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The following was excerpted from LDS Living. To read the full article, click here. 

In a letter to her husband, Joseph, Emma Hale Smith wrote, “I desire the Spirit of God to know and understand myself, that I might be able to overcome whatever of tradition or nature that would not tend to my exaltation in the eternal worlds. I desire a fruitful, active mind, that I may be able to comprehend the designs of God, when revealed through His servants without doubting.”

This faithful woman sacrificed much to help bring forth the gospel as she served as the first president of the Relief Society and sacrificed to hold the Church and her family together while her husband was beaten and imprisoned for his faith. Among one of her most prevalent teachings and desires was for the women of the Church to be united in purpose.

Here are some wonderful insights we can learn about this brave woman from At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women.

1. Women have an extraordinary work to do.

[March 17, 1842]

President Emma Smith remarked we are going to do something extraordinary. When a boat is stuck on the rapids with a multitude of Mormons on board we shall consider that a loud call for relief.1 We expect extraordinary occasions and pressing calls. . . .

President E. Smith then arose and proceeded to make appropriate remarks on the object of the society, its duties to others, also its relative duties to each other, viz., to seek out and relieve the distressed, that each member should be ambitious to do good, that the members should deal frankly with each other, to watch over the morals and be very careful of the character and reputation of the members of the institution, etc.

2. We need to be unified, especially in serving others.

To read the full article, click here.