“To adopt is to be willing to have a personal love lesson from heaven”—that is how Sister Andrea Veronica Munoz Spannaus, Relief Society Advisory Council Member, describes her experience adopting her two daughters.

Luke 2; Matt 1; D&C 96:12-18; Matthew 3:24-26 JST

On June 7, 1950, the Brigham Young University men’s basketball team boarded a United Airlines DC-3 in Salt Lake City. Fifty-six hours and five layovers later, the team arrived in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Their mission: bring exposure to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and BYU by playing basketball games at night and hosting clinics and Church firesides in the afternoon. And wear their sweat suits to identify themselves, which had been tailored to read “Mormons” instead of “Cougars.”

Jolene is a widow, mother, grandmother and disciple of Jesus Christ seeking the promised rainbows that follow mortality's darkest storms, leaving puddles of joy to jump in, and learning with a lot of faith and a little chocolate "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.”

Ruth and Hannah were strong figures in the Old Testament who demonstrated faith and established a righteous lineage. This week we are paying special attention to what we can learn about God’s pattern of revelation in Ruth and 1 Samuel 1-7. Sometimes the Lord asks hard things, but when we know it comes from God, it makes it worth it to obey.

Michelle Amos didn’t aspire to a career at NASA. It wasn’t that she didn’t have big dreams; it’s just that her big dream was to work for IBM. But once she arrived on the campus of the Kennedy Space Center, she fell in love with its mission and never left—until she was called on a different kind of mission.

INTRODUCTION:

Books, articles, and numerous Internet websites work to undermine faith in Joseph Smith’s first vision, but historically there have been just three main arguments against it. The minister to whom Joseph reported the event responded that there were no such things these days. More than a century later and in a literary style that masked her weakness in following the historical method, Fawn Brodie wrote that Joseph invented the vision years after he said it happened. A generation later, Wesley Walters charged Joseph with inventing revivalism when, Walters claimed, a lack of historical evidence proved that there was none and therefore there was no subsequent vision as a result. By now it has become a foregone conclusion for some that there are no such things as visions, that Joseph failed to mention his experience for years, and that he then gave conflicting accounts that failed to match historical facts. 1 But these three claims assume much more than they prove.

Within one month of being called to the Quorum of the Twelve, Elder Ballard was sent to Bolivia to begin a significant period of focused ministerial service filled with love and concern for the Saints in South America.

With Salt Lake City as the global headquarters of the LDS Church, you might assume the University of Utah, the state’s flagship school, is a major hub for scholars studying and teaching about the Mormon faith.