LDS women’s leader: Get ready for Christ’s return by becoming ‘pure vessels’

Provo • To prepare for Jesus Christ’s return, a top Latter-day Saint women’s leader counseled this week, believers should nurture virtue and purity to help them overcome life’s challenges.

Speaking on Thursday at Brigham Young University’s Education Week, Kristin M. Yee, second counselor in the presidency of the worldwide women’s Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, asked her Marriott Center audience to consider what it means to be “pure vessels in the hands of the Lord.”

Besides her high-level church position, Yee also manages the faith’s animation team and previously worked as an artist and producer at Disney Interactive Studios for 13 years. Her artistic background gives her a distinct metaphorical framework.

“When I paint, there are certain colors that only come with layers of paint and glazes built upon each other,” Yee explained. “You can’t get certain colors straight out of a tube. They come with layers, or, in other words, time and experience.”

Similarly, she said, some of the “most beautiful parts of our lives” can only be formed through layers of life’s challenges and heartaches. Yee emphasized that her own trials have allowed her to develop a relationship with God in a way that she couldn’t have otherwise.

Her artistic practice has also taught her about the need for balance. As a painter, she often has difficulty stepping away from a canvas because she sees so much that needs attention — “some hue value, shape or texture that needs to be adjusted or refined.”

”I realized early on that I needed to literally turn my painting to face the wall before I could go to sleep at night,” Yee recounted. “...The Lord can help us to know how to find rest and to know when to turn it to the wall. … Let us be flexible with our to-do list and open to that which the Lord may bring our way each day.”

Yee also highlighted the importance of receiving as well as giving ministering service.

”It is not always easy to let others minister to us. We are usually more comfortable ministering to others,” she acknowledged. “As we strive to more readily welcome and invite ministering efforts of others, we are actually helping them to keep their covenants. … Allowing others to serve me is a way that I can serve them.”

Yee’s calling as a senior leader in the global faith of 17.5 million members has necessitated her learning how to request and welcome ministering efforts from members of her own congregation. Her ministering brothers, she said, had been “lifesavers many times” in situations ranging from illness to household emergencies.

Another component to preparing for the Second Coming, she said, is cultivating virtue by “looking to the Savior.”

Quoting church President Russell M. Nelson’s recent teachings about virtue’s power to drive away depressing, anxious or troublesome thoughts, Yee taught that virtue can also help us to “avoid unrighteous judgment of others” and “look upon each other’s hearts.”

“May we consider those things taught to us today by [God’s] spirit as you strive to be pure vessels in his hands in preparation for his Second Coming,” she concluded, “and let us find occasion to praise the Lord often for his goodness and mercy.”