President M. Russell Ballard said, “Clearly, those of us who have been entrusted with precious children have been given a sacred, noble stewardship, for we are the ones God has appointed to encircle today’s children with love and the fire of faith and an understanding of who they are.”

“If we are going to have any hope of eradicating this plague from the world, love must be both at the forefront and the foundation of all our efforts,” stressed Sister Jones.

Take a peek into the life of Mark Madsen, assistant coach to the Los Angeles Lakers, former NBA player, husband, father, and faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Elder Neil L. Andersen spoke to BYU students this week on what it means to minister.

Even after numerous political victories, years of public scrutiny and gigabytes of press, Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney remains an enigma to many. Is he a brilliant businessman or a ruthless capitalist? Is he driven by family values or by personal ambition? Is he a political moderate or a right-wing conservative? Just what kind of leader is he likely to be? One of the reasons we can’t fully answer this question is that Romney doesn’t speak enough about one of the most formative influences on his leadership: his faith. Yes, he learned leadership theory at Harvard Business School and gained leadership experience founding Bain Capital, running the Salt Lake City Olympics and governing the state of Massachusetts. But fully unraveling Romney’s leadership identity requires delving more deeply into how he demonstrated leadership in his church.

Every now and then it still happens. Someone will stare at Scott Ditty, a local high school coach and teacher, and ask, “Do I know you? You look familiar.” In another lifetime, Ditty was a professional actor. He made a brief career with small movie and TV roles and commercials until he decided he could better live his Mormon faith and do more good by teaching and coaching youth. These days you can find him at Alta High School, where he plays many roles: defensive coordinator of the football team, head track coach, powerlifting instructor and film studies teacher. The latter is one of the most popular classes at Alta. Students get to watch movies in class and then discuss them with a guy who was in them.

As a part of the "millennial" generation, I read CNN's religion blog post "Why millennials are leaving the church" with great interest. The author explains how churches are trying to appeal to my generation through casual services, pastors in skinny jeans, and coffee shops in the meetinghouses — at the cost of teaching what constitutes the heart of Christianity. With the ongoing cultural wars, pretentiousness, and seeming exclusivity, young people my age are struggling to find Jesus when they go to church. Reading this article made me think carefully about how my faith, the Mormon church, is instituted. While I admit that our church leaders have their own struggles in retaining some who are my age, I think that the Mormon institution solves many of the problems that other millennials experience when attending church.

Manual 3; Supplement from "Man Down!," by Henry B. Eyring

The real heroes of the story are women such as Jane Elizabeth Manning James, a free black woman who was baptized into the LDS Church in the early 1840s and then traveled with a small group of black converts from Connecticut to Illinois in winter, the last 800 miles on foot. “We walked until our shoes were worn out, and our feet became sore and cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet with blood on the ground,” James recounted in a brief autobiography several decades later. James walked to Utah with the Mormon pioneers in 1847 and remained a devoted member of the Church until her death in 1908, outliving its first five prophets. Upon her death Church leaders recognized James as a pillar of faithfulness—after having denied her access to Mormonism’s most sacred temple rituals by virtue of her race.

Since the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, the Church has hosted an annual interfaith event full of music, celebration, and prayer. Check out these stunning photos from this evening.