I’m Stephanie. I’ve been LDS my entire life. I’ve served in various positions in the Church as long as I can remember: from Young Women’s class presidencies to Relief Society pianist and Primary secretary. I love this church and the gospel. I grew up moving all over the western United States while my dad worked in forestry and my mom taught piano and built a career as a psychologist. My dad was often gone for long stretches of time with his work and it led to my mom, and her four children, needing to be very self-sufficient. She taught us how to use tools, how to build things, how to landscape and how to stand up for ourselves.
My mom was also my first example of feminism, though she doesn’t call herself a feminist. When she saw how sad I was about not having a cool camping trip for our last year at Girls Camp (compared to the Boy Scouts’ 50-mile hike) she lobbied the stake leaders to change that. We ended up riding horses into the Sierras and then camping for several days. It was one of the greatest experiences of my adolescence because it taught me to identify a problem, find, and then push for a solution. She’s been doing that inside the Church as a faithful member her whole life. I cannot be less than that after I know how deeply her efforts touched me for good.
When I started my journey about the ordination of women I was only comfortable saying, “I support those sisters but I don’t want it for me.” That’s still true, I don’t want ordination for myself. I want ordination for women because I’ve come to believe firmly that it’s the way God intended things to be. I’m not clear on the details. I don’t know how it would look, but I have faith in the Lord’s servants at the head of our Church to ask those questions of Him and provide the answers to me. I believe that this is part of the ongoing restoration of the fulness of the gospel. I believe that God is no respecter of persons when it comes to His power and authority to act in His name. I believe women should be ordained.