by Pres- ident McKay in this same Priest- hood manual that Fm talking about. He says:
As teachers, we are to let the people know, and warn these men - and this is not imagination - who, after having lived with their wives and brought into this world four or five children, get tired of them and seek a divorce, that they are on the road to hell (Ibid., pp. 63, 64).
That comforts me a little, be- cause I quoted something to a certain lovely sister who was hav- ing trouble with her husband, that no woman was expected to follow her husband to hell, and I am reinforced when President McKay made this statement:
It is unfair to a woman to leave her that way, merely because the man happens to fall in love with some yoiuiger woman and feels that the wife is not so beautiful or attractive as she used to be. Warn him! Nothing but unhappiness for him and injustice to those children can result (Ibid., page 64).
I saw what I think was the pinnacle of understanding in this respect when the president of the American Medical Association was here to give an address be- fore our Utah Association. They, the auxiliary to the Utah Associ- ation, had arranged for some en- tertainment for his wife, but she
became ill and could not accom- pany him, and the sisters, of course, were very disappointed, and one of them asked him, "Is your wife just as beautiful as she always was to you?" And he an- swered, "Yes, just as beautiful, but it does take her a little more time."
Sometimes as we go through- out the Church we hear a hus- band and wife who come to us and ask that because they are not compatible in their marriage, they having had a temple mar- riage, wouldn't it be better if they were to free themselves from each other and then seek more congenial partners? And to all such we say, whenever we find a couple who have been married in the temple who say they are tiring of each other, it is an evi- dence that either one or both are not true to their temple cov- enants. Any couple married in the temple who are true to their covenants will grow dearer to each other, and love will find a deeper meaning on their golden wedding anniversary than on the day they were married in the house of the Lord. Now don't you mistake that.
The duties and purposes of the Relief Society in this regard have found expression from one of the Presidents of the Church, Pres- ident Joseph F. Smith, in which he emphasizes another phase of the woman's role as a member of the Relief Society. Now I have spoken of the one phase as a creator in company with her hus- band. Now note what President Joseph F. Smith says:
I will speak of the Relief Society as one great organization in the Church, organized by the Prophet
January 1967
Joseph Smith, whose duty it is to look after the interests of all the women of Zion and of all the women that may come under their super- vision and care, irrespective of re- ligion, color or condition. I expect to see the day when this organization will be one of the most perfect, most efficient and effective organizations for good in the Church but that day will be when we shall have women who are not only imbued with the spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and with the testimony of Christ in their hearts, but also with youth, vigor and intel- ligence to enable them to discharge the great duties and responsibilities that rest upon them. Today it is too much the case that our young, vigor- ous, intelligent women feel that only the aged should be connected with the Relief Society. This is a mistake. We want the young women, the intelligent women, women of faith, of courage and of purity to be associated with the Relief Societies of the various stakes and wards of Zion. We want them to take hold of this work with vigor, with intelligence and unitedly, for the building up of Zion and the instruction of women in their duties - domestic duties, public duties, and every duty that may devolve upon them (Smith, Joseph F., Gospel Doc- trine, Tenth Edition, pp. 386, 387).
I was startled upon one oc- casion to have announced by a certain women's organization that one of our past Relief So- ciety presidents had graduated from the Relief Society into this other women's organization. Let there be no uncertainty in the minds of our Latter-day Saint women as to the Relief Society being the greatest of all women's organizations. There is no other greater organization on the face of the earth for the Latter-day Saint wife or mother.
Sister Spafford has so kindly spoken of my daughter Helen. (This isn't on the script, dar- ling.) When she was a teenager, the patriarch gave her a blessing.
Her older sister had received a blessing in which she was told that she would be a missionary, a great missionary, and this sweet daughter was told that she would be a shining light in the great Relief Society program of the Church. Carefree, careless, both of them; they may have placed their own individual in- terpretations, but now the wheels of time have moved on. This other, yes, who knows, she is now an angel, maybe, in the realms on high, is one of the great mis- sionaries.
In the temple today, one of the Brethren bore witness to hav- ing sat in meditation and having recalled an experience in the Logan Temple when a sister in deep sorrow had come to him because of the loss of her com- panion, then a few days later she came back and was all in ecstasy, never happier in her life than now, and he said, "What's happened to change you?"
''The last few days," she said, "I went to the assembly room in the Logan Temple. There were some other couples in that room, and as I sat there, I heard the most heavenly music. Then, after it was ended I said to the people there with me, "Did you hear that music?" They all said, "Yes, we heard it."
In my mind, as he spoke, I thought of my own sweet mis- sionary daughter. In my mind's eye she could have been accom- panying that kind of heavenly choir because she majored in music to be the great missionary that God apparently intended her to be.
Woman's place in training her family is the third phase of this
The Role of Women in Building the Kingdom
work that I want to mention. I'll quote a few significant scriptures and then draw some obvious con- clusions. The Lord said:
But, behold I say unto you, that little children are redeemed from the foundation of the world through mine Only Begotten;
Wherefore, they cannot sin, for power is not given unto Satan to tempt little children, until they begin to become accountable before me;
For it is given unto them even as I will, according to mine own pleasure, that great things may be required at the hands of their fathers (D&C 29:46-48).
Now what is the age of ac- countability and what are those great things that God requires of the fathers of children, which, by inference, means mothers as well, during this period before little children begin to become ac- countable before the Lord? Now the age of accountability, the Lord, in another verse of revela- tion, says is eight years of age. No one can be received into the Church unless he has arrived at the age of accountability. Parents are admonished to have their children baptized when they are eight years of age and teach them the fundamental principles of the gospel, and their children shall be baptized for the remission of their sins and receive the laying on of hands. Children should be taught to pray and walk upright- ly before the Lord, and so on.
Now the conclusions and log- ical deductions. Great things are required of fathers and mothers before Satan has power to tempt little children. What are the great things? Have you ever thought of that? Before Satan has a chance to lay hold on a little
child, it is the responsibility of the parents to lay a solid founda- tion by teaching Latter-day Saint standards by example and by precept. In other words, to you and to the sisters over whom you preside, it means the making of a career of motherhood. Let nothing supersede that career. Do teach mothers to take full ad- vantage of the Family Home Evening lessons each week.
I was down to Cedar City just after Family Home Evenings were provided with a full course of lessons for each week. Why that startled the Church to think that now we had prepared a les- son that the parents, each week, could teach. Six hundred fifty thousand manuals were sent and put into the home of every par- ent, so no one could say, "We didn't have a manual," or "We couldn't afford one." They were put in the hands of every parent. And I was anxious to see how we were getting off at this stake con- ference. I asked if they would call in some in whose homes the family home night lessons were being taught, and they called a young Singing Mother from out of the chorus upon the stand.
This mother said they had just begun their lessons when she and her husband were asked if they would be dance instructors until after the dance festival. Now you have heard of things like this happening. As they began to try to find a night when they could get all these participants in the festival, every night was pre- empted except one, and you can guess what night that was. It was the night of the Family Home Evening, that had sup- posedly been held sacred for
January 1967
Family Home Evening. Well, ity in teaching my family on a they said to the children, "We Family Home Evening/' guess that until the festival is Now, you teach the women and over, we'll have to give up the mothers to do likewise. Mother's Family Home Evening." So, with first sacrifice is to become a regrets, they went to the task of mother. I was going to do some- this dance festival, and a few thing today, Helen, but I don't nights thereafter they came home know whether I dare or not — late, weary from their exertions, just a quote from our oldest They were awakened around daughter when she had her first daylight the next morning by baby. She was in a hospital in the sound of their children's California, and I was going to voices in the front room down- read a bit from Helen's sixteen- stairs. When they went down the year-old letter to her mother in children were all dressed, and an attempt to demonstrate in our there was a blazing fire in the own family how the great in- fireplace. The fifteen-year-old fluence of mother had been daughter, the night before, had passed on to two lovely daugh- engineered the children in pre- ters who, in turn, now are pass- paring the preliminaries for an ing it on to ten grandchildren, early morning breakfast which Presumably those ten children, if consisted, as I remember, of the record is kept up, will go on peeled potatoes which, when al- and on throughout the genera- lowed to stand overnight had tions as these, my family, become taken on a darkish hue — ^black part of my eternal kingdom in potatoes. When the parents the world yet to come. I don't asked what this was all about, think I'll try to say what I they said, "Well, Mother and thought I would read to you. My Dad, when you said you couldn't feelings are a little bit tender find a night for us to have Family today.
Home Evening, we counseled to- Pain and suffering coming in gether and decided, then, that or going out of the world seem to hereafter we were going to have be a part of the plan, and moth- Family Home Evening at five ers were promised that in pain o'clock in the morning. We are and travail they would bring all here now. Breakfast is ready, forth children. You remember It will take only a few minutes; Mother Eve's promise. She and now give us the Family Home her daughters would be saved in Evening lesson." child bearing. Saved! I thought And as this sweet mother stood that meant protected so they there and the tears streamed would go through delivery of down her cheeks, she said, "As their babies, unscathed. I'm not I sat down to that breakfast of so sure that that's what it means blackened potatoes, they were now, but I know that if mothers the best tasting potatoes that I will do their part, even though have ever had in my whole life, it costs their lives, that their and I resolved that never again eternal reward in our Father's was I going to let anything take celestial world will be certain, precedence over my responsibil- I was up at Blackfoot, Idaho,
10
The Role of Women in Building the Kingdom
I guess I shouldn't have said responsibiUties were taking him
that, but I'll have to go through out of the home, I could be there
with it now. I had made a with the children, and when my
blunder when I found that there responsibilities took me out of
had been assignments to hus- the home, daddy could be there
bands and wives that took them with the children." She said,
both out of their home at the "That's the way we have worked
same time, and left their children together so that our children
unattended. I scolded a bit over were never left without father
the pulpit, and one of the coun- or mother." Finally, she said,
selors scolded me between ses- "Third, I have an imshakeable
sions by saying, "Well, we'll have testimony of the divine mission
a whole stake resignation after of the Lord and Savior, Jesus
that talk." I thought I'd better Christ."
repent. So, in the afternoon ses- I say to you, there are the sion, I was sitting by the Relief three hallmarks of great mother- Society president of the stake, a hood in the training of children lovely mother, now in her late in a family home, sixties. She had raised a family And now, finally, a fourth role of nine, and all of them while she of mothers is the building of a was presiding in one capacity or home here and laying a foimda- another. She had been in Pri- tion for a home in eternity. What mary, in the MIA, and now pres- is a home? There are some rather ident of the stake Relief Society, apt quotes which indicate what And without knowing what she I want you to get. "Home is a would say, I said to her, "Sister, roof over a good woman." But if I wish you would get up and tell the roof is lacking or the woman these folks how you've been able is lacking, it isn't any home. It to raise a remarkable family, all takes both. "Home is the sem- of them now married in the tem- inary of all other institutions." pie, and still be able to carry on "The most essential element in in your Church work as you are." any home is God." "A man is I couldn't have written the always nearest to his God when script for Sister Christensen's he's at home and farthest from talk any better than she gave it. God when he is away." (This She said, "Well, first, I followed could be true to a degree, that in the example in raising my family the home, there is the good in- of my own wonderful mother. I fluence of a true wife and moth- merely followed the example she er.) "Home is the place when gave us, so I tried to raise mine you go there they have to take as she had raised us. Second, I you in." That's the boy or girl have a wonderful companion, who stays out late until you've Daddy always felt that I should worried yourself sick and comes have a Church activity just as he trooping in at one, two, or three had. So when we were called to o'clock in the morning, but, after a position, we would sit down all, that's his home, that's her with the bishop or stake pres- home. Yes, home is the place ident, and we would try to work that when you go there, they it out and see if, while daddy's have to take you in.
11
January 1967
Now just a word about another subject. President Joseph F. Smith said something else that I've carried in my mind these years, something about the im- portance of owning your own home. Now we're drifting away from that today. And I want you to get the importance of what he said here.
It was early the rule among the Latter-day Saints to have the lands so divided that every family could have a spot of ground which could be called theirs; and it has been the proud boast of this people that among them were more home owners than among any other people of like numbers. This condition had a good tendency, and whatever men said of us, the home among this people was a first con- sideration. It is this love of home that has made the saints famous as colon- izers, builders of settlements, and re- deemers of the deserts. But in the cities there appears now to be coming into vogue the idea that renting is the thing. Of course, it may be neces- sary as a temporary makeshift, but no young couple should ever settle down with the idea that such a con- dition, as far as they are concerned, shall be permanent. Every young man should have an ambition to possess his own home. It is better for him, for his family, for security, for the state, and for the Church. Nothing so engenders stability, strength, power, patriotism, fidelity to country and to God as the owning of a home - a spot of earth that you and your children can call yours. And besides, there are so many tender virtues that grow with ownership that the government of a family is made doubly easy thereby (Smith, Joseph F., Gospel Doctrine, Tenth Edition, page 305).
Now a home, I would impress, not only a home here, but build- ing a home for the eternity. This is a phase of it, and I shall close with this, with one or two ob- vious conclusions. The Lord said:
And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise. . . . they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever (D&C 132:19).
Now, the Prophet Joseph Smith, commenting on this scrip- ture, explained:
Except a man and his wife enter into an everlasting covenant and be married for eternity, while in this probation, by the power and author- ity of the Holy Priesthood, they will cease to increase when they die; that is, they will not have any children after the resurrection. But those who are married by the power and author- ity of the priesthood in this life, and continue without committing the sin against the Holy Ghost, will continue to increase and have children in the celestial glory (Smith, Joseph Field- ing. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pages 300-301).
Our First Presidency in our latter days has said:
So far as the stages of eternal pro- gression and attainment have been made through divine revelation, we are to understand that only the resur- rected and glorified beings can become the parents of spirit offspring. Only such exalted souls have reached matu- rity in the appointed course of eter- nal life; and the spirits born to them in the eternal worlds will pass in due sequence through the several stages or estates by which the glorified par- ents have obtained exaltation (The First Presidency, June 30, 1916, "The Father and the Son," page 8).
Now the conclusions. Woman has within her the power of cre- ation in company with her legal and lawful husband here, and if
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The Role of Women in Building the Kingdom
sealed in celestial wedlock, may have eternal increase in the world to come. Woman is the home- maker in her own home, and an exemplar to her posterity in the generations that succeed her. Woman is a helpmate to her hus- band and to render him more perfect than he otherwise would be. Woman's influence can bless a community or a nation to that extent to which she develops her spiritual powers in harmony with the heaven-sent gifts which she has been by nature endowed. If she does not forfeit her priceless heritage by her own willful neg- ligence, she can be largely instrumental in safeguarding de- mocracy and downing a would-be tyrant. Year in and year out, she may cast the aura of her calming and refining influence to make certain that her posterity will en- joy the opportunities to develop to their fullest potential their spiritual and physical natures.
Now this is a rather sensitive thing that I shall close with. We had one in high station in gov- ernment circles who has made a suggestion which was highly ap- plauded, according to a great educator whose words Fm going to quote. It made the suggestion that all young persons in this country, boys and girls, perhaps, should be required, whether in peace or war, to give a year or two of their lives in some kind of
national service. Then this wise educator said this. Now don't you quote me as saying this, but you say that I said, he said that:
There are a lot of folks who thmk that it is just as vital for a young Los Angeles woman to get married and rear a family with respect to law and rights of men as it is for an- other young woman to work