Shannon Foster is a wife, mom, and former seminary teacher who helps people study the scriptures in the middle of real life—between laundry piles and carpool runs. She didn’t understand the scriptures when she was younger, and that experience has become her superpower in helping others truly fall in love with them. She's happiest in the mountains with her family, staying up late and losing at board games. She's the founder of The Red Headed Hostess, where she creates gospel learning tools that feel doable and deeply meaningful. She believes the Lord always makes a way—and that walking with Him leads to more than we ever imagined.

Andrea Erickson Lindsey received her master's degree in Religious Education from BYU. She was a full-time Professional Religious Educator for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until the birth of her son. She has presented at Education week, S&I Area Meetings, EFY, the Church History Symposium, S&I Research Conference, Single-Adult Events, and has been a volunteer Institute teacher for several years. She is the author of God's Plan, Book 1 of the True Doctrine Series, which was awarded best seller status on Amazon. You can order with the link provided on her website. https://andreaericksonlindsey.com/ Andrea loves wearing the color black, not just because it is slimming, but because it absorbs light, and like all of us she loves light. She and Kendra George are co-hosts on the podcast Gather in Christ, where they focus on the blessings of following a living prophet’s invitations, while seeking to build faith in the basic doctrines of the Church. Presently, Andrea is having her book, His Gospel Restored: Book II of The True Doctrine Series, illustrated. Follow her for future details. You can order prints by contacting her at authorandreae.lindsey@gmail.com.

Carli Anderson is an assistant professor of religion and the humanities at Northern Arizona University. Her academic research—which focuses on female figures in the Hebrew Bible—blends textual hermeneutics and religious anthropology and is enriched by theoretical frameworks related to ritual, pilgrimage, space, memory, and affect. She has an MA in Hebrew Bible/Ancient Near Eastern Studies from Brigham Young University and a PhD in religious studies from Arizona State University. Her dissertation work focused on the biblical Rachel as an emplaced cultural figure at the site of Rachel’s Tomb in Jerusalem. Dr. Anderson has spent many years working and researching in the Holy Land. She currently lives in the beautiful mountain country of Arizona.

Near the end of World War II in a salt mine near Strassfurt, Germany, Elder Rudolph K. Poecker, a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, put on a miner’s outfit. He accompanied the mine engineer all the way down to the floor some 1,312 feet or 400 meter, as is told in "Hearts Turned to the Fathers," Vol. 34, No. 2, by James B. Allen, Jessie L. Embrey and Kahlile B. Mehr and published by BYU Studies. There was a large cache of books containing genealogical records waiting for them, according to Kahlie Mehr's article in June 1981 Ensign article titled "The Langheinrich Legacy: Record-Gathering in Post-War Germany."

You could call him the Bible detective.

In early February 1940, Mormon FBI agent James Ellsworth left his home in Huntington Park, California, prepared for a normal day of work. Instead, he was met by a man with a message from John Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI in Washington, D.C., instructing him to take the next possible plane to New York City.

The anticipation is over. Jabari Parker, the top high school basketball player in the country, is headed to Duke. This afternoon he made it official in a nationally televised press conference held at Simeon Career Academy in Chicago, bringing an end to an unprecedented recruiting process that began over three years ago. BYU fans will no doubt be disappointed. So will the folks at Florida, Michigan State and Stanford. But nobody should be surprised. The top recruit wants to play for the top coach. Many consider Mike Krzyzewski to be second only to the late John Wooden on the short list of all-time greatest college coaches. Krzyzewski also coaches the U.S. Olympic team. Olympians LeBron James and Kobe Bryant have both said that if they had gone to college they would have gone to Duke. That says a lot.

This time of year means cold and snow in much of the world, but not in Australia, where summer prevails from December through February. Mormon missionaries in the Australia Perth Mission took advantage of the balmy temperatures to put on a "Summer Wonderland" event Dec. 10 that drew some 1,500 people, yielded some 200 missionary referrals and has already led to at least one baptism and several people hearing the missionary lessons. In an e-mail to his family in Utah, Elder James Crawley said a committee of six missionaries planned and organized the event, which included a Cook Islands group, a Samoan fire dance, a Hawaiian group, a New Zealand kapa haka group (the traditional performance art of the Maori people) and performances by groups of sister missionaries and elders.

With hundreds of new books published each year by LDS authors, it’s impossible to keep up with the best in LDS writing. So we’ll make it easy on you: Here are 15 of the most popular LDS books ever, summarized in just a sentence each.

INTRODUCTION: Consider this quote from Brigham Young on the necessity of the gifts of the Spirit in the Church.