On the way through Provo yesterday (March 16, 2014), I snapped these pictures of the Provo Tabernacle/Temple — I hadn’t seen any pictures since the building was “floating,” and was happy to see that the cones have been put back up and that the center tower is rising. There are massive underground works going on at the north and west sides of the building.

“You are the future of the Church in the British Isles,” declared Elder Russell M. Nelson to the cast and crew of the British Pageant, which was staged July 31–August 3 and August 5–10. Subtitled “Truth Will Prevail,” the pageant tells the story of the Church in the British Isles. August 8 and 9 saw three Apostles, the senior President of the Presidency of the Seventy, and the Europe Area Presidency, accompanied by their wives, take time out from training new mission presidents and missionaries to attend performances of the British Pageant on the grounds of the Preston England Temple in Chorley, where they also met on sequential days with pageant cast, crew, and organizers.

Thank goodness that the Mormon Moment has finally come to an end. It’s been six months—a year, maybe—and what with all the Broadway musicals, billboards and radio ads, magazine spreads, the op-eds and the letters responding to the op-eds, the television news stories, the daytime pundits, the night-time pundits, the op-eds responding to the pundits and the letters excoriating the op-ed responses to the pundits, this Mormon is exhausted. Now that the country has voted the highest Mormon in the land back to Boston or Wolfeboro or wherever, I’m looking forward to a well-earned break from the country’s daily construction of my identity.

The Joseph Smith Papers recently published its17th volume associated with the life and works of Joseph Smith. The project, which began with the work of a single individual, has grown in scope and influence over its first decade. Along the way, the project has changed in numerous ways, overcome challenges, garnered unprecedented popularity, secured academic prestige, and set the stage for a new era of Mormon history.

As a young sister missionary, having been set apart by my father, who was the stake president, I wondered how it was that I was able to preach the gospel to the wonderful people of Los Angeles when I did not have the authority of the priesthood as the ordained elders did. I obediently taught the gospel and felt the influence of the Spirit strongly, even to exhorting and promising, but I wondered how that was possible. I understood that I was not ordained to a priesthood office and therefore could not perform priesthood ordinances outside the temple, but I still felt that I had authority—being a full-time, set-apart, assigned-by-the-prophet missionary—to help people obtain salvation. I even felt, although I didn’t understand how, that I was authorized by the Lord to do so. Here is what I have found about this and five other sometimes confusing aspects of priesthood power and women.

People passing through Main Street Plaza on Temple Square can now look through the construction project fence windows and see some 170 years into the past.

As The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith opens in theaters nationwide this weekend, we wanted to share an excerpt from the faith-promoting book on which the film was based. The following account is excerpted from Fire of Faith by John H. Groberg.

Every Monday morning, I eagerly check Newsroom to see what temples will reopen in the coming week. I feel joy for my fellow Saints around the world as the sealing power is once again available in their country in the first phase of reopening. I marvel as I picture missionaries preparing to serve during a pandemic who have the opportunity to receive their endowment before their departure through temples in the second phase of reopening.

INTRODUCTION: President Heber J. Grant made an applicable remark:

Having learned something of St. Patrick's life finds my mind drifting each March to the Emerald Isle of over 1500 years ago, when a sixteen year old boy was captured and sold into slavery by Irish pirates.