Women and Priesthood Bearers

The lesson from Young Women Manual 1, lesson 16 is about Women and Priesthood Bearers. Recently, I had been asked if women in the church hold the priesthood and when they learned that we do not they asked about the roles the women in the church do play. I've been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for almost 14 years and have never felt that my role as a women is less significant or that a man's role is more important.

A few years ago, while my husband and I were embarking on a new business adventure, we attended a few specific classes. The instructor had advised that if we were going to be in business with a partner, whether that partner is our spouse or simply a business associate, that there were some rules to apply to help insure success. He counseled us to determine what roles each of us were going to play within the business. Determine those roles now, he suggested, while in the beginning of our business adventure, to insure that every important corner of the business will be covered, that nothing gets left behind, and that we are using our time wisely. He explained that without that understanding of each persons specific roles we could be wasting time by having both of us working on the same tasks and leaving important ones unfinished because they were never handled by one or the other. If we are both working on the same task, other tasks will suffer. Furthermore, it prevents confusion and lessons contention when each role and responsibility is planned in advance and each person abides by them. It is one thing if one partner or the other needs help with their task, but it is entirely another if the animal of our business had four front feet and no back feet because we didn't set forth and divide our responsibilities equally.

When I thought about this some more I realized that is exactly what Heavenly Father had done with Adam and Eve. As soon as He had muddled through the admissions that Adam and Eve had partaken of the forbidden fruit, he set forth the "business" plan by dividing and assigning the roles between a husband, wife, father and mother in order to insure that all important tasks within a marriage and a family were both accounted for and assigned. It isn't that one role is more important than another. They are all equally important. In a simplistic definition, a father is to preside and protect the family so the mother can nurture, teach and rear their children. If both parents are trying to play the father's role or if both parent's are trying to play the mother's role, then the children and family will suffer.

Here are the handouts for the lesson in jpg and pdf, as well as the chalkboard labels, which includes all of the suggested word strips and the question below. I tried to put all chalkboard labels into their own doc, but it was too large to convert to pdf. The previous service I have been using to share my pdfs was not cooperating with a password requirement for visitors of my docs that I couldn't find a way around. I'm trying out a new service for sharing the pdf, so if there is a problem - please let me know.

Here is the handout in PDF.
Here is the handout in jpg.

Chalkboard label - Supportive
Chalkboard label - Non-Supportive
Chalkboard Label - Question

Women and Priesthood Bearers