My Weird Project: Women of the Scriptures Blog Series

Prepare yourselves:  A series of posts about women in the scriptures and the Young Women values! But first, a bit of explanation…

Being the ~feminist~ that I am, I love to read stories about my fellow ladies in our religious canon. Knowing this, my grandma gave me some cheesy women-in-the-scriptures baseball cards for my birthday. Each card bore one of the Young Women values [click here to know more about these values] and had a picture of a woman from the scriptures who exemplified the said value. To my own surprise, I took an interest in these cards and found myself deeply analyzing each one. Do I know why? Nope, still don’t. But these cards both fascinated and bothered me.

Things that I noted: For one, I thought it was cool that they found so many scriptural women (I mean, from what I knew, there weren’t that many). However, there was one thing that irked me (other than the quirky drawings on them – those things were weird, man) – the value designated for each woman. Some of them were great, but others just didn’t fit. I mean, who the heck are “The Women in the Wilderness”? And where in heaven’s name is Eve?! I stewed for weeks about these dumb LDS novelty cards. Then I decided I could take no more. I wanted to correct the mistakes made on these tiny pieces of cardstock – I needed to set the record straight.

My task: to search the scriptures and make my own list of women for each Young Women’s value, gosh darnit.

So I read, and I googled, and I searched. In the process, I found this AMAZING website called Women in the Scriptures that I highly recommend – check it out if you have a few minutes. This site really helped me formulate a good list.

In my research, I discovered a couple things.
1) My presumption that there were more applicable women to the YW values was correct but
2) There are SO MANY MORE women than I thought. Holy cannoli. I found that I could not narrow down my list to one-person-per-value. I cheated and made it two-people-per-value. Hope you don’t mind.

Now, after searching  f o r e v e r , I thought that I would share with you the results. Click any of the values listed below to read what I have found! (and don’t worry, Eve is there.)

FAITH
DIVINE NATURE
INDIVIDUAL WORTH
KNOWLEDGE
CHOICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY
GOOD WORKS
INTEGRITY
VIRTUE

 

 

 

Women of the Scriptures: Faith

Faith was tough to choose for, in that virtually every woman in the scriptures is an exemplar of faith. In the end, I settled on these strong women whose stories reflect a very intense trust in the Lord.

The Widow of Zarephath   1 Kings 17:9-16 

Like many women in the scriptures, (including many women in this list) the Widow of Zarephath goes unnamed, but this in no way diminishes her importance. She lived in a time of drought, a single mother with no means of supporting her family. One day, the food ran out and hope ran out with it. In this dire moment, she met a man – whom she recognized immediately as a holy man – who asked her for the unthinkable. He asked her to feed him first instead of her own son. Even with the promise of food thereafter, I am mesmerized by her ability to agree to his terms and use all of the ingredients she had left to make him a small cake. Through her faith in the prophet and promises of the Lord, despite not having any proof that food would arrive thereafter, she and her son did receive and endless supply of meal and oil, and thus survived the drought.

 

King Lamoni’s Wife   Alma 19

There are not a whole lot of women mentioned in the Book of Mormon, but the ones that we do have are incredible, and King Lamoni’s wife is one of my favorites. She lived in troubling times – her kingdom was divided against itself with rebellious men stealing her husband’s sheep on a regular basis. Then a mysterious, enemy Nephite prince arrives and starts working as a servant. Matters only get worse when one day after having an extended conversation with this Nephite, her husband the king dies. We see from a later account with Lamoni’s father that it would have been easy for her to execute the man supposedly responsible for Lamoni’s death. But instead she does something interesting – she listens to her servants’ side of the story. She seeks out information from those of lower status than her. Then she ultimately decides to confer with the possible murderer of her husband. When Ammon arrives, she does not accuse. She does not rail on him. She asks him for help. When Ammon tells her that her husband is not dead, she has no one to confirm his claims – but all the same she humbly submits to his advice and believes his words. “There [had] not been such great faith among all the people of the Nephites” (Alma 19:10). This queen stands as a wonderful example of the humility and grace of faith.

 

 

 

 

Fire of Discipleship

 

It has been a while, folks! Sorry about that. Been trying to get back into the swing of things after coming home from my mission. It has been a ride and a half, but now things are all settled and I am back at school.

My first week in my YSA ward, I was asked to give a talk on discipleship. And for the life of me, I could not think of any ideas. Eventually, after lots of searching and mulling things over, I had a tiny thought…

You remember in middle school, when you were obsessed with that one thing – that band, that book series, that TV show, that movie – and you had t-shirts, lavishly decorated binders that celebrated that thing you loved so much. Your life revolved around that thing – you were a fanatic, you were enthusiastic, and fired up. You would defend it to the death.

Things I Learned on My Mission

• Jesus is sassy.
• Inspiration from the Spirit is real – trust it will come and don’t over-think it.
• Faith brings miracles.
• Remember – people have their agency.
• How to properly eat an apple.
• No matter what you do as a missionary, even if it’s not your best, God uses every ounce of your effort for good.

Fired-Up

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Aragorn:  “The beacons. The beacons of Minas Tirith have been lit! Gondor calls for aid.”

Theoden: “And Rohan will answer!”

 

So, my mission president summoned all of the veteran missionary leaders to Lyon this week for a special Leadership Council. Every single missionary I go home with has been a Leader at some point in their mission, which doesn’t happen often, apparently. And all of us were gathered at this grand meeting for the sole purpose of figuring out what we could do to fire-up the missionaries.

Finding the Fire
Fire was a big part of the conference. There is a rising number of missionaries who have lost their spark and are struggling.  And with a large batch of new missionaries coming in, well, the president’s charge to us was to inspire others to rise up, and ignite the work again.  We all sat down in council and discussed it.

How do you inspire someone out of a slump?  What does it take to get someone from the doldrums on to high ground? From snuffed-out to burning bright?