Politics is not new to the former Ann Davies. Her father was a mayor in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She was with Mitt Romney when his father, George Romney, was governor of Michigan and running for president, and when his mother, Lenore Romney, ran for U.S. Senate. In the 1970s, Ann Romney herself ran for Town Meeting in Belmont, Mass., and won. But her real passion and focus has been raising her five sons.

Sixteen-year-old ballerina Gisele Bethea of Mesa, Arizona, has received numerous awards, traveled the world to perform and been asked to join the American Ballet Theatre.

Elaine Bradley is a wife, mother and Mormon who lives with her family in quiet and conservative Provo, Utah.

In 1841, rumors began to circulate that Martin Harris, one of the three Book of Mormon witnesses, had been murdered. The Mormons (who else?) had supposedly shot him to death. But, in fact, Martin Harris was perfectly healthy. He would live on until age 92, dying on July 10, 1875, in Clarkston, Utah. As Mark Twain later quipped after reading his own obituary, the report of Martin’s death was “an exaggeration.” He was now, the “Painesville Telegraph” wryly observed, “a living witness of what shall be said of him after his death.”

Kim Pomares was on a plane the first time he saw “Evan Almighty.” Turned off by religious comedies in the past, Pomares wasn’t sure if the 2007 film — a sequel to “Bruce Almighty” and a story about an unsuccessful congressman's transformation into a modern day Noah — would be suitable for him and his family.

In the common lexicon of the past few decades, the word “cult” has conjured up images of fiery leaders and fanatical adherents indulging in all manner of religious excesses that often end in death. When we hear of cults, we think of Texas compounds burning, mass murders within Charles Manson’s “family,” and suicides in Marshall Applewhite’s Heaven’s Gate. Cults are generally thought of as bizarre, isolationist, anti-government, fundamentalist, controlling, and on the extreme fringes of society. Sociologists once used the term “cult” to refer to small and distinctive religious movements such as the Amish or Mennonites, but since then, the word has become so politicized that they generally avoid its use in academic discourse. The term today has such negative connotations that it has become a universal insult designed to discredit any group it might be hurled at.

On a recent Friday night when their peers were probably hanging out at the mall or posting on Facebook, some 150 Mormon teens pulled 10,400-pound covered handcarts for seven miles through Connecticut's Mohawk State Forest.

Håkan Palm feels blessed to live a mere four miles from the first temple in Scandinavia and the only temple in Sweden. He served on the committee to find the wooded site about 15 miles south of Stockholm in 1981, was there for the groundbreaking and, as LDS public affairs director for the country and a member of the temple committee, organized the open house where an expected 2,000 visitors turned into nearly 50,000 before the Stockholm Sweden Temple was dedicated in 1985. Ten years later, he arranged for Sweden’s king and queen to visit the temple grounds and meet President Thomas S. Monson. Despite the impressive resume, it’s the value of the temple covenants to his posterity that matters most to him.

“You have 24 hours.”

Watch how a 30-day faith challenge helped seven young adults grow closer to Jesus Christ, connect with others, and better live their faith.