Hi, Beth, welcome to our show.

Hi, Savannah.

It's so fun to be here.

Isn't it so exciting?

It's nice.

And you are on the tail end of having a magical time in the archives for the Southern

Baptist Convention.

Magical time indeed.

I mean, it is really fun.

I remember when we were doing research for all the buried women, people were like, what are the archives

like? And I was like, envision hundreds, if not thousands of bankers boxes that are organized,

like alphabetically sometimes, sometimes by topic, that you just get to go through and rummage.

Right. And they have folders that have

letters and people's correspondence and sometimes saying things that they might not have really

wanted for people to be reading several decades later. Strangers from 2026. That's exactly right,

but it's all there. It is really magical. I remember one of my favorite things that I read in the archives was from a Southern Baptist missionary named Bertha Smith.

Yes. She has several boxes of her own. And what decade was she around? So she died in the late 80s or early 90s.

Yeah. So I think these must have been from like the 30s or 40s, maybe or 50s around there.

And I was able to find her journals.

And I read through all of her journals.

And it was just really moving to read someone's personal experience who was doing something that was really new for her time, especially being a woman in that era.

And so I really love the archives. And I'm so happy you've been able to spend time there.

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