Happiness ultimately boils down to two essential components—at least according to a Harvard study that took 75 years to complete. But these components are something Church leaders were sharing long before the study was ever published.

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When I mention “FARMS” or the “Maxwell Institute” to a typical Latter-day Saint I am usually met with a blank stare. Sometimes recognition will flash across their face, but they can rarely explain what these organizations are and, most importantly, what they have taught us over the last 30 years. FARMS (the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies) began in 1979 and eventually became a part of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU. At 27 I consider myself very lucky that I grew up with these organizations and I credit them for many of my gospel-related research interests. Having grown up in the church, some of my most exciting memories are the moments when parts of the Book of Mormon came alive, jumped out of the translucent pages, and became . . . possible. I mean really possible.

The final class of approximately 650 students graduated from Benemerito de las Americas, an LDS Church-owned high school in Mexico City, on June 14. At the graduation ceremony, Elder Alfredo Miron, the school's final director and an Area Seventy, symbolically handed a large wooden "key to the campus" over to the new MTC President Carl Pratt. On the key was written the name of the school with the dates 1963-2013, indicating its "fifty years of teaching the youth of the Latter-day Saints." Under these dates was written 2013- Missionary Training Center, and the scripture, "Behold, I will hasten my work in its time" (Doctrine and Covenants 88:73). On June 26, President Pratt and his wife, Sister Karen Pratt, welcomed their first group of about 100 newly set-apart missionaries, some of whom had graduated as high school students only a week-and-a-half earlier from the same campus. "I cannot believe it's only been 10 days since I graduated from this school," said one elder as he was entering the new MTC. "It's quite a special experience to be able to see the way in which the Lord transforms things in order to fulfill his work.

“It’s a dream come true to be doing what I’m doing,” former BYU football player and NFL Daniel Sorensen says about his NFL career. “I think about it every day. I’m very fortunate. It’s very surreal.”

In between watching himself and his friends sing on national television and attending his BYU classes, Vocal Point’s Robert Seely still runs the window washing business that he started before his mission. He also picks up a few shifts at the BYU Creamery, except now that he’s appearing on NBC’s “The Sing-Off” – watch Monday at 7 p.m. MT – he has to deal with coworkers asking to take photos with him. “It really surprises me that four or five times a day, while I’m walking across campus, people come up to me and say, ‘Aren’t you the bass in Vocal Point?’” Seely says. “I don’t have any solos, and, I mean, even I didn’t know who the basses were in Vocal Point before I joined.”

David joined a team at the Kane County, Utah, jail that he found surprisingly comforting — the family history indexing team. “Indexing brought the inmates together in teamwork — like a sporting event — and it was really good to see in a setting like this,” the prisoner explained. “Indexing allows us to have a positive interaction with one another.”

It’s a powerful story. The young Joseph F. Smith, fresh off his mission to the Sandwich Islands, is traveling through Southern California on his way home to Utah in late 1857/early 1858. The Mormons are viewed with mistrust and hostility: rumors surrounding the Mountain Meadows Massacre are fresh on everyone’s lips as Johnston’s Army converges on Utah. Joseph F.’s party is confronted by a band of rough and tumble men on horseback, looking to pick a fight with any Mormons they can find. Joseph F.’s fellow travelers scatter, and when one burly ruffian pointedly asks Joseph F. if he is a Mormon, the young returned missionary responds, “Yes, siree, dyed-in-the-wool; true blue, through and through,” diffusing the tense confrontation by staying true to his identity. But was he really “dyed-in-the-wool, true blue, through and through”?

President Lyndon B. Johnson and President David O. McKay had one of the closest relationships between a Church president and U.S. president. They spoke fondly of each other and President Johnson visited Salt Lake City numerous times, even before Johnson was elected.