A capacity crowd in the chapel of the Hillcrest Academy building was buzzing with the conversation of enthusiastic women. That warm summer day, June 8, 1953 a national organization for women was about to be born.  With Mrs. Clarence Walstad (Ruth) presiding, a roomful of women decided that they should organize nationally, “in order to do a more effective work in our synod.”  “It wasn’t just another meeting they felt they must attend, but it was a chance for wider fellowship with like-minded women, an opportunity for service to God and others, in ways uniquely theirs.”

The Lutheran Brethren National Women’s Missionary Fellowship (WMF) was born.  The women met again the following year, and a constitution was begun.  A notice in the Faith & Fellowship magazine, and letters sent to all of the LB churches invited any Ladies Aid, Guild, or Mission Society that existed, to join together in this effort.  They adopted aims that are still relevant today, fifty years later:

1. To awaken and deepen interest in and love for the kingdom of God at home and abroad, thus sharing in the great missionary enterprise of the Christian Church.

2. To unite all of the women of the Lutheran Brethren Church into the deeper fellowship of consecrated service and cooperation for the missions, the charities and the Christian education program of our church.

3. To organize mission societies and children’s mission groups wherever possible.