Hi, I’m Eve.
I grew up in small wards and branches of West Texas and rural Oklahoma with my parents and seven younger siblings. I spent 13 years in Young Single Adult Wards, and served in Relief Society Presidencies and as a Service Committee Co-chair for many of those years. I am a newlywed, working as a purchaser for a cancer research lab in Arizona, and have been in recovery for an eating disorder for several years. I love to crochet gifts for the many babies being born to my friends and coworkers.
I long for Zion: a continual state of living in charity, abundance, and unity of heart, where all are alike unto God; bond and free, black and white, male and female. Where there is no “manner of -ites; but [we are] all in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God” (4 Ne 1:17). The imagery of the City of Enoch and the Americas after Christ visited is what I hope for in my home, in my community, in my church.
I often wonder how we as a people have progressed toward Zion in the past 3 decades of my life. How have we collectively propelled ourselves toward Christ? Have there been any revolutions of opening of our hearts to convey His enduring love to those around us? How have we as a church progressed toward seeing and treating each member as a unique being of intrinsic, infinite worth? Does our culture encourage each person to seek a deep, raw, individually sacred spiritual growth, and honor that path?
Priesthood expansion to all worthy male members in 1978 was a huge, wonderful, essential step toward Zion. Two months before that expansion, President Kimball said in General Conference, “The length of time required ‘to accomplish all things pertaining to Zion’ is strictly up to us and how we live, for creating Zion ‘commences in the heart of each person’ (Journal of Discourses, 9:283.)” and “Zion is not things of the lower, but of the higher order, things that exalt the mind and sanctify the heart.” (May Ensign 1978)
I believe we need a big shift in our paradigm, as a people of God, to push us closer to Zion. I believe that actively seeking revelation from God, through our prophets and in our individual lives, regarding the ordination and equality of women in our church will bring us to that necessary shift. I believe that we can and will find Zion, and I believe that ordaining women will be essential to reaching this state.