For LDS women, 'sky's the limit'
Massive project called 'largest humanitarian event the Church has ever been involved with in one setting'
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Amazing things happen when you gather Latter-day Saint women together, Wendy Watson, chair of the 1999 Women's Conference at BYU told the Church News.
And one of the most amazing things about this year's Women's Conference was the "Worldwide Sisterhood Through Service" event, held April 28. Some 5,000 women who attended the annual conference, held April 29-30 in Provo, Utah, gathered in the Wilkinson Center or J. Reuben Clark Law School building to sew, sort, compile and crochet hygiene kits and other items for needy families throughout the world. Sister Watson related that BYU Pres. Merrill J. Bateman, who is also a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, called the event the "largest humanitarian event the Church has ever been involved with in one setting."The service project, with the original goal of 1,999 service hours in commemoration of the last year of the 1900s, eventually reached more than 6,955 service hours. The majority of the work was done the first evening, but service stations in the Garden Court of the Wilkinson Center remained in operation throughout the conference for women to donate time between sessions. By the time the conference ended, some 20,000 women had helped make, compile or sort 31,000 hygiene kits, 2,500 newborn kits, 2,500 education kits, 2,500 school bags, 31,000 sewing kits, 372,000 buttons, 407 quilts and 1,200 surgical drapes. In addition, women took home materials to crochet 2,000 bandages for leprosy patients. Sister Watson explained that these items are being sent to the LDS Humanitarian Services Center in Salt Lake City for distribution to people in need.
Expressing her delight in the success of the service, Sister Watson noted the original goal of 1,999 hours was accomplished in the first one hour and 18 minutes of work April 28. "You put Latter-day Saint women together with a purpose and focus and the sky's the limit," she exclaimed. "They came, they gave, and they made a huge difference."
She was especially thrilled at the response the first evening. Despite a rain storm, "they came in droves, and they stayed," she added.
Sister Watson quipped that the women seemed to have had such a good time that conference officials joked about canceling a session on depression "due to lack of interest."
