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A Sunday night fireside at the University of Utah LDS Institute building felt like a reunion of sorts — a Young Women leader reuniting with her girls who are now women, and she never having met many of them personally.

Sister Elaine Dalton, who served as general president of the Young Women for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2008-13, spoke to Relief Society sisters from the Bonneville and the Pioneer YSA Stakes, many of them of teenage young women during her 11 years total as a member of the Young Women General Presidency.

“As I’m sitting here, I’m feeling like this is a divinely orchestrated moment in time for me because I feel like Heavenly Father is allowing me to see you, and there are so many of you, the young women that I love…to see you now after X amount of years,” Sister Dalton said. “But as I look out and I see your faces and I see the light that you radiate, which, I’m not kidding you, is absolute tangible light that is in your eyes and in your faces. You just are filled with light.

“And as I see that, I feel like Heavenly Father has done another one of those tender mercies just to allow me to see some of the fruits of the things he allowed us to work on and do for you to prepare you for such a time as this.

“And I have to say right now that he is so pleased with you, and so am I. You are everything, you embody and you exemplify everything I prayed you would be every single day. You are everything we prayed for, and I am so so grateful to you for taking advantage of the things that were there to prepare you.”

To read the full article on the Deseret News, click here