From a modest beginning has grown the largest and most effective organization of its kind in all the world, President Gordon B. Hinckley declared in a video shown during the General Relief Society Meeting.
"Who can gauge the miraculous effects upon the lives of millions of women whose knowledge has been increased, whose vision has been extended, whose lives have been broadened and whose understanding of the things of God has been enriched by reason of countless lessons effectively taught and learned in meetings of the Relief Society?"
President Hinckley made these comments while narrating the film shown during the annual meeting in the Conference Center Sept. 24. In a video presentation depicting the organization of the first Relief Society by Joseph Smith on March 17, 1842, and a subsequent meeting on April 28, 1842, President Hinckley spoke of the role of Relief Society in the restored Church.
"Who can measure the joy that has come into the lives of these women as they have mingled together, socializing in the atmosphere of the ward or branch, enriching the lives of one another through companionships that have been sweet and treasured?" the Church president continued.
"Who, even in the wildest stretch of imagination, can fathom the uncountable acts of charity that have been performed, the food that has been put on barren tables, the faith that has been nurtured in desperate hours of illness, the wounds that have been bound up, the pains that have been ameliorated by loving hands and quiet and reassuring words, the comfort that has been extended in times of death and consequent loneliness?"
In his concluding remarks, President Hinckley declared: "God bless the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. May the spirit of love, which has motivated its members for a century and a half, continue to grow and be felt over the world. May their works of charity touch for good the lives of uncounted numbers wherever they find expression. And may light and understanding, learning and knowledge, and eternal truth grace the lives of generations of women yet to come, throughout the nations of the earth, because of this singular and divinely established institution.
"May they recognize — one and all — their great responsibility and blessing to be 'instruments in the hands of God to bring about this great work' " (Alma 26:3).
