"Women of Prayer are Women of Power": Women's Missionary Societies in Alberta, 1918-1939‪.‬

On Wednesday morning, the first of June in 1927, sixty delegates to the Alberta Conference Branch of the United Church Woman's Missionary Society enjoyed the fragrant scent of spring blossoms which filled Central Church in Calgary. At 9:30 a.m., their president, Mrs. A. M. Scott, opened the proceedings with a devotional service. The discipline of prayer as a central component of society fellowship was a major theme of the three-day conference. Believing that members supplied the spiritual power of the church, leaders asserted that "[p]rayer is the line of communication down which the energy of God is poured into our lives. Behind you are your prayers, and behind your prayers is God." (1) Originally established before the turn of the twentieth century to uplift "heathen" women and children in foreign missions, members of the Alberta Woman's Missionary Societies (AWMS) appropriated conversion strategies acquired in the distant mission fields of Japan and China to pursue God's plan on their doorstep where a "pagan" immigrant population was fast encroaching upon the predominantly Anglo-Protestant society of Alberta. (2)