In his first general conference address as President of the Quorum of the Twelve, in October 2015, President Nelson spoke directly to the sisters of the Church, reminding them of who they were in the Lord’s eyes and how crucial they were in the work of the Lord. For many women this message was a clarion call, even a game changer in the way a senior leader viewed their significance in the building of the kingdom of God.
In “A Plea to My Sisters,” He minced no words about what the Lord expected from His covenant daughters: “We need your impressions, your insights, and your inspiration. We need you to speak up and speak out in ward and stake councils,” he urged, continuing: “We need women who have a bedrock understanding of the doctrine of Christ and who will use that understanding to teach and help raise a sin resistant generation. We need women who can detect deception in all of its forms. . . we need women who have the courage and vision of Mother Eve.” And he declared, simply, “We brethren cannot duplicate your unique influence” (Nelson, “Plea to My Sisters”).
The impetus for what many women regarded as a landmark message to and about them was straightforward: “men provide for the present,” he said, “but women shape the future. I wanted to try to help the sisters of the Church understand how distinctive, how irreplaceable they are in the Lord’s work.”
In his address, President Nelson referred to a prophecy President Spencer W. Kimball had made thirty-nine years earlier that “much of the major growth that is coming to the Church in the last days will come because many of the good women of the world . . . will be drawn to the Church in large numbers. This will happen to the degree that the women of the Church reflect righteousness and articulateness in their lives and to the degree that the women of the Church are seen as distinct and different—in happy ways—from the women of the world. (Teaching: Spencer W. Kimball, 222-23). President Nelson then declared without reservation that women living today were the ones President Kimball foresaw—that they would be the ones to fulfill the prophecy.
No one who had known President Nelson through the years was the least bit surprised by his message. I never heard him refer to my grandmother as anything other than an angel mother,” grandson Stephen McKellar said (Church News/KSL Interview, January 11,2018), David Webster said that every time his father-in-law received a medical award or was asked why he chose medicine, ‘he would say, ‘because I couldn’t choose to be a mother.’ He believed that and he lived that way. His respect for women has shone through everything he’s done” (Church News/KSL Interview, January 10,2018). Russell M. Nelson, Insights From a Prophet’s Life (Salt Lake City, Deseret Book, 2019). 292-92
