Jenny Oaks Baker recently released her 14th album, Awakening—a stunning collection of inspiring music featuring other artists such as Condoleezza Rice, GENTRI, and Lexi Walker. Listen to a sample of the music found on this album in the recently released video below, or check out the CD, available at Deseret Book stores and deseretbook.com.

"I've always thought if the women of the church all wanted the same thing, step back," said Sharon Eubank, the director of humanitarian services at LDS Charities. "I've really felt that before, and this was an opportunity for that to happen."

This is one of my all-time favorite LDS YouTube videos! When LDS comedian Shawn Rapier approaches the microphone, he demonstrates all the hilariously awkward ways you can start a church talk in your ward. Enjoy a few minutes laughing—and maybe even squirming—as you watch all the things you shouldn't do during a sacrament meeting talk in just 2 minutes.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints confirmed Saturday that it purchased 6,000 acres of Missouri farmland and three historical sites from the Community of Christ — the group formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “The Church recently acquired operating farmland and several other non-farmland properties located in Missouri and Ohio from the Community of Christ," LDS Church spokesperson Scott Trotter said. "Non-farm sites include the Haun’s Mill and the Far West Burying Ground in Missouri as well as the Joseph Smith Sr. home in Kirtland, Ohio."

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.

If you thought Team Obama was having a rough time figuring out how best to handle Mitt Romney’s presidential run, consider the plight of the poor Latter-day Saints. Despite the growth and gradual mainstreaming of Mormonism in recent years, the church is still regarded by many as disconcertingly exotic. Now, with the very real possibility that one of its own could wind up in the Oval Office, the LDS finds itself scrambling to adjust to life in the global spotlight.

Recently, KSL highlighted an LDS artist, Jolynn Forman, who uses cold wax and oil paints to create fanciful and stunning works of art.

Voters are likely to know two things about Mitt Romney: that he’s rich and that he’s a Mormon. At the same time, more than one fifth of Americans tell pollsters they won’t vote for a Mormon for president. Yet if Americans understood Mormonism a little better, they might begin to think of Romney’s faith as a feature, not a bug, in the Romney candidacy. If anything, Romney’s religion may be the best offset to the isolation from ordinary people imposed by his wealth. It was Romney’s faith that sent him knocking on doors as a missionary—even as his governor father campaigned for the presidency of the United States. It was Romney’s position as a Mormon lay leader that had him sitting at kitchen tables doing family budgets during weekends away from Bain Capital. It was Romney’s faith that led him and his sons to do chores together at home while his colleagues in the firm were buying themselves ostentatious toys.

A brother and sister are home after leaving their Mormon missions to prepare for a funeral Friday to honor their parents and two younger brothers, who died together Saturday night from carbon monoxide poisoning.

In his most recent music video, Alex Boyé teamed up with the Five Strings, a group of LDS siblings, to create this free and beautiful version of "Amazing Grace," with some of the text sung in Swahili.