Elizabeth Ann Claridge McCune — Impromptu Missionary Speech in London

While visiting England in 1897, Elizabeth Ann Claridge McCune attended a London Conference meeting where anti-Mormon sentiment was high due to the activities of a former member named William Jarman. Feeling a strong spiritual prompting to speak, she stood before the large, skeptical crowd and bore a powerful testimony of her life in Utah and the truthfulness of the Church. Her impromptu address was so effective and well-received that it shifted the atmosphere of the meeting and led Church leaders, including President Joseph W. McMurrin, to request that sister missionaries be sent to England, ultimately paving the way for the first single female proselyting missionaries to be called in 1898.