Driving through the rain-soaked streets of Portland, Oregon, on October 19, 2016, Michelle Schmidt wasn’t worried about her oldest daughter, Annie Schmidt, even though Annie hadn’t arrived to pick Michelle up from the airport.

If you were a bookie making bets in Zarahemla between 100 and 92 BC, with the foreknowledge provided by the Book of Mormon, you could have made a million dollars a day by giving long odds on this proposition: I’m willing to wager 10,000 senines that Alma the Younger will one day be President of the Church!

“Not everything in life is . . . black and white, but it seems that the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and its keystone role in our belief is exactly that. Either Joseph Smith was the prophet he said he was, who, after seeing the Father and the Son, later beheld the angel Moroni, repeatedly heard counsel from his lips, eventually receiving at his hands a set of ancient gold plates which he then translated according to the gift and power of God or else he did not. And if he did not… he is not entitled to retain even the reputation of New England folk hero or well-meaning young man or writer of remarkable fiction. No, and he is not entitled to be considered a fine teacher or a quintessential American prophet or the center of great wisdom literature. If he lied about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, he is certainly none of these” (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, "A Standard unto My People," delivered at the CES Book of Mormon Symposium, 9 August 1994, BYU Marriott Center).

A lovely young lady sat in my office a while ago. Her life, which had begun with joy, service, and obedience, had descended through successive layers of iniquity and decadence to a place where blackness enveloped her, and she was miserable. Like Lehi of old, she beheld herself (see 1 Nephi 8:7). Like the prodigal son, she had spent too much time with the pigs and had come to herself (see Luke 15:17). She did not like what she saw in her mirror each morning and came at last to the one unfailing source of help. She came to my office seeking the Savior, because she had finally realized that there was nowhere else to go.

When Stephen Nelson signed on as the producer of the newly formed group GENTRI, he had a few conditions: he would not perform on stage, he would not travel, he would not be in any music videos, and he would not be in any social media posts.

Hank Smith

Often we influence each other in ways that we will never know or understand, but sometimes, we are gifted the opportunity to see how we touch each other’s lives for good.

The three Nephites—few in the Church have not heard about these translated beings. Like the apostle John, these three disciples of Christ chose to "live to behold all the doings of the Father unto the children of men" (3 Nephi 28:7), meaning they are translated beings who will live on the earth until the Second Coming.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at her today, but Ann Romney was once 100 percent tomboy.