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Summer Travel Series: Palmyra, New York, surrounded by history

Packed into several communities in and around Palmyra, a quiet village of nearly 3,500 people in upstate New York, are well-defined religious historic sites, which are also a part of American history. To members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the area surrounding Palmyra has significance few other areas have. It is where a 14-year-old boy named Joseph Smith, serious about following God’s teachings, found a quiet spot in a grove of trees near his home and prayed for answers to many of the perplexing spiritual questions of 1820. It was there Latter-day Saints believe God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to the young Joseph. That experience was the humble beginning of a worldwide religion that dots the globe with more than 14 million members.

Missionary surge prompts LDS Church to open new MTC in Mexico

The surge of new full-time missionaries entering its existing Missionary Training Centers has prompted The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to announce it will close a high school it operates in Mexico City and convert it into an MTC that will accommodate missionaries called to serve in Mexico and other Latin American countries. Elder Russell M. Nelson and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, both members of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, presided at a Tuesday night meeting during which the establishment of what will be the church’s second-largest MTC was announced. The meeting was held on the campus of the church’s privately owned high school, Benemerito de las Americas, which will be closed and its facilities used for the new MTC.

Fun

Cancer Won't Stop One LDS Family From Running Together

For Nate and Kacee Houle, life and running are inseparable. The couple met as employees at a running store, 26.2, in American Fork. They were both collegiate runners, Nate at Southern Utah University and Kacee at the University of Utah and later at Georgia State University. Until two months ago, Nate was a cross-country coach at SUU.

Little-known Historic Solution to the 'Mormon Problem': Mormon Removal & Reserve

In every instance where Mormons faced growing animosity from outsiders and tension escalated between Mormons and their neighbors, accusations of a Mormon-Indian conspiracy were among the charges. The Mormon expulsions from Jackson County, Missouri, from Clay County, Missouri, and from the state of Missouri altogether, along with their exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, and the later Utah War were all events notably marked by claims that Mormons were combining with Indians to wage war against white America. Outsiders did not always see war and conspiracy, however, when they conflated Mormons with Indians. Sometimes the conflation was in the search for a solution to the Mormon problem.

App finds relatives among your Mormon Facebook friends

Many people already know the joy of discovering their ancestors, and now a new app by BYU students takes it to the next level - finding which of your Facebook friends are also family. The group of computer science students developed a Facebook app called “Relative Finder.”

Los Angeles Times: Mitt Romney's conservative roots may lie in Mormon faith

When the bottom fell out of the real estate market, Jason and Liz Anderson reached out to the institution they trusted most: the Mormon Church. Meeting with their bishop in Rancho Cucamonga, they laid out the problem: Although Jason was working two jobs, he was barely earning enough to make ends meet.

MSNBC: Mitt Romney's French missionary education

To understand why Mitt Romney persists in the face of rejection, opposition and indifference from his own party, look no further than the two and a half years he spent in France, getting up at 6:30 a.m. every day to venture forth and have doors slammed in his face for 10 hours. The fresh-faced Latter-Day Saints who came to France in the late 1960s to preach the message of Jesus Christ — of whom Republican presidential candidate Romney is the best known — discovered a secular and skeptical populace, and few willing converts.

The Genesis of a church’s stand on race

On Dec. 25, 1964, as Mitt Romney enjoyed his last Christmas break as a high school student in Michigan, two Mormon missionaries visited Darius Gray in Colorado Springs and asked him if he had any last questions before joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He had one. A proud African American, Gray expressed wariness over a description in the Book of Mormon of a dark-skinned tribe being out of favor with God and asked, “How, in any way, does that relate to me?” The younger of the two missionaries stood off to the side as his senior companion explained, “‘Well, Brother Gray, the primary implication is that you won’t be able to hold the priesthood.’”

Jared Halverson: Giving People the Benefit of their Doubts

While pursuing a doctoral degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School where his studies have been focused on anti-religious rhetoric, Jared Halverson has simultaneously sought to help students who wrestle with questions and doubts about the restored gospel. And while many say that divinity school tends to weaken faith, he says he has only become more convinced of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Presidents and prophets: The story of America’s presidents and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

By Michael K. Winder

Rising from obscurity and persecution, Latter-day Saints have gradually gained significant political clout and earned the trust and respect of some of the most powerful leaders in American history.