About Dear Princess
What Is the Purpose of Dear Princess?
Dear Princess is a publication for young ladies who seek and strive to please their Heavenly Father. I, Abigail Spinks, started in the fall of 1996 with a burden to share trials and victories, and in turn to be encouraged and share with other girls.
In January 1998, I felt a burden to ask Skye Erickson to come and take the place of co-editor. She accepted—as you can see—and we are both learning lessons in patience and longsuffering with each other in between the enjoyable times.
We want not only to create a publication with homemaking skills, but one that will encourage girls in becoming spiritually prepared for their future homes. We need to have a vision of trusting the Lord long before the actual time. If we wait until the time we really need grace to wait, we will be ill-prepared. The more grace we have at home with our families now, the more victories we will have behind us to strengthen us in our future trials and battles in homes of our own, if the Lord wills for us to be married. As my mother says, “The way you set your sails is the way your ship [life] is going to sail.” Right now we’re in the moldable time of our lives. The way we hinder or allow the Lord to mold us now is the way we re going to be when we’re older. We want to be molded the way Jesus wants us to be and we know there are other girls who want to as well. We need to encourage each other along the way.
When You Write
Submissions are extremely welcome! Letters, articles, recipes, homemaking hints… we are always in need of them! Articles on how the Lord has taught you to be gentle, patient with siblings, humbleness—anything the Lord has taught you, please share! Two particular ideas: serving others and contentment at home. Anything would be appreciated and considered, but we’d love to hear about what you’d have to say on these subjects. Stories are welcome too.
Also, a discussion column has starting forming, but we need many more submissions for it. If you have any thing you’d like to ask other readers about, please send in your questions!
Your letters are a source of great encouragement to us; please state in your letter if you wish it not to be printed. We’ll try to answer the letters, but we can’t answer them all.
Mothers, grandmothers, and older sisters are very welcome to write in to encourage and teach us younger women. “The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness… teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” (Titus 2:3-5)
A Note From the Editresses
“Freely Give, Freely Receive!”
As we have received several donations this time around, we feel a need to make things a little bit clearer in regards to “free will offerings.”
The Lord has made it clear to us that this is His magazine and He will provide the means to publish and send Dear Princess out. He has showed us the scripture: “Freely ye have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8) We wish to obey His Word, and to our minds, charging a subscription would not be freely giving.
Recently, a sister sent in some money and said, “I hope this will get me a few issues; I’ll try to send more later.” While we really appreciate her thoughtfulness, we earnestly hope and pray that we have not implied that to receive Dear Princess, you must send money. By saying Dear Princess is supported by “free will offerings,” we do not mean a sort of “pay as you can” subscription. To us, from what the Lord has shown us, it means that it is money that the Lord burdens someone to send in to help out with the costs. That is what we believe the “freely you have received” part of the verse means. We hope we have cleared any misunderstandings on this subject and if you have any questions, please feel free to write.
We want to write a special little note of thanks for the ones who wrote letters. They were such sweet encouragements! There is nothing so encouraging as to get a letter written from the heart, from a sister in the Lord!
In His tender care,
Skye and Abigail