NBC's American Ninja Warrior is a test of skill, strength, and endurance that pushes athletes to their limit. But this year, four Latter-day Saints have competed on the show and made it to the finals in Los Angeles, and they all have some pretty incredible stories of how they ended up on the show.

What does sunshine have to do with family history? Well, besides helping our plants and vegetables grow, sunshine has a profound effect on our bodies. One of those effects is melanin production. Melanin is a dark pigment in our hair, skin, and iris of the eye that protects us from the sun’s radiation. Tragically, throughout history some have used melanin to create caste systems that determine social status, ultimately affecting our family history. In this episode, Dr. David-James Gonzales discusses how these caste systems and resulting colorism began and the impact they still have on us as we seek to learn more about ourselves and our ancestors.

Editor's note: The following is excerpted from Chapter 4 of the book "The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith," by Matthew Bowman, published this week by Random House. Copyright © 2012 by Matthew Bowman. All rights reserved. If the Mormons saw themselves as a new Israel, the trek west was inevitably their Exodus. For generations of Mormons, including the one that walked across the prairies, what mattered more than the destination was the act of the journey. It was a collective rite of passage that thousands of Mormons endured, as they had learned to endure all suffering: the death of their prophet, their flight from Ohio and Missouri, and their march across the plains all were taken as divinely sent education, clarifying and refining, testing the bonds that the temple ordinances had created, and they saw God's hand in every bush of berries. Many Mormons were rebaptized upon reaching Utah; they had traveled not only from the United States to the Utah territory but also from the secular realm to God's promised land, reborn into a sacred world. The banks and courts still close in Utah on July 24, the day Brigham Young crossed into the Salt Lake Valley, and the Mormons there celebrate it still, though the number of those who have ancestors who walked across the plains is a fading minority. They have become an archetype.

Whether it's climbing up the infamous 15-foot warped wall or jolting up the salmon ladder, American Ninja Warrior is known for testing contenders to their physical limits.

In a new survey conducted by Gallup, 81% of Americans said they would vote for a presidential candidate who is Mormon.

FamilySearch, the largest genealogy organization in the world announced the digital release of 4 million Freedmen’s Bureau historical records and the launch of a nationwide volunteer indexing effort, Elder D. Todd Christofferson

There’s a new way for you to check your ancestry — look at your thumb.

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.

It is coincidental that the exterior wood trim of pioneer leader Brigham Young's winter home is painted in pleasing shades of green and red — colors we associate with Christmas, a time of year when the great Mormon colonizer took up residence in St. George in his later years.