The following article previously ran on LDS Living earlier this year and is being shared as part of an article series that will highlight the life and teachings of President Russell M. Nelson. Beginning at his birthday week and leading up to general conference, LDS Living will focus on the insights and life lessons we can learn from the Lord's prophet on the earth today.

“A thought has occurred to me that my making a covenant today is a lot more important than the message that I have prepared.”

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.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has publicly distanced himself from the anti-Mormon rhetoric of a prominent Baptist minister who has endorsed his presidential campaign. But new evidence suggests that Perry’s team may be quietly advancing the notion that Mitt Romney’s faith should disqualify him from the White House. The Daily Beast has obtained a series of emails that show an influential evangelical activist with close ties to the Perry campaign stressing the political importance of “juxtaposing traditional Christianity to the false God of Mormonism,” and calling for a “clarion call to Evangelical pastors and pews” that will be “the key to the primary” for Perry.

Earlier this week, the 2015 Parliament of the World’s Religions came to an end in Salt Lake City.

“Programs of the Church are home-centered and Church-sponsored,” said Mike Magelby, director of the curriculum for the Church. “Your study starts at home. You will get the doctrine and learn things from the home manual.”

“There will be a convergence of discoveries (never enough, mind you, to remove the need for faith) to make plain and plausible what the modern prophets have been saying all along…[I] do not expect incontrovertible proof to come in this way…, but neither will the Church be outdone by hostile or pseudo-scholars.” (Neal A. Maxwell) In 1997 a group of Latter-day Saints who frequented the Mormon message boards of America Online found that they were responding to the same LDS-critical arguments over and over. They decided to form a non-profit organization so they could share information and create a repository of responses. That organization was The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, or FAIR. In 1999 FAIR held their first conference in Ben Lomond California. A large percentage of the few who attended this first conference were the speakers themselves. Two weeks ago FAIR held their fifteenth annual conference in Provo, Utah, with about 400 attendees.

The First Presidency on a recent visit to the home of Elder and Sister Perry (May 1, 2015).

Editor's note: “Resources to Follow Him” curates study resources, teachings, and thoughts to deepen your study of this week's Come, Follow Me.

Mormon Cassidy Stay has received condolences and support from many people over the past month, including President Thomas S. Monson. The young girl, who was the lone survivor of her family after a tragic massacre, more recently received some support from the famed Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling, who sent a personalized letter from “Dumbledore” reported LDS.net on Monday afternoon.