Open Your Gift

Do you have a copy of this book yet? If you don't have one, get one from a member of your ward's Relief Society presidency TODAY! If you have a copy have you read it yet?  I just finished mine last week and I LOVED it!  I can not say enough good things about it.  It was absolutely incredible.  What a wonderful gift it is from our loving  Heavenly Father to his daughters.  This book tells about the purpose of Relief Society and what are responsibilites are as women in the Relief Society Organization.  It also answers the questions:  What does it mean to be a woman of God?  What does God expect of me?  What is my divine purpose and mission as a woman? 


LDS. org says this about the book:  "The history of Relief Society teaches the divine identity and infinite worth of daughters of God. It is a Spirit-filled story of strong, faithful, purposeful women who have served with little public recognition.   
"As you study this history you will see that our Heavenly Father knows His daughters, that He loves them, that He trusts them with sacred responsibilities, and that He guides them as they fulfill those responsibilities."


This book is filled with so many great stories of really exemplary women, and it contains wonderful quotes on motherhood and womanhood from the prophets, apostles, and General Relief Society presidents.  I was so thrilled  to see that my all time favorite quote on womanhood was included.  It is:

“The world's greatest champion of woman and womanhood is Jesus the Christ.”

—James E. Talmage, in Daughters in My Kingdom, page 3

I am teaching a lesson next week in Relief Society on this book, and as I was looking at the church's website, I came across this wonderful video about the book.  

Don't you think this book must be incredibly important for us as women to read and to study if it was made to be  given to every single woman in the church?  

Click here to read the book online.

Click here to order a copy

Think of Me As One Who Is Truly Happy

I told Tabetha the other night that finishing a really good book is like having your best friend move away, and that is the way that I felt when I finished reading  Letters of a Woman Homesteader, by Elinore Pruitt Stewart.  

Elinore Pruitt Stewart

Letters of a Woman Homesteader is the real letters written by Elinore Stewart to her previous employer, about her life in Wyoming as a homesteader.  
Elinore moved to Wyoming in 1909 with her baby daughter after her husband died.  She took a position as house keeper for  Mr. Stewart who is a cattle rancher, and as as you can tell by the last name she ends up marrying Mr. Stewart.   Her letters cover about 4 1/2 years of her life as she arrives in Wyoming and begins to settle into a new life there.  
Elinore had a such a way with describing everything, especially people.  She makes you feel like you know her friends and that her friends are your friends as well.  Elinore was kind to all her neighbors and they all took such good care of each other.  One time she and two of her neighbors took the time to make a 12 year old girl feel special by making her some new clothes.  Her mother and father were dead and she lived with her grandparents.  They were incredibly poor and when the women gave the 12 year old the new clothes,  she hugged them to her and cried and cried.
My favorite thing about this book though, is Elinore's upbeat attitude about everything.  She was just so happy to be alive and she found joy all around her, even in the smallest things.
Elinor writes,

"When you think of me, you must think of me as one who is truly happy.  It is true, I want a great many things I haven't got, but I don't want them enough to be discontented and not enjoy the many blessings that are mine.  I have my home among the blue mountains, my healthy, well-formed children, my clean, honest husband, my kind, gentle milk cows, my garden which I make myself.  I have loads and loads of flowers which I tend myself.
There are lots of chickens, turkeys, and pigs which are my own special care.  I have some slow old gentle horses and an old wagon.  I can load up the kiddies and go where I please any time.  I have the best, kindest neighbors and I have my dear absent friends.  Do you wonder I am so happy?  When I think of it all, I wonder how I can crowd all my joy in to one short life."

When the book was over I was left with the feeling that the world was a little better because Elinore Stewart was here and I was better as well for having know her even if it was just a little from her letters.

To Get Letters of a Woman Homesteader free on your Kindle click here.

No Book Discussions This Week

I'm not leading any book discussions this week and that means two things around here:  1.  A little time to blog, and 2.  I get to read whatever I want this week.  We went to Anchorage over the weekend and I spent the whole drive home reading.  It was awesome!  So this is what I am reading:

The Book of Mormon 
As a ward we are reading the Book of Mormon together in 100 days.  I am happy to say that I am on schedule and I just finished day 49.  Yah! Half way there!  I have never read it this quickly before.  I am learning so much and my testimony is growing by leaps and bounds. It's awesome!

To request your free copy click HERE. 

The Prophet Joseph Smith said: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”

The Real Thomas Jefferson
I got this book a few months back.  I thought since I am doing Thomas Jefferson Education with my children I should know about Thomas Jefferson, right?  The book is great, and he really was an incrediable man.

"He studied not only the law, but also languages, physics, agiculture, mathematics, philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, zoology, botany, religion, politics, history, literature, rhetoric, and virtually every other subject imaginable--always recording quotations and observations in his personal notebooks." 
"But he is most remembered most for his profound influence on man's istitutions of self-government.  His thinking, his writing, and virtually his entire adult life were dedicated to the overthrow of tyranny and the protection of individual freedom." 

A Patriot's History of the United States

Got this in Anchorage when I went to Target.  (Yes, Target was awesome!  The anchorage area now has 3, when am I going to get one here?  Just wondering!)  I just started this and I am very excited to read it.  Glen Beck has recomended it over and over again on his show.  I'm excited to read about how great America is for once, because evern though we have our problems we are still the greatest country on this earth. 

"The authors of A Patriot's History think that an honest evaluation of the history of the United States must begin and end with the recognition that, compared to any other nation, America's past is a bright and shining light.  America was, and is, the city on the hill, the fountain of hope, the beacon of liberty."