Serving Arizona Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
August – September 2020 • Vol 46 • No 4 • Est 1975
Image by Jorge C. Occo, courtesy of Church Media
Photo by Elise Curtis
At the SALT Gathering, women learn to embrace each other and themselves as they are spiritually fed.
SALT Gathering Helps Women Connect, Reflect By Merry Gordon
“Y
e are the salt of the earth,” reads Matthew 5:13—but a few years ago, professional photographer and mother of 4 Elise Curtis felt like she had “lost her savour,” so to speak. “A huge message that is out in the world is that if you are a believer, you’re doing something wrong,” Curtis said. “I needed to be reminded what the Spirit felt like.” Out of the Utah native’s spiritual discomfort came a period of reconciliation and renewal from which the SALT Gathering, a retreat for Latter-day Saint women, was born.
Pitched as an “EFY for women,” Curtis wanted a spiritual safe place not just for women in the Church, but specifically for women who were “choosing to stay.” “Every day you have to be converted,” Curtis says. She had grown up with EFY, served a mission, married in the temple—and still found herself struggling with her testimony, caught up in a news and social media cycle that was “depleting and draining her.” “I learned that conversion isn’t a one-time thing. Continued on pg. 3
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