Emily Utt - Prayer: A Small and Simple Thing

Virginia H. Pearce gave her powerful talk “Prayer: A Small and Simple Thing” at BYU Women’s Conference in April 2018. Join hosts Shalyn Back and Katie Perez as they discuss how this discourse remains relevant today along with special guest Emily Utt of the Church History Department. Full Discourse https://www.churchhistorianspress.org/at-the-pulpit/part-4/chapter-50 From childhood, Virginia Hinckley Pearce (b. 1945) found that her parents wove prayer and church service into the fabric of their everyday lives. She remembers that when she or one of her siblings was particularly worried over a situation, her father, Gordon B. Hinckley, would say, “Just say your prayers and go to bed. Get up in the morning; it’ll be clearer.” Pearce has applied that good advice; her own restatement of it is, “Just say your prayers, go to bed, and when you get up in the morning, go back to work.” Gathering for family prayer, going to church, and working on church assignments felt like a natural part of her family life, not something on a list she had to complete. She saw that church work for her mother, Marjorie Pay Hinckley, was “part of who she was,” and that she always seemed energized by doing that work, not pressured or annoyed.