The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
President Elaine L. Jack, who served as the 12th general president of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1990 to 1997, died Tuesday, June 10, 2025. She was 97.
In an interview when she was first sustained as a general officer in 1987, Sister Jack recalled being a young girl and standing on a dirt road near her home in Cardston, Alberta, Canada. Gazing at the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains in the distance, she wondered, “Will I ever travel to the other side of those mountains?” (Church News, June 13, 1987, p. 5).
As the wife of a surgeon, and then as a counselor in the Young Women general presidency starting in 1987 and as Relief Society general president starting in 1990, Sister Jack lived and served in many states and traveled extensively throughout the world, experiencing and appreciating a diversity of cultures.
She recognized that the Church is “full of diverse, interesting, faithful women,” she said. But she also recognized the tremendous unity that comes through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“Relief Society is glorious because we join as sisters who come unto Christ. In all our roles, as sisters, wives, mothers, daughters, friends, roommates, teachers, leaders and on and on, we strive to come to the Savior. I know how rich our Relief Society sisterhood can be because of what each of us brings to it. Think about how unified we feel and yet how individual we are” (“Charity: How We Treat Each Other,” BYU devotional, March 10, 1992).
Latter-day Saint women everywhere — from the Philippines to Japan, from England to New Zealand, and from Paris to St. Petersburg — are part of a grand whole, she taught.
“We need each other to make our sisterhood complete. When we reach out to clasp the hands of our sisters, we reach to every continent, for we are of every nation. We are bonded as we try to understand what the Lord has to say to us, what He will make of us. We speak in different tongues, yet we are a family who can still be of one heart. We work, play, give birth, nurture, dream dreams; we cry, pray, laugh, sometimes clap for joy and find that mortality teaches us our need for our Savior, Jesus Christ,” Sister Jack said (Relief Society Sesquicentennial Satellite Broadcast, “Charity Never Faileth,” March 14, 1992).
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
