Connections
https://youtu.be/Lsv47ZuUDzQ
On Getting Lost: Learning to Nurture the Small and Tender Things
The most beautiful thing in the sterile white classrooms where I teach are the students themselves, full of vibrancy and noise and mess, enthusiastic in both their excitement and confusion, bringing color into the room in the same way that a flung open window brings in light and sound and gently wafting breezes to tease…
Big Ocean Women: Sending Waves Across the World
Ann Takasaki, executive board member of Big Ocean Women, shared her passion and vision for our work in an interview on Spanish Fork City Television last month. Among the life-changing efforts of our organization are virtual and face-to-face cottage meetings of like-minded women, seeking generative solutions to poverty and abuse, educating women and girls on…
Currents February 2021
As I read through the articles submitted by our talented authors this month I was pleased to see how each of these women took the same tenet, “We are each unique and worthy of respect,” and filtered it through her life experience and perspective to share with the world a gift of light. This happens…
If I Could Have a Do-Over
What if do-overs were something we were really allowed in our life? Sometimes we are given the opportunity to correct a wrong, but we don’t ever get the option to go back in time and handle things differently. But if we did, I know exactly what one of my first do-overs would be. As a…
The African Girl Child
Betty Abah is the 15th of 30 children. She is the only one from her family to get an education, and it has led her back to her home in Lagos, Nigeria. Betty is the CEO of CEE-HOPE, an NGO that focuses on the rights and welfare of vulnerable children. She is also a journalist,…
Jewel Tones
The hit song “Diamond” by Martina McBride and Keith Urban was written to honor women exclaiming they are, “priceless as they come.” Throughout history, women have often been referred to in poetry, song, literature, and terms of endearment as precious stones. Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth, and his other works comparing women to…
Oasis Housing: A Place to Blossom and Grow
Oasis Housing began with two women from the Utah State Hospital moving into Sharon Evan’s newly remodeled basement in February of 2017. Sharon shared her vision then of providing not just housing for those with mental illness, but helping them grow and blossom. Four years later, that growth is steady and gratifying. Like any gardening…
Vive la Difference ~ All-in Respect
It’s a new month, and there is space and time for a fresh start. So, how do we want to create improvements and shape this new blank page? It’s up to us to choose how our time is spent. Before we begin our experience together, I first and foremost want you to know what an…
Meet Big Ocean: Kalisa Jenson
Kalisa Jenson is a force for good who draws on the examples of faith and service from her family as she is engaged in her work as a wife, a mother, a student, and the secretary of the Cottage Committee for Big Ocean Women. Kalisa grew up in a family with two brothers and two…