Looking to plan your own wedding soon? Then you won't want to miss our ultimate Mormon wedding checklist.

In her article "I am a Mormon Because I am a Feminist," Valerie Hudson Cassler shares the way Mormonism liberates women from traditional religious thinking that can be negative or damaging.

When I mention “FARMS” or the “Maxwell Institute” to a typical Latter-day Saint I am usually met with a blank stare. Sometimes recognition will flash across their face, but they can rarely explain what these organizations are and, most importantly, what they have taught us over the last 30 years. FARMS (the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies) began in 1979 and eventually became a part of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU. At 27 I consider myself very lucky that I grew up with these organizations and I credit them for many of my gospel-related research interests. Having grown up in the church, some of my most exciting memories are the moments when parts of the Book of Mormon came alive, jumped out of the translucent pages, and became . . . possible. I mean really possible.

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.

A few years ago I signed up for a marathon.

“It’s a dream come true to be doing what I’m doing,” former BYU football player and NFL Daniel Sorensen says about his NFL career. “I think about it every day. I’m very fortunate. It’s very surreal.”

With 2016 coming to a close, it's time to look back on some of the big changes, announcements, and news from the Church throughout the year and reflect on the progress, miracles, and changes that continue to bless the lives of members worldwide.

In between watching himself and his friends sing on national television and attending his BYU classes, Vocal Point’s Robert Seely still runs the window washing business that he started before his mission. He also picks up a few shifts at the BYU Creamery, except now that he’s appearing on NBC’s “The Sing-Off” – watch Monday at 7 p.m. MT – he has to deal with coworkers asking to take photos with him. “It really surprises me that four or five times a day, while I’m walking across campus, people come up to me and say, ‘Aren’t you the bass in Vocal Point?’” Seely says. “I don’t have any solos, and, I mean, even I didn’t know who the basses were in Vocal Point before I joined.”

David joined a team at the Kane County, Utah, jail that he found surprisingly comforting — the family history indexing team. “Indexing brought the inmates together in teamwork — like a sporting event — and it was really good to see in a setting like this,” the prisoner explained. “Indexing allows us to have a positive interaction with one another.”