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Summer Reading List for Kids

Holly Newton - Summer is coming! Here’s a list of great kids’ reads to keep the kids busy, beginning with picture books. There are a lot of great and newly published picture books, but I look for inventive, interactive, fun or teachable books when selecting picture books to review.   (For our Summer Reading List for Adults & Young Adults, click here .)   There Are Cats in this Book , by Viviane Schwarz, fits the first two components for me to review. This creative book has three lively cats that want you to become involved in their games, such as tossing a ball of...

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Celebrate Mother's Day: No Kids Required!

Kerstin Daynes - Even if you don’t have children of your own, there are still plenty of ways to celebrate Mother’s Day. Redirect your thoughts. Consider Mother’s Day as a celebration of your own mother, rather than a celebration of your own “motherly” status. Although it sometimes takes all my strength to redirect my thoughts, I have found the emotions to be not as intense when I am thinking of and celebrating my mom.  Consider how you are a mother. According to dictionary.com , the verb form of “mother” is “to acknowledge oneself the author of, to give origin or rise to, to care...

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Mothers Matter

Steve Mikita - My life would be lived in a wheelchair. That was an irreversible reality. The doctors envisioned a life full of hopelessness, despair, and frustration—and a life that wouldn’t be all that long.  All seemed lost. No one gave me a chance; well, almost no one.   In spite of this distressing news that my future would be tragically brief, my first memory is not the realization that I would never stand or walk as a result of my nerve disease, Spinal Muscular Atrophy. It is not being left alone in a cold, dreary hospital or doctor’s examining room and listening to a...

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Gluten-free Food Storage

Kaela Worthen Gardner - Providentliving.org suggests we store 25 pounds of grains per person, per month, most of which often comes from wheat. And for most people, that’s fine. But more and more people are being diagnosed with gluten intolerance, an autoimmune disease sometimes known as Celiac disease, which means that ingestion of this nutrient can cause minor or even life-threatening reactions. Currently, 1 in 10 people has a gluten intolerance, but experts expect that diagnosis to rise to 3 in 10 within the next 10 years. Gluten is often easy to discover, found in any wheat-containing product, but can sometimes be hidden away in...

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Just Asking: Hilary Weeks

LDS Living staff - A personal peek into the life of the mother of four girls, artist of eight albums, and author of two books.   You talk about inspiration being found in the nature and beauties of Alaska, where you grew up. What now serves as your primary inspiration?       I think people: their stories, experiences, what we go through. What I have been through, what friends and family members have been through. Just real-life experiences. Has your music changed tone with this change in inspiration?       I think it has stayed in the same vein. It is certainly Christ-centered, but I think in...

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Ex-traor-di-nar-y

Hilary Weeks - Ex-traor-di-nar-y  [ik- strawr -dn-er-ee] 1. Beyond what is usual, ordinary or established. 2. Noteworthy, remarkable. I was having a really tough day. Well, to tell you the truth, it had been a really hard week.  Fine . . . if I must fully divulge, I had been struggling for several months. There. I said it. Fortunately the feeling of discouragement was about to be lifted right in the middle of an ordinary afternoon. My family was visiting Zion Ponderosa in Southern Utah—one of my favorite places on the planet. I had about an hour to myself, so I took an iPod...

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Mongolia honors Church for wheelchair donation

Newsroom - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was recently recognized by the Mongolian government for its donation of 250 wheelchairs, as well as crutches, canes and walkers. Deseret International Charities (DIC), a Mongolian humanitarian organization sponsored by the Church, partnered with the Social Welfare Service Department of Mongolia. Church Humanitarian Services, through its wheelchair program, works with local organizations to distribute wheelchairs wherever they’re needed around the world. ...

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ICE releases reason for LDS president's deportation order

ABC 4 News - US Immigration and Customs Enforcement released information Friday evening stating that the former President of the (Spanish) LDS 9th Branch is in the Utah County Jail awaiting deportation to El Salvador. ICE says Felix Joaquin Callejas-Hernandez, his wife and two teenage children were taken into custody Tuesday, April 19th. ICE says the family’s appeal of deportation orders from 2008 and 2009 was dismissed early April and are now residing in the US illegally. A friend of Callejas, Rob Perry, says the way this circumstance is being handled is outrageous. “He is a fine man. I would say a law abiding citizen,”...

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YSA encouraged to find lost sheep

LDS Church News - Hundreds of young single adults from the Salt Lake and Davis counties gathered to the Conference Center in Salt Lake City on April 26 to learn about the upcoming changes to student wards and stakes. As of May 1, "student" units will no longer be in existence, and 12 new stakes will be established. Tuesday's meeting was the first of three, determined by geographic areas, to discuss the changes and new boundaries. The plans to eliminate all current "student" units to form young single adult wards and stakes is an effort to increase accountability and foster activity for the 18-30 year-old...

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Ancient gold plates in Mesoamerica

Deseret News - Archaeologists have know for about a century that gold plates with carved writing have been found in Mesoamerica, yet it is still not common knowledge outside their discipline. It all began with Edward Herbert Thompson. When he was excavating at Chichén Itzá near the turn of the 20th century, he was enthralled with the sacrificial cenote. Unlike other archaeologists, he believed the Spanish Priest Diego de Landa’s account of offerings at this location. Determined to find them, he began to dredge it in 1904, donning a diving suit to search the muddy bottom himself (Carolyn Meyer and Charles Gallenkamp, “The Mystery...