150. President Camille Johnson: Shining God’s Light in Our Circle of Influence
We're thrilled to welcome President Camille N. Johnson, Relief Society General President, to the Magnify podcast. From President Johnson’s powerful testimony and example of Christlike discipleship we learn ways to let the light of our personal conversion shine above the darkness in the world. President Johnson shares the daily acts of devotion that strengthen her testimony, practices we can emulate to put Christ at the center of our lives. From her unique perspective as the president of a worldwide organization, we learn more about the power we have as covenant-keeping women to individually make a tremendous difference for good as we minister one-by-one.
President Johnson was sustained as the 18th Relief Society General President for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 2, 2022. She also served as the Primary General President. She and her husband, Douglas R. Johnson, served as a mission leaders in Arequipa, Peru. They are the parents of three children and eight grandchildren. President Johnson graduated from the University of Utah in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in English followed by a law degree from the University of Utah in 1989. She practiced law for nearly 30 years.
Links:
Read or watch President Johnson's devotional address: Righteous Stewards—Disciples of Jesus Christ
Transcript:
Sheri Dew: Welcome to the Magnify Podcast. My name is Sheri Dew, and I've been asked to serve as a guest host for this episode. I am delighted to welcome President Camille Johnson, the General President of the Relief Society, to the podcast. President, we just feel like we won the lottery that you said that you could spend a few minutes with us today. Thank you so much.
President Johnson: I'm tickled to be here with you, Sheri. You know that. You know my dear friend. I just, I love any chance that we have to talk.
Sheri Dew: Me too. Just a word of introduction about President Johnson, though she really needs no introduction. But prior to her calling as a Relief Society General President, President Johnson served as the Primary General President; that is a very unique duo. With her husband, Douglas, she served as a mission leader in Odaquipa, Peru. They're the parents of three children and eight grandchildren. She graduated from the University of Utah's law school and practiced law for 30 years.
Now, what we're doing today in particular, there's so many questions I would love to ask you, I've got a list as long as my arm, but my instructions are to focus a lot of our conversation about a really important talk you gave earlier this year. May of 2025, the name of the talk that you gave at the Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults was entitled, “Righteous Stewards—Disciples of Jesus Christ.”
Now, developing a message for a worldwide audience is never easy. And in my experience, there's usually a backstory. There's usually something that led you to say, this is what I want to focus on, this is why I think it'simportant, this is how the talk developed. Is there a backstory to this message?
President Johnson: Yeah, a little bit of one. This was a talk that was given directly to the young adults of the Church. And sometimes we think of the young adults as those that are just single, but it includes our young adults who are married as well. And with an eye towards a message that would really spark their interest and perhaps invigorate them to action, I was thinking a little bit about the stewardship of the earth because I know a lot of our young people have great interest in preserving and protecting the environment and doing things to enhance the longevity of the earth.
And it was when I was contemplating that, that I thought that, that's got to be key, because I know that's a message that will resonate with young people. They have an interest in that. And connecting stewardship, that is stewardship to the earth, for the stewardship that we have, not just for the earth, but for all the resources found there, including the people on the earth. So, we have stewardship for one another, and that's really how the message developed, with an eye towards my audience, hoping that that was something that would spark their interest and that I could extend some invitations to them that would feel relevant to them at their stage of life.
Sheri Dew: So that explains really, or at least it gives a little more clarification about a simple statement that you made, because near the beginning, you actually define stewardship, and the way you defined it was, “Carefully and responsibly managing those things entrusted to our care.” That's a great sentence. That's a really concise way to think about stewardship. I loved it when I read that. But what it made me wonder, the thought it triggered was, okay, what has stewardship look like for you in your life? Like, what made you start to think about your individual, personal areas of responsibility, your stewardships? Can you give us a sense of that?
President Johnson: Well, what and who has and have been entrusted to your care? And all of that comes fromour Heavenly Father. He sends us with this divine mission to help one another, to lift one another, and to provide for one another. And I guess my personal journey isn't really unique to anyone else's, but there have been people placed in my life that I think, yes, I have a stewardship to help lift and love and serve thesepeople, of course, members of my family.
Sheri Dew: Of course, but probably others too.
President Johnson: But probably others too. And sometimes you have stewardship for someone who just enters your life for a moment. And you've had that, where you've just been a steward of His light and His love for a moment in the life of someone that you encounter briefly and that perhaps you'll never see again. But I think He's entrusted us with the care of one another.
And it made me think about Matthew 25 and the three parables there. Of course, President Nelson had just given his talk about how we can have covenant confidence and confidence before the Lord now, and it included charity and virtue. And he said, we need to prepare now. We need to have confidence before the Lord now. And that preparation led me to the Matthew 25 preparation and stewardship parables. And I found that they were stewardship parables.
The first, the story of the five, or the ten virgins, five that were wise and five that were foolish, was really a parable about stewardship for our own conversion. And the second one, I think, had to do with those talents with which we have been blessed, and are we faithful and profitable stewards with respect to the gifts and talents that He has given us? Are we magnifying them and letting our light shine? And the last really, when he talks about those that are found on my right hand, are those that care for the sick, those that feed the hungry, and this is our stewardship for others.
So that, I used Matthew 25 in those three parables because they felt like a natural fit for teaching the connection between discipleship, a message that President Nelson had just shared with us about being prepared for His Second Coming and being confident before Him now. And also, that discipleship, connecting discipleship and stewardship, I thought it worked with respect to that, the three parables taught in Matthew 25. So, I used those as a springboard.
Sheri Dew: So, that’s powerful. Let’s, let me build on that for a second and maybe zero in on the parable of the 10 virgins, which of course we’ve all read many times. So just a little backstory on this, when COVID hit,and here in Salt Lake City was followed just days later by an earthquake. I was disappointed in myself with how scared I was. And I kept saying to myself, I mean, when you're in the house by yourself and the earth starts to shake, it's kind of like your brain stops working and you think, what do I do first? Where do I go? What should I do? And I kept saying to myself, “If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear.” Sheri, you should not be, why are you so stirred up about all of this?’
That leads to this question. For years, as I've read the parable, or seen it performed or heard it spoken of, I've asked myself, how do you know if your personal lamp is full of enough oil? Because during the COVID period and the earthquake and everything else, I thought, I must not have enough faith. I must not be grounded enough. So how do you, how would you, and if you were sitting knee to knee with a young adult age couple, or a group of girls or a group of young men, how would you tell them, this is how you know if you've got enough oil in your lamp.
President Johnson: Yeah. Well, you know when you don't. And it’s hard to know how much oil you have to have in order to sustain the challenges that are inevitably coming. So, my answer is: you can’t have enough.
And it just really comes down to those daily acts of devotion that we engage in. And for me, that includes prayer. I'm trying to pray, not just in my usual fashion, morning and night on my knees. I always giggle about this because those are not my best times of day. I mean, I get out of bed and I get on my knees to pray, and yet I'm sleepy. And when I pray before I climb back into bed, I'm sleepy all over again.
So, I've been trying to find moments to pray during the day, sometimes while I'm in the car. I'm praying out loud more often. I'm trying to, I have a good habit of prayer morning and night on my knees, but I'm trying to amplify that to make sure that my oil is sufficient and make sure that my connection and my communication with my Heavenly Father through my Savior is consistent and it's fresh and it's real. I'm talking to Them about the things that matter to me today, not just the generic things that I always throw into a prayer.
My daily act of devotion includes time in the scriptures. And I always try to find time for the Book of Mormon because I know that the promises that have been extended to us by prophets are real, that there's power in the Book of Mormon. President Russell M. Nelson said that, and that we'll make better decisions every day if we're in the Book of Mormon every day. So, I've employed that.
One of my other daily acts of devotion that has helped me keep my lamp, I hope full enough, right, is to listen to the words of living prophets. So, you’ve heard me tell about my daily practice of the devotional with President Russell M. Nelson, I did that for nearly three years. Every single morning, I started my day with him. And I listened to the 114 general conference talks that he gave over and over and over again. So that prophetic voice was not just in my head, but it was in my heart.
On the day of his funeral, I listened, and this is going to even make me cry. I listened one more time to “Spiritual Treasures.” You know why.
Sheri Dew: Classic. An absolute classic.
President Johnson: And he spoke it directly to the women. And he invited us to do things that were life-changing for me to understand better what it means to be blessed by God's power. So, on the morning of the funeral, I listened again to “Spiritual Treasures.” And I got up the next morning on Wednesday and started listening to the words of President Dalin H. Oaks. And I'm nearly finished now.
And as you do that, you have the opportunity to recognize prophetic voice and the themes that are of most importance. And that's been a blessing for me and has helped me keep my lamp full.
Now, those are examples. Participation in the ordinances of the temple, worshiping there, not just—participating isn't enough—worshiping in the House of the Lord. There have been blessings promised to us by prophets, seers and revelators when we're there. So that's part of the, perhaps not a daily act of devotion for me, but certainly part of my filling my lamp with the oil of conversion.
Expressing testimony is a way that I try to keep my lamp full. You know, when you say it out loud, it rings true in your heart, doesn't it? So, all of these things we do over and over again, with the hope and expectation that there's enough oil in there for when these trials and the challenges come, and they will inevitably come.
I don't know if I'll ever be satisfied and know, okay, I've got enough, and that's the point. If you're burning the oil in your lamp, the oil is always being diminished. So, you can't say, well, I had enough in my lamp in the moment that I had to light it. Because the moment you light it, the oil is being diminished. You've got to continually replenish it. And so that's why we say we do these things over and over and over again. I haven't come up with anything new.
Sheri Dew: Because those are the things.
President Johnson: Those are the things. Those are the things. Putting Jesus Christ at the center of our lives, that's it.
Sheri Dew: As you're answering this, I think the question I should have been asking myself is, are you keeping your lamp full?
President Johnson: Yeah.
Sheri Dew: Are you keeping your lamp full? And yeah, that doesn't probably mean that there aren't some days that are scary. Some days probably just are until you get on your knees and ask for help and plead for strength. And that, in its very act, is an act of faith. Yes. Asking for help, asking for direction, but probably that's the better way to think of it, is, am I keeping the lamp full?
Now, that leads to another thought, another question. I want to read a paragraph from your message. This is such a good one. I just thought, yes, I agree with every word you say here. You said, “I understand it's easy to get trapped in negativity, caught up in the constant barrage of trouble being reported in the world. Armed conflict, contentious politics, repression, natural disasters, human suffering. It practically takes my breath away. You may feel powerless to affect long–standing solutions.
With confidence, I declare that blessed with the strength and power of God available to you, as you make and keep covenants with Him, you can counter the negative and shine light in every corner of darkness.”
That's a great statement, and that's a great promise. So, if you were sitting knee -to knee with a small group of young adults, what would you tell them to do actually that they could affect or things they could put into practice to put negativity behind them and to radiate more light? Like, how do they do this? Because I bet they want to. We all want to, don't we?
President Johnson: Absolutely.
Sheri Dew: But we are consumed. We're consumed with things that are negative and one position fighting against another. We just see it everywhere. What would you tell them to do, how to do it?
President Johnson: Well, the light always wins. We know that. Light always wins out over dark. And so, consider your sphere of influence. Am I in the workplace? Am I at home with little children? Am I going to a PTA meeting? Am I going to a city council meeting? Am I active on social media? What's my sphere of influence? And then consider what can I do in that sphere of influence?
If I go to a city council meeting, I'm going to practice being a good listener because I know somebody's going to stand up there and say something that's contrary to what I believe to be right. But I'm going to practice the art of being a good listener and then practice the art of effective communication in conveying my message. I'll be respectful but not contentious. And so I practice that in that sphere of influence.
What difference will that make? One city council meeting. What difference can I make? People model good behavior. Other people look at that and they say, I'm going to stand up to the microphone next and make a comment. I want to model what I just saw because it was respectful and it was persuasive.
I'm not suggesting everybody go to social media, but if you're going to go to social media and you're going to be out there, let your messages be uplifting and full of light and Christ-centered and Christ-focused. Elder Gary Stevenson, in the last conference, talked about when we’re preparing to present any kind of message, and he was talking specifically about social media, but I'd say any message, is it a message that builds bridges? And if it is great, and if it's not, stop and think about it.
President Nelson invited us to be peacemakers. President Oaks has done the same thing. We avoid contention. It doesn't mean that we're not actively pursuing what we think is right. We have to speak up and speakout as disciples of Jesus Christ, and yet we can do it in the way that the Savior did with meekness, with gentle effort and persuasion, and not vilifying those that have opinions that are different from ours.
So, we're going to model good behavior. We're going to be meek in our presentation of our positions. We want to avoid the contention, but that doesn't mean that we just avoid, right? Staying home from the city council meeting isn't the answer. Somebody's got to be the voice for good and reason, and we can be, and we must be.
Sheri Dew: So it's the combination of being meek and persuasive.
President Johnson: Yeah.
Sheri Dew: They're not mutually exclusive.
President Johnson: Exactly.
Sheri Dew: Yeah, that's a beautiful combination, really, when you think about it. Okay, another question that your talk prompted for me and it prompted so many. You talked about taking charge of your personal conversion. Can you give us an example from your own life about what that looks like? How do you take charge of your personal conversion? President Nelson's spoken about that too. Yeah. I think President Oaks has too. So how do you do it? How have you done it?
President Johnson: Well, you can't rest on someone else's testimony, can you? Those five wise virgins, I think sometimes they get a bad rap because they didn’t share their oil with their friends, right? And we say, why didn’t they just pour a little bit out, it would have been the kind, Christlike gesture for them to pour a little oil out. I can’t give you my conversion, I can’t give you my testimony. But what did they do? In the statue that’sdepicted right outside of my Relief Society building where I'm working that I love so much.
Sheri Dew: Which is stunning.
President Johnson: It’s stunning. Their arms are outstretched. Their lamps are up, and they're letting their light shine. So that's the point. I will continue to let my light shine. Even while I can't give you the oil of my conversion, I'll let the light of my conversion shine. So yes, I'll stay in someone else's light until I have that, my lamp full of personal conversion.
I think I had a moment when we were serving as mission leaders. Where I had to really dig deep to make sure that I wasn't resting on someone else's testimony. Because I had 190 missionaries, we had, and many of them were coming to me with medical challenges and, you know, just the things that missionaries have, emotional health challenges. And I felt discouraged some days too.
So, here I was trying to put on my pom -poms every day and tell them how great it was, and they could do it when I was thinking, I wonder if this is really great and I wonder if I can do it myself. And I actually remember a moment when I was, I took a walk one morning when we were there in Arequipa and I just thought, I have got to dig so deep to be sure that I'm converted to the things that I'm teaching to my missionaries and the pep talks that I’m giving them, that I really believe it.
And I’ll tell you where I drew the greatest strength, and that was from The Book of Mormon. When I dug deep, and I really had to fill that lamp for myself with the oil of conversion, I found it in the Book of Mormon. And those promises that President Nelson made about the blessings associated with being in The Book of Mormon, I know that they're true. And because I found it there, I was able to communicate that with my missionaries.
So, I think if you were to go back and ask, there were 552 of them over the course of those three years, what did Hermana Johnson teach us? It was, be in The Book of Mormon every single day. They knew that I lovedthem, and they knew my personal conversion, particularly that The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ.
I didn’t speak Spanish, and so going to Arequipa was a bit of a challenge to me, but I committed to reading The Book of Mormon, each year while I was there, in Spanish. And I frankly didn’t understand much of what I was reading, but that’s an interesting exercise because what I discovered is that there was power being in the words of The Book of Mormon every single day, even when I didn't understand all of them.
So sometimes it's less about understanding the depth and gravity of the scriptural message and more about keeping the commandments and keeping the counsel of a prophet of God who said be in The Book of Mormon every single day. So I was, and I was blessed for that.
Sheri Dew: Could I just add a second witness to that and say that sometimes when I'm asked about my testimony, and this sounds, I don't want this to sound formulaic or simplistic, but it is Book of Mormon and Temple.
President Johnson: Yeah.
Sheri Dew: Those are the things that have saved me. And it's not like every moment, or at least for me, it's not like every trip to the temple is some amazing experience. And it's not like every day when I'm reading The Book of Mormon, it's some amazing experience. But sometimes it is. And they’re amazing moments.
President Johnson: And don’t you think that consistency is part of it? It’s just about committing to be in The Book of Mormon every single day for me. And some days are better than others. And some days I get farther than others. But I just think, no, a prophet promised that I’d make better decisions, and I’d be able to resist temptation, and I'd be able to draw upon God's power if I was in The Book of Mormon every day. That's good enough for me, so I'll give it my best effort.
But I don't always get something really dramatic from my reading. It's not like every answer's found there. But I feel like I'm inviting the Spirit to be part of my life, and I'm following prophetic direction, and I've been blessed for that.
Sheri Dew: And then there are the days when, this morning, I’m in the war chapters. And sometimes I think, okay, I know the story, I’ve read about all the battles. But there was one verse that kind of leaped out. I thought, have I noticed that verse before? That’s interesting. It was one verse this morning. It wasn’t a bolt of lightning, it was just a, I ought to think about that more, I think that’s gonna help me going forward.
President Johnson: And you know what, Sheri? You started your day in The Book of Mormon. I do better when I do, and I don't always.
Sheri Dew: Me too.
President Johnson: Because my schedule isn't conducive to getting up that early sometimes, but I do better when I start with it.
Sheri Dew: I do too.
President Johnson: At the beginning of the day, it sets the tone for the day. Rather than turning on, turning to the news first, we were talking about how do we dispel the darkness with light? Open up The Book of Mormon to start with. Listen to the words of living prophets to start with. Start your day there and it'll come to you.
How can I dispel the darkness of the day? I'm not saying that we shouldn't know what's happening in the news. We must know what's happening in the world because we have a stewardship over all of our brothers and sisters who occupy the earth with us. So we've got to know. But when you start with that, we start with the dark and the negative, there's gloom that sometimes drags with us all during the day. So start with the positive. Start with the words of living prophets. Start with the scriptures. And then I think it comes to us. The spirit will prompt us, how can you share light to dispel that darkness as the day progresses? In your sphere of influence, right?
Sheri Dew: Right.
President Johnson: Sometimes we think I have to do something really grand. And perhaps my example of speaking in a city council meeting wasn't appropriate. I'm talking about you can be a source of light in your workplace, at the gym, in your home, wherever. Consider your spheres of influence and how you can be that light and that example.
Sheri Dew: Love it. And I especially love the, going back to what you said a few minutes ago, that light always wins over the dark. Light is stronger than the dark. It just is. So as you travel, one of the things as a general officer that you have the privilege of doing is traveling fairly extensively. You've seen a lot of men and women and young adult men and young adult women around the world. Can you give us an example or two of something that has someone, some example that has stood out for you where you said, there's an example exactly what I'm talking about. The light is overcoming the dark. It's winning over the dark because that young woman or that young man is doing this. Do any examples come to mind of seeing that in action and seeing it played out?
President Johnson: We see it everywhere. Good young people choosing to put love of God and love of neighbor first before love of self a little bit, right? At a time in our lives where sometimes we're looking inward, I see them looking outward, looking for opportunities to serve.
But as you were talking, I thought about an experience I had recently. She was a youngish woman. I don't know if she'd fall in the young adult category. But I was in the grocery store parking lot. And she came up to me to tell me that her daughter had recently been involved in a rollover accident. And I thought, oh, she's here because she wants me to put my arms around her and minister to her. She's hurt and she's distressed.
But she finished her sentiment by saying, and I know everything's going to be fine because I put my trust in Jesus Christ. And I know that He's taking care of things for me. And I know there's angels around about me. And then she told me that she'd lost a daughter to cancer. And so this woman had had a life of challenges, and she had a daughter in a hospital after this rollover accident. She came up to me in the parking lot, not because she needed me to reassure her, but to reassure me that she knew everything was going to be fine.
Sheri Dew: That's beautiful.
President Johnson: Because she had confidence in the grand plan of happiness that would allow her to see her deceased daughter again, the Atonement of Jesus Christ that would make everything right as pain and, you know, grief and sorrow have come her way. It was really quite remarkable. My expectation about why she was approaching me was turned upside down. She was there to communicate to me her faith and confidence in the Lord. She was disseminating light. And she could have disseminated gloom and darkness because she had a lot. She had some she had issues happening in her life, hard things that she was working through, and yet she was disseminating light. And it you know it took her five minutes to come and share that with me.
Sheri Dew: I think that's beautiful and it feels like the very definition of a tender mercy.
President Johnson: Oh! For me! The tender mercy was mine.
Sheri Dew: That's beautiful. So, several times President, we've talked about this parable of the five and the ten virgins, the five wise virgins. And you've referenced the statue outside your window. Just tell us a little bit about how that came to be, because it's stunning.
President Johnson: It is stunning. There is statuary now on Temple Square, and more coming as the Square will open up, with an emphasis on the Savior, of course, so that our friends that come and visit Temple Square will see yes, in fact, we are Christians and Jesus Christ is the center of all we do. But when it came time to pick a piece for the location just outside of the Relief Society building, and there in the shadow of the Salt Lake Temple, the Presiding Bishopric invited the Relief Society presidency to review five or six maquettes these were examples of what the artists, the sculptors, were proposing be in that particular space. And this piece, that had been prepared by Ben Hammond, really spoke to us. It turned out to be more magnificent and stunning than we ever imagined.
Ben Hammond used women of multi-ethnic backgrounds as his models. And so, you see Asian women and Polynesian women and African women represented in the faces of those who are representing the Five Wise Virgins. We were so pleased with that, that that was our recommendation, which the Presiding Bishopric then took to the First Presidency who made the final selection.
But it is a beautiful representation of the work of Relief Society, because those women are holding their lamps high, they're facing the temple, they're letting their light shine, and they're helping and lifting and serving one another.
Sheri Dew: With the risk that this might sound like a shameless plug, if you haven't been down to see this, and if you're traveling to Salt Lake or live in the vicinity, that's worth a trip to Temple Square. And it's easy to see right now. And it really is just very thought-provoking and truly stunning. I don't know another word that describes it better.
President, one of your areas of stewardship today is the global initiative for women and children. What can you tell us that would update us on what you're seeing happen around the world because of this reallyremarkable initiative. Talk about spreading light and replacing darkness with light. This initiative is doing it, is it not?
President Johnson: The global initiative to improve the well-being of women and children, we've seen remarkable progress. So, in 2024, and then again in 2025, we announced contributions from the Church, totaling more than $100 million, to focus in on efforts in 12 high-need countries. And the 12 high-need countries are interesting because they're not, not all of them are places where we have a big member population, which tells you something about what motivates us.
So, they are Nepal, we have fewer than 200 members there, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Philippines, Sierra Leone, the D.R. Congo, Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Kenya, Senegal, and Mali.
And the Church, our humanitarian services are working with eight NGOs that have global experience and expertise and that we have confidence in, we've worked with them before. And rather than saying we're going to give each of you some money, we organized those eight NGOs into four consortia. And they're working together on projects to try to lift and build women and children.
So, to set the stage, these NGOs are typically competing with each other for dollars. And with US aid drying up, there's a particularly aggressive competition for dollars. Rather than competing with each other, we brought them all to the table and said, you’re good at vitamins, you’re good a clean water, we need you to work together. Because it’s not enough to give vitamins or immunizations if you don’t have clean water, all these things work together. So, we brought them to the table, organized them as consortia, and asked them to work together.
And I was part of a meeting just in May of 2025 when we brought them all back together again. And the testimonials that they offered about this being a new way to look at their work. It was innovative. They thought it was going to change the profile of how NGOs go about doing their work worldwide.
But just by way of example, in 2024 and into 2025, we had set a goal of addressing the needs of 12 million children. And we actually got to 21 million women and children who received vitamins. So, we nearly doubled our goal in that first year, and it's because those dollars were used in an exponential way. It wasn't one plus one is two. It was one plus one is three because people were cooperating.
So, the church has been innovative in its approach to this global humanitarian initiative. And importantly, we're not just addressing the needs of members. As I pointed out, some of those countries are places where we don't have member populations, but we are living the first and second great commandments. We love God, and so we love our neighbors. But it's been beautiful to see the impact in the lives of women andchildren.
I did have a chance to go to Nepal this year and see one of these projects that had been promoted through this consortia there. And the example is a woman who had the ability to start a chicken farm. So, think about what having some chickens does for this woman. She was able to get the chickens at a lower cost than she'd otherwise be able to purchase them and had chicken coops. Now she has a protein source for her own family. Now they're not just eating rice. They're eating eggs, protein, every single day. And through these NGOs working together, they created a market for the eggs. So now she has enough eggs for her own family, but because she's got this chicken farm going, she has eggs to go to market every day. Well, what does that do? Now she can pay for her children to go to school.
You see, it's about giving women opportunity. Global progress starts with women and children because when you bless a woman, you've blessed her whole family. You bless that community and ultimately you bless the nation. And when you invest in a child, we're investing in the future. So, it's been exciting to see all of these efforts come together and the Church really leading and being innovative in the way that these NGOs are doing their work all over the world.
Sheri Dew: And helping them work together.
President Johnson: Exactly, which was kind of a unique thing.
Sheri Dew: That's interesting. So, President, one of the things that you're emphasizing here is really the tremendous influence that women have. And when they're strengthened a little bit and given some new opportunity, their influence just explodes.
President Johnson: Yeah. And we do this one by one. So, that’s an interesting thing too. I mean we do this on a global scale, but really the work is done just the way the Savior did, one-by-one. One of the things that has rolled out is member-focused child nutrition screenings. So, these are happening in stakes, with community resources being employed. So, we’re bringing in doctors and nurses from community health centers and we’ll screen children for malnutrition, measuring their upper arm circumference, weighing and getting their height. And then parents are given informational resources about either connecting with community health care services or specifics about how they need to feed the child, or giving them ready-to-use therapeutic food. So, when they go home, they're armed with information and with food, and then we're doing follow-up screenings. So, this is happening through the Relief Society. Relief Societies all over the world are engaging in this.
But I just got a beautiful story, received a beautiful story from Ghana, where a mother had come in with her child for one of these member-focused child nutrition screenings. This was just in October of 2025. And one of the children that was screened that day was a little girl that was just over eight months old, but her screening results showed severe deviations from what they would have expected and a critical nutrition concern.Her physical appearance supported that. She was tiny, and so they did a re-screening, and the second screening showed she was severely malnutritioned.
In that particular area, this is in Ghana, they had a stake nutrition specialist who was actually a former pediatric nurse, and they brought her in for some consultation with the mother. She learned from the mother that this little eight-month-old refused to eat any kind of solid food. She was surviving only on the little bit of breast milk that this mother was producing, and every time the mother would try to feed her anything else, this little baby would throw it up. She would vomit both through her mouth and through her nostrils. So, recognizing the seriousness of the condition then, this former pediatric nurse, who was our stake nutrition specialist,a member of Relief Society, she suspected a possible cleft palate or an opening, you know, in the upper palate of the mouth. And so, she examined the baby's mouth. And sure enough, there was a visible hole in that little girl's upper palate, a condition that her mother had been completely unaware of.
So, this was detected during one of those member-focused child nutrition screenings. And because the stake nutrition specialist had expertise as a pediatric nurse, she was able to get this child in within the week for surgery through a hospital that was known for voluntary surgical interventions for children with cleft palettes. And so, she was able to get a free appointment and get the surgery consultation, and the surgery was scheduled. I just think that's evidence of the divine guidance that's happening. I'm not talking about divine guidance here on the global headquarters scale. I'm talking about the divine guidance that our sisters can expect when they're participating in these child nutrition screenings and participating in the service that they're doing wherever there's need.
I hope that whoever's listening to my voice recognizes it doesn't matter where you live, there are malnourished children in your neighborhood and there are women who can't read in your neighborhood. So as a priority, we're focusing on the global, the global well-being of women and children, but you don't have to go to Ghana and you don't have to go to Nepal to find women and children who need care and attention. Who are on the right hand of the Savior? Those that feed the hungry, those that clothe those that are naked, that's who we ought to be. And we can look for opportunities right in our own communities. We don't have to go far afield to find people who are in need. So all of us are part of the global initiative to lift and improve the wellbeing of women and children when we help and serve wherever we are.
Sheri Dew: And think about that little child whose life now is totally changed.
President Johnson: Totally changed. Severe malnutrition.
Sheri Dew: Yeah, totally changed just because of the efforts of one person who had the skill to know what to look for, found it, and then solve the problem.
President Johnson: Organized through the Relief Society and the stake. And think about what that does for the mother and her confidence. Because as a mother, she's wondering, what am I doing wrong? Why isn't this baby growing? Why isn't my baby developing and progressing as she should? Now she's got confidence as she moves forward in her role as a mother. And certainly now she's been empowered with knowledge and information as well. When someone says to her, my baby's not eating, she's going to say, let's look inside the mouth, right? I mean, she knows something now she wouldn't otherwise know. And women are like this. We share what we know.
Sheri Dew: Yeah, we do. It's a virtuous cycle that you just described.
President Johnson: It's a beautiful virtuous cycle. Yeah.
Sheri Dew: You've been the Relief Society General President for three years.
President Johnson: Yes.
Sheri Dew: What do you know today that you didn't know three years ago? I know that probably is a podcast by itself.
President Johnson: Yeah.
Sheri Dew: But what do you know today? And would you roll into that, and you've been speaking about it all along, but what do you know about the opportunities that we have as covenant daughters of God to make a difference?
President Johnson: Well, in his last address to the women of the Church, “The Influence of Women,” President Nelson invited us to change the world. See, he makes my cry, doesn’t he? I cry when I talk about him.
And he addressed the women three times as covenant women, covenant daughters of God. And I think that is so critical that in order for us to make that change, to change lives and to change the world—and when we say change them, what we mean is bring them to Jesus Christ, help them to recognize Him as their Savior. The way we change the world is by making and keeping covenants, because he consistently referred to us as covenant women, covenant daughters of God.
I know that when we make and keep covenants, particularly those that we promise in the House of the Lord, we can be blessed by God's healing, strengthening power. It's been capacity enhancing for me. I don't know a better way to describe it.
I was, for all intents and purposes, from an outsider's perspective looking in, ill -prepared to be the General Relief Society president. I didn't have a resume that qualified me for that. But I do have a willingness to put my hand in the Lord’s and trust Him. And when I strive, not perfectly, but when I strive to keep the promises I’ve made to Him, the covenants that I’ve made, I have been blessed with an increased capacity to do what He needs me to do, and with an increased sensitivity to the spirit.
And I'm recognizing the diversity of ways in which the spirit communicates with me and to me. Not always the same way and it doesn't always feel warm and fuzzy like a warm comforter and blanket. More often than not, the spirit prompts me with a push or a poke because I need to speak up or I need to do something, or a thought comes to me and I need to express it, not because I have the answers, but because, and I'vecertainly learned this, that as we express the impressions that come to us, we'll get to where the Lord wants us to be, but it requires everybody around a council table expressing the impressions that the spirit is giving them in order to arrive at the next best step.
Sheri Dew: President, we are so grateful for this time you've spent. I want to give you the last words to say, what are your concluding thoughts, if any, that you'd like to share today? And I say that with such gratitude for your service and your example, you may feel like you didn't have a resume, but the interesting thing is that the Lord just, it's fascinating to me to watch how the Lord works with us.
President Johnson: Yeah.
Sheri Dew: And makes us equal to whatever he asks us to do.
President Johnson: Absolutely.
Sheri Dew: Even though we may feel, you've got to be kidding. I can't do this. There's no way. And so we are so grateful for your service, for your example, for speaking up, for the articulate way that you teach the doctrine and that you teach what's true. And I'd just love to give you the last word with my thanks for joining this podcast today.
President Johnson: Well, maybe I'll hearken back to that statue that's just outside the Relief Society building and facing the Salt Lake Temple and the five wise virgins. Those five wise virgins have their lamps up. They'reholding their light out. They're not letting that light be hidden. And I think that's my invitation to everyone who's listening today: let the light of your conversion to Jesus Christ shine. You might not think it's sufficient to do much good, but you let that little bit of light you have dispel the darkness, and then lift and love those around you.
In that depiction of the five wise virgins, those women have their arms around each other. They're lifting and supporting one another. And that's really the point, isn't it? We're trying to get home to our heavenly home, but it's not going to feel like home if we're there alone. We want to make that journey with others, with the people that we love, and it'll feel like heaven when we're all there together.
Sheri Dew: Thank you, President. Where you lead, we will follow.