Posted by admin on Apr 5, 2013 in Profile |
I’m a nurse. A mother. A hiker. An advocate. I’ve served in the Church as a missionary, a Relief Society teacher and a Counselor in the Primary Presidency. I worked in Haiti after the earthquake and provided nursing care at the Astrodome in Houston after Hurricane Katrina.
One branch of my family came to the Utah Territory pushing handcarts, leaving their oldest son in a shallow grave on the prairie, and almost perishing in the Wyoming snow with the Martin Handcart Company. I’m of ‘Pioneer Stock.’
As a child, growing up in Utah and Idaho, I loved going to church. It didn’t bother me when I was 9 that I was the only girl in my Sunday School class that raised her hand when the teacher asked ‘Who’s going on a mission?’ I knew who I was and what I was capable of being: A child of divine Heavenly Parents. During my interview to be a missionary it did bother me a bit that I had to talk to my male Bishop about some sexual abuse that I experienced as a young teenager. As a missionary I didn’t fully understand why only the elders could be assistants to the President or why the sisters couldn’t be district and zone leaders.
As an adult I work as a registered nurse. I save people’s lives. I make life and death decisions advocating for my patients and their families almost every day. And yet in my church I am not to make any major decisions about how the church operates or proceeds because I am not in the priesthood hierarchy. The church is missing out on half of its talent and brain trust by passing over its women. It will be better for all when the church opens up the priesthood to all worthy members after all, as they have recently emphasized, “All are alike unto God, old and young, bond and free, male and female.”
