Instruct and Edify through Homemaking Meetings

“When I got married,” says Consolacion Pilobello of Pasay City, Philippines, “I didn’t know how to cook, and I was too superstitious to go to a doctor and get prenatal care. Our first baby died.”

She begins to cry. “If only I had been a member of the Church then, we could have saved that baby!”

After baptism, she learned in Relief Society about water purification, sanitation, nutrition, first aid, and immunizations. “I learned how to take care of my children, myself, and my family,” she says. Her next seven babies were healthy. She is now ward homemaking leader—teaching what she has learned. (See Tambuli, September 1991, pages 11–12.)

Sister Pilobello is one of many who have benefited from the Relief Society’s homemaking program, with its goal of helping sisters to meet daily challenges and to live the gospel in the home.

In what ways have homemaking activities blessed your life?

Strengthening Individuals and Families

In 1831 the Lord counseled: “When ye are assembled together ye shall instruct and edify each other” (D&C 43:8). To edify means to instruct, improve, or enlighten. Through covenants made with our Heavenly Father, we are linked in the sisterhood of Relief Society, where we build character, confidence, skills, faith, homes, and families.

Women worldwide describe practical and spiritual blessings that come from homemaking activities:

One singles ward refers to this time as “enrichment meeting” because they are learning and doing things together.

In Auckland, New Zealand, sisters are learning to help children who have learning disabilities and to support the divorced, the widowed, the abused, and the terminally ill.

On her recent trip to Africa, Relief Society general president Elaine Jack found the leaders using homemaking meetings to help members learn to save money at home.

How can the homemaking program strengthen you and your family?

Putting Gospel Principles into Action

Homemaking meetings can allow women to serve others. One group in Argentina sewed clothing for a sister in their ward, making it possible for her to go on a mission.

Veronica Dallender of Pretoria, South Africa, learned to make knitted lap rugs in homemaking meeting. When they gave them to the aged, Veronica said, “One blind woman asked me to tell her all the colours in her rug and had me run her fingers over it again and again. That day I came away counting my blessings!”

In Grants Pass, Oregon, where Relief Society women made eighty-seven quilts for underprivileged people, the stake Relief Society president, Louise Champneys, explained, “One of the interesting by-products was that suddenly there was a real purpose to the things sisters were doing, with a goal in sight.”

We invite you to realize the full potential of homemaking meetings to bless lives as you apply principles of the gospel through learning, sharing, doing, and rendering service.

How can we help foster a spirit of service and sisterhood?

Illustrated by Lori Anderson