Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, it's time we are to start. Apparently the person who is to introduce the program has been able to be unable to get here on time.

And so they've asked me to introduce the program, which I'm very glad to do.

The program is on gifts of the spirit, women's sphere. And the principal paper talk will be delivered by Linda Newell, co-author of the forthcoming biography of Emma Smith.

Linda lives in Salt Lake City. The new family are performing valiantly in connection with this symposium. Since next hour her husband Jack Newell is delivering paper in one of the other sessions.

Linda has been a dedicated and devoted researcher in connection with the biography and other topics connected with Mormon history.

And I'm sure you will very much enjoy her paper today. She's one of those who not only knows how to write well, but how to speak well also.

Our comments are by Irene Bates and Michael Quinn. They're listed on the program in reverse order in which they'll appear.

Irene Bates lives in Pacific Palisades, California, which is famous as the place of residence of Ronnie Reagan and formerly of Juan Bordy.

We live there ourselves one year and find it to be a wonderful community in which to live.

Irene Bates has written for Sunstone and for other periodicals and has been very active in the Relief Society in Southern California.

You will enjoy her charming English accent just as she enjoys the charming Utah accent of Linda Newell.

Michael Quinn, an indefaticable researcher and writer, is an associate professor of history at BYU, has written also for a number of important professional journals and has a couple of books that are now about to be published.

He probably knows more about early Mormon history than any other person. I'm very glad to introduce this program. Hopefully, considering that we have almost an hour and a half, we'll have a chance for responses and comments and questions from the audience as well.

So it's with great pleasure that I introduce Linda Newell, who will be followed by Irene Bates and Michael Quinn. Linda?

Thank you, Leonard. I hope, too, there will be time for questions, but what Leonard didn't say is that I also talk a lot.

So we'll see the paper is somewhat long, but this is why we're giving a little bit extra time, I believe.

Actually, the name of the paper in your program is a little bit misleading. This paper that I'm giving today, more appropriately, could be called a gift given, a gift taken, washing and anointing and blessing the sick among Mormon women.

It's taken from a larger essay, which will appear in a series of essays on Mormon women in a year or so.

And that essay deals more completely with all of the spiritual gifts, and I have pulled from that, particularly the washing and anointing practice as it relates to the blessing of the sick among Mormon women.

For members of the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the term washing and anointing is synonymous with the initiatory ordinances of the temple endowment.

Joseph Smith first introduced the practice to male members of the LDS Church in the Kirtland Temple. He included women when he gave the endowment and ceiling ordinances to his select quorum of the anointed in Navu.

By the time the Mormons had established a refuge in the Great Basin, washing and anointing had also been combined with healing.

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