20 Reasons why Latter-day Saint Women are the Toughest and Sweetest Women on the Planet

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About 8 months ago, I ran across a Buzzfeed post called “25 reasons why Mormon Men are the Toughest SOBs on the Planet.”  

In honor of the upcoming Mother's Day, I felt like Latter-day Saint Women deserve some props too, so I decided I’d write a version for them. 

20 Reasons why Latter-day Saint Women Are the Toughest and Sweetest Women on the Planet

1. Get your Young Women’s Medallion by age 18. It’s like Eagle Scout rank, but for girls.

2. Don’t swear when you’re mad.  And passive aggressiveness isn’t considered Christ-like.

3. Survive girl-gossip brutality without giving any.

4. Get revelation from God as to whether it is necessary to take an 18-month break from education to preach the gospel 24/7 without pay.

5. Earn the money to pay for that 18-month break.

6. Go to Chile for 18 months, learn Spanish in 6 weeks, and convince strangers to believe in Jesus.   Get rejected a thousand times a day.

Return home and be completely normal.

7. Keep the gorgeous guy interested without using sex or body-revealing attire until he’s desperate to put a ring on your finger.

8. Have 7 children under the ages of 12 and teach a church class full of other people’s teenage girls.

Teach lessons about why celestial marriage and being a mother is the Best. Thing.  Evarrrrrrrrrrr.

9. Be an on-call, stay-at-home mom 133 hours a week and then work 15 hours on a church calling.

10. Teach each of those 7 children the gospel before they can even talk.  Get them interested in ancient scriptural texts before they can even read.

11. Shop for and feed those 7 kids with a 10% lower budget than the Joneses. 

12. Drive a Mormon assault vehicle (van). Parallel-park that thing like a boss.

13. Whip up an extra full-course meal to donate to a needy family with only eight hours notice.

14. Cook that food storage like a Thanksgiving dinner.

15. Drown your sorrows with nothing more intoxicating than chocolate.

16. Making sure teenage sons earn eagle rank = Latter-day Saint mother earning eagle. 

17. Your great-great-grandmother gave birth to her babies under a wagon. In the snow.  And helped hitch the oxen the next day.

18. Your great-great-grandmother also had to share her husband with four other wives, all while the rest of the nation thought she was a slave and a whore.

19. Handle questions about your religion like a champ.

20. Marry off your oldest child while pregnant with your youngest child.

Conclusion?    Latter-day Saint Woman = Grace under fire

How Three Nephite Stories Came to Be Told

At the risk of being somewhat sensational...

 You might be curious to know how and when Three Nephite stories started circulating.  You’ll find the answer in this masters thesis paper by Marilynne Rich Smith called “A Mirror Brought byTruth: A Study and Comparison of the Folklore of the Wandering Jew and the Folklore of the Three Nephites.”  

You can read pages 182-242 of the paper specifically about Three Nephite stories.  In it we find that sermons by church leaders in 1850s, beginning with Parley P. Pratt, started the saints thinking about how they might encounter the Three Nephites.  Parley P. Pratt took passages of scripture from the Book of Mormon about how the Three Nephties could show themselves to whomever they wished and taught that they might be a means of giving miraculous help to the Saints in time of need.  Orson Pratt (an apostle at the time) called the members’ attention to the scripture verses about the Three Nephites and preached that the Three Nephites could come among the Saints once the Saints were prepared and worthy to receive them. (This meant an encounter with the Three Nephites would be considered something desirable and an informal sign of sanctity.) Orson Pratt, in underlining the importance of preaching the gospel, preached that the Three Nephites would prepare the wild tribes of Lamanites around them to receive the gospel.  John W. Taylor preached that the Three Nephites would be sent where the missionaries could not yet go, to prepare the minds of peoples to receive the gospel.   

In short, for over 50 years since 1855, members were reminded of the Three Nephites from time to time by talks (sometimes in conference) given by church leaders (and sometimes apostles).  These statements encouraged the members to look for visits by the Three Nephites, to look for ways that they were given miraculous help by them, and to look for ways that the Indians and other peoples were being prepared to hear the gospel by agents outside the church. The effect was that visits and help received that could not be explained by earthly means were attributed to the Three Nephites. 

One of the things I like about this thesis paper is that it shares some of the stories along with sources.  Incidents of folklore are pointed out, along with stories with actual sources, and analysis of patterns and what they mean for the Mormon people follows. Some of the stories seem a little..odd, but others are genuinely inspiring.

Overall, I like what these stories generally communicate about our beliefs about these mysterious men.  They convey that:

--We believe help comes from God, not just by comfort, intelligence, and help from mortals, but also from extra-mortal beings.

--We believe the promises of God can and do give mortals power over death, pain, and sorrow.

--We believe that God and his angelic messengers engage with the practical parts of our lives and guide others to our church.

 Today if you start telling Three Nephite stories, you are likely to get eye rolls, but the principle of looking for the hand of the Lord acting in our lives (in large and small ways) still stands.  President Eyring counseled us to write in our journals all we notice about the Lord's workings in our lives.

 Are the Three Nephites out there?  I believe they are; but the church puts little to no emphasis on that kind of thing because it can get too much in the way of doing the work of salvation.  Salvation is more lasting than sensation.  The Three Nephites will do their part; we still have to do ours.