LDS Leader to Foster 'Global Sisterhood'

As the head of her church's Relief Society, Bonnie Parkin's job is to build community among Mormon women worldwide.

BY: Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune

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Now she and her husband have changed roles -- he does much of the laundry, vacuuming and doesn't hesitate to pick up a roasted chicken for dinner, while her day is filled with faxes, files and itineraries.

"I know what it means to have a husband gone for many hours a week, days on end. I know how it feels to be alone with young children with no one to talk to," Parkin told The Salt Lake Tribune this week. "And I have crooked teeth because my family didn't have enough money for braces."

She was born with a "believing heart," Parkin says, that was fostered in a small Herriman ward by women teachers and leaders.

When she was 10 years old, Parkin's mother was hospitalized in Salt Lake City for three months. She remembers the family on its knees, begging God for healing.

"That had not always been done in our home," she recalls. "But my father needed a mother for his children and a wife for himself."

It was a "tender time," she recalls, "a gift from God."

What will weave the different strands of Mormon women together is not culture or circumstance, she says, but their common devotion to Jesus Christ.

It helps that Parkin chose two longtime friends to serve as her counselors.

Kathleen Hughes, first counselor, had a career in education for 14 years. After earning a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in special education, she worked as personnel director, assistant superintendent and director of special education for the Provo School District.

One of Hughes' favorite authors is the sorrowful English novelist Thomas Hardy, whose works are filled with tragic characters and circumstances.

As a young girl, Hughes was mesmerized by this scripture: "Are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend on the same being, even God, for the substance that we have?"

She has never forgotten, Hughes says, the feeling that "you can never pay the Lord back."

Anne Pingree, second counselor, and her husband, George Pingree, have lived in several states and countries, including three years in Nigeria. It was as a newlywed in France that Pingree faced one of her greatest challenges -- her mother died of cancer.

"I was sad and disappointed and I didn't think it was fair that this was happening to her or to us," Pingree says.

But later, Pingree had a strong feeling she would see her mother again. In that moment, she says, "what I thought I believed, I knew I believed."

That conviction has helped Pingree empathize with women in trouble everywhere. And it has shaped how these three women see the Relief Society.

What they want to accomplish is for all Mormon women to feel loved by God. They want Mormon women to stop being judged for working or staying at home, being single, divorced or childless. They don't want women to feel alienated and alone.

Indeed, they hope to create an atmosphere where everyone feels valued and supported and bolstered in their lives and faith. "That's what should happen on a Sunday morning," Parkin says. "We all need it. Every one of us."