APRIL RELIEF SOCIETY MEETING

Wednesday, April 7th 2010, at 6:30 we will be making temple pictures, you can view what they look like at: lovetoseethetemple.com The prices on the website will most likely be different, we will have those out soon. We are doing sign ups now and then we will be collecting the money so that we can get them ordered within the next week or so. We are so excited about these, and hope that you can join us.

As we think about temples and the Relief Society, we all have heard stories about how in Nauvoo, the sisters raised money to help the building of the temple. Some sisters made work clothes and brought food to the men working to build the temple. One such woman was Sarah M Kimball.

Born December 29, 1818, in Phelps, New York, to Oliver and Lydia Dibble Granger, Sarah joined the Church and moved with her family to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1833 at age fifteen.

Perhaps most significant in her early adulthood was her formation of the Ladies' Society of Nauvoo, the antecedent of the Relief Society. Married at age twenty-one to Hiram Kimball, a wealthy Nauvoo merchant who later converted to the Church, she sought to help build the kingdom of God, which the Saints then saw as embodied in Nauvoo, especially in the temple. She and her seamstress, a Miss (Margaret?) Cook, determined to sew shirts for the temple workmen and subsequently invited other women to join forces with them in a ladies' society. When they approached Joseph Smith for his approval of the society's Constitution, written by Eliza R. Snow, he stated that although the Constitution was excellent, the Lord wanted the women organized "under the priesthood after the pattern of the priesthood." According to Sarah Kimball's recollection, Joseph continued, "The Church was never perfectly organized until the women were thus organized" (Kimball, p. 51).