The Friday Four, Part 138

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For the past several months, my friend Lauren Ard and I have been working on a project called General Conference Sisters. With the help of a few other volunteers, we read through every single talk given by a woman in LDS General Conference (more than 300 since 1975 when Barbara B. Smith, the Relief Society General President at the time, started speaking in the General Welfare Session - read more about the history here), pulled out quotes and categorized them by topic.

We'd both been frustrated in our efforts to include women's voices in our callings (she as an Activity Days leader and I as Young Women president) and wanted to create a resource to make it easier to find relevant quotes for lessons, talks, and personal edification. I think we've done that.

Every six months we'll cull through the five or so talks given by women (including those in the General Women's Session) and add more quotes to the database.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback, and especially how you've been able to use General Conference Sisters to increase women's voices.

(If you'd like to read more about our experiences during this process, check out our guest post, cross-posted at both Feminist Mormon Housewives and Young Mormon Feminists.)

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This is the best General Conference prep video I've seen since "How General Authorities Eat Their Reese's" one a few years back. Enjoy!!

~3~

Lots of cool stuff has happened recently: FaVS covered the Pope's visit to Philadelphia; the "blood moon"; the lack of the end-of-the-world apocalypse; the AH-MA-ZING food at the 80th annual Greek Festival at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church (even if they were sold out of the incredible cabbage rolls on the first day); my very first Sukkot celebration with friends; and yet another oral surgery for me (whee!).

~4~

And there's lots of cool stuff coming up: LDS General Conference this weekend with possibly three new apostles called (I have my favorites I'm pulling for, but we'll see who gets tapped); Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia speaking Sunday evening at Gonzaga; another awesome Coffee Talk with SpokaneFaVS (and it's gonna be packed!); my trip with SpokaneFaVS to present at the Parliament of the World's Religions (though I'm devastated that the Dalai Lama had to cancel due to illness).

And all that's just in the next three weeks! I'm tired just reading that list! Can't wait to tell y'all all about this cool stuff!