Book Review: Raspberries and Relevance - Linda Hoffman Kimball

Raspberries and Relevance: Enrichment in the Real World - compiled by Linda Hoffman Kimball

Kimball has done it again. This time she got her friends together and asked them to write about Enrichment night.

For the uninitiated Enrichment Night refers to "Home, Family and Personal Enrichment Night" which used to be "Homemaking Meeting" which I guess before that used to be "Homemaking Day" in the LDS church and before that it was "Work Meeting."

It started off as a day to help out those in the community. The sisters would get together and can foods or make quilts or sew shirts. It's evolved and although those things are still done it can be pretty much anything the sisters want.

This book is a bit of a celebration and a bit of a guidebook. As a guidebook it actually is pretty decent. I would encourage groups of women from any organization to have this in their arsenal. There's some pretty good ideas in here and quite an extensive list of suggestions.

There's also stories of some unusual Enrichment nights. One of my favorites was of a sister who covered the gym with tablecloths and had sisters purposely break eggs as they thought of a frustration or a problem they had. Pretty therapeutic. Then she had them come up with ways to protect the eggs before they were tossed. I wouldn't have minded being at that one.

There was also a story that brought a tear to my eye of a sister who brought her baby to Enrichment night after several weeks of the ICU and struggles with having that baby survive.

Basically it's not about the crafts that Homemaking is notoriously known for but it's about the friendship and the time women take from out of their lives to serve or to just be and love one another.

Enrichment night, or Homemaking or whatever you call it, is a lovely and positive night in the LDS church.

This book is pretty decent too.