Provide Relief by Seeking Out and Helping Those in Need

In Nauvoo, Illinois, Emma and Joseph Smith led efforts to help the hungry, homeless, and sick. 

Provide Relief by Seeking Out and Helping Those in Need

With the Relief Society organized under priesthood authority, the effort to help those building the Nauvoo Temple was even greater. From the hearts of these sisters flowed a great desire to engage in good works. They did so with wool and wagons, soap and sewing, food and finery, time and talents. Through their new society, the women of the Church acted according to their natural sympathies to build up the Lord’s Church.

Joseph said: “Don’t be limited in your views with regard to your neighbors’ virtues. . . . You must enlarge your souls toward others if you’d do like Jesus. . . . As you increase in innocence and virtue, as you increase in goodness, let your hearts expand—let them be enlarged towards others—you must be longsuffering and bear with the faults and errors of mankind. How precious are the souls of men!”

In another Relief Society meeting, he taught: “Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind.”

This is a gift I seek after and desire to refine: to be able to know how to, and then actually serve those around me, especially our family, and those who I’ve been given stewardship over. I feel impressions regarding acts of kindness or service, but then almost talk myself out of them, or react so slowly on them that I get distracted and/or forget them. I’m going to make a more concentrated effort to follow the promptings of the Spirit and to seek after opportunities to serve and lift.