{"id":45,"date":"2008-07-01T20:26:45","date_gmt":"2008-07-02T02:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ldswomenofgod.com\/blog\/?p=45"},"modified":"2012-03-23T20:16:07","modified_gmt":"2012-03-24T02:16:07","slug":"young-women-and-relief-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reliefsocietywomen.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/01\/young-women-and-relief-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Women and Relief Society"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are losing our Young Women.\u00a0 So many of them want nothing to do with the \u201cold lady\u201d club (Relief Society is well known to be full of gray haired, old ladies).\u00a0 Well, my hair isn\u2019t completely gray, thank you very much, and I still feel pretty young\u2026on most days.\u00a0 But Young Women should know that growing up isn\u2019t so bad, in fact it\u2019s pretty darn fantastic.<\/p>\n<p>Someone made the perfect description of Young Women vs Relief Society.\u00a0 Young Women are catered to for six years; their leaders do everything FOR THEM, they must be entertained, they must be coddled, lessons and activities must be brought down to their level of acceptance.\u00a0 We bend over backwards to serve the Young Women.\u00a0 Then suddenly in Relief Society everyone is expected to serve the world and forget themselves.\u00a0 That\u2019s serious gear-shifting!<\/p>\n<p>I have some questions that have nagged at me for a while now:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Why don\u2019t we demand more from our Young Women?\u00a0 So what if they hate to babysit, we all survived!\u00a0 I\u2019m a proponent of bribery because it works, but not at the cost of lowering standards, expectations and dumbing down our lessons.<\/li>\n<li>Why do we wait so long to really teach the Young Women how to serve unselfishly?\u00a0 Painting each other\u2019s fingernails is not service.\u00a0 Having a secret sister is not learning how to think about others.\u00a0 Making cute nothings for our girls is not raising their awareness.<\/li>\n<li>If we are serious about including our Young Women into Relief Society, why are they merely invited to Relief Society functions (like it\u2019s a sweet little mother\/daughter event). \u00a0Why aren\u2019t all meetings inclusive, and mandatory, of all women, just like for the Priesthood men and boys?\u00a0\u00a0 For example, why is there a General Young Women meeting in the Spring and a General Relief Society Meeting in the Fall?\u00a0 Why don\u2019t we meet together as a sisterhood?\u00a0 And for that matter, why don\u2019t we have Stake Women\u2019s meetings, like the men have Stake Priesthood meetings?\u00a0 What\u2019s wrong with being spiritually motivated and uplifted together on a regular basis?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sorry, I just shook myself off my soapbox.\u00a0 I\u2019m all right now.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t wonder why there\u2019s a problem, we have caused it for ourselves.<br \/>\nAnd just to end with a positive note.\u00a0 I have met some wonderful young women and they are incorporating themselves beautifully and actively into the Relief Society.\u00a0 It does happen and these beautiful young women are strong and capable.\u00a0 Their testimonies sparkle and because of their eagerness to serve they are fulfilling a need in our organization and in our church.\u00a0 What a blessing it is to work together:\u00a0 steadfast and immoveable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are losing our Young Women.\u00a0 So many of them want nothing to do with the \u201cold lady\u201d club (Relief Society is well known to be full of gray haired, old ladies).\u00a0 Well, my hair isn\u2019t completely gray, thank you very much, and I still feel pretty young\u2026on most days.\u00a0 But Young Women should know [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[484,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relief-society-challenge-ideas","category-relief-societyyoung-women"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Young Women and Relief Society &#8211; 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