Relief Society

Our Relief Society organization is celebrating its 184th birthday on March 17!

Relief Society sisters have been a good influence for me my entire life. I’ve learned how to sew, to crochet, to teach English, to garden, to can tomatoes, teach my children the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to serve others, and to create a home food storage. All of these useful things, and more, I learned to do in Relief Society.

Living as an ex-pat in Thailand and Indonesia, I found that needs were much greater than in my stateside ward Relief Society. In Thailand, RS sisters regularly visited member’s very humble cement rooms for needs assessments. Relief Society sisters and other members regularly delivered food, reading materials, and hygiene items to refugees in immigration prison. We often had whole ward service projects in Thailand and Indonesia to make care packages for people caught up in natural disasters.

“We are the Lord’s hands here upon the earth, with the mandate to serve and to lift His children.

Thomas S Monson, October 2009.

It was at a funeral that Relief Society sisters became my angels, the Lord’s hands. Five wonderful sisters surrounded me in a circle of prayer as we prepared to dress the body of a dear sister and friend who had been hit by a bus. Up to that point, I had never prepared anyone’s body for a funeral, but two of the sisters who had volunteered to help me knew very well what it meant to dress a body in Thailand and they volunteered anyway. Without their helping hands, their spiritual fortitude, and their love for our departed sister, I know I would’ve had very different feelings about that day. I am forever grateful to my sister angels who helped me dress Ruth.

Relief Society is a sisterhood of women working to do the will of the Lord on the earth. As we practice being disciples of Christ, we are preparing for those hard times when disciples of Christ will answer a need and become angels of God.

And behold, I tell ye these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.

King Benjamin; Mosiah 2:17, Book of Mormon