Trace was born in Quincy, Illinois, part of the Nauvoo district and final resting place to his relative Frederick G. Williams. Later his family moved to Grass Valley, California, nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains between Lake Tahoe and Sacramento. Northern California is where Trace calls home and the place that shaped his interests in snowboarding, the outdoors and art. Trace enjoys landscape photography and travel with his wife, Susan, (a former guest on the podcast) and his four children. Two of his children are serving full-time missions. A daughter is serving in the Washington Kennewick Mission and his son is called to the Japan Fukuoka Mission with a reassignment near his sister in the Washington Tacoma Mission. Trace served in the Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission and has fond memories of the people, food and being branch president to an all-sister branch.

Emeobong "Eme" Martin is a native of the Washington, DC area and currently resides there with her husband of nearly two decades. They are the proud and favorite auntie and uncle of 10 nieces and nephews. They are also the self-proclaimed favorite figures in the lives of a handful of YSAs as they have served among them for seven years and currently preside over the Strathmore YSA Ward in the Washington DC North YSA Stake. Eme and her husband separately served in the Missouri St. Louis Mission where they first met before beginning the debate of who truly initiated missionary follow up thereafter. Eme currently works as the lead equity, diversity, and inclusion officer for a national nonprofit focused on providing a firm foundation for infants and toddlers. She earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Brigham Young University and a master's of public health from Saint Louis University. Eme was recently called to serve on the General Relief Society Advisory Council.

My sister and I have ongoing conversations about big ward/little ward, in-Utah/outside-of-Utah church experiences. You’ve probably held similar conversations with friends and family. Our conclusion? There are pluses and minuses everywhere.

Have you ever had this happen before? It’s dinner time and you’re about to dig into your favorite meal. You scoop your plate full of food only to discover, to your disappointment, that you get full before you can finish it all. I have. And it’s a sad feeling.

In lesser moments in my life—and perhaps in lesser moments in your life—I must admit I am sometimes tempted to be critical of the way that God is running the universe, at least our corner of it. I have a tendency occasionally to look heavenward and quote Shakespeare, and say as Macduff said, “Did heaven look on, and would not take their part?”

I asked my institute students if they had beautiful feet. They thought I had gone mad, of course, but the question was asked in perfect seriousness. Isaiah’s poetic imagery about the messengers of the Atonement includes the moving assurance that those who carry such a message have beautiful feet. In Isaiah’s time, messages were always carried by runners, and he described those privileged to carry the most meaningful of messages as having beautiful feet.

I am the father of five rambunctious, high-energy little boys, 9 years old and younger. Trying to get them to sit still, let alone listen, at Church is exhausting. During sacrament meeting, my wife and I sometimes feel like we are referees, calling penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct (throwing cereal and/or other objects, hitting, kicking, and pinching), offsides (one of the boys breaking through our tackles to escape down the aisle), and excessive celebration (screams, giggles, and laughs that echo throughout the cultural hall).

Every Christmas, my family reads the story of Jesus’ birth from the second chapter of Luke.

When I was just a baby, my father, because of concerns in his own life and challenges that he was having, left our family. Our mother alone, therefore, raised my sisters and me, and as I was growing up, my father had very little to do with us as children. I realize he was working with things in his own life, but his decisions created certain challenges and hardships for my mother, my sisters, and for me. At age fourteen or fifteen, if you were in my situation, and you knelt down and said: “Father in Heaven, help me find peace concerning my father leaving us and really having nothing to do with us for all these years. Help me forgive my father,” would you not think that was an appropriate prayer, one that deserved an answer? But no answer came at age fourteen and fifteen. Twenty, twenty-one comes, same prayers, still no answer. Twenty-five, twenty-six passes, same prayers, yet still no answer. Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-three, thirty-four all come and go. Surely I’m in the fourth watch by now, would you not agree?

King Benjamin’s speech in Mosiah 2–5 can well be called a masterpiece of oratory. Just one way in which this is so is in the unmistakable presence of chiasmus and other parallelisms in the speech’s structure. “A stunning array of literary structures appears in Benjamin’s speech, purposefully and skillfully organized,” noted John W. Welch. “Benjamin’s use of chiasmus, all types of parallelisms, and many other forms of repeating patterns adds focus and emphasis to the main messages and the persuasive qualities of this text.”