My high school class ring was all bling. BHS, for Bountiful High School, stood out boldly on one side of a ruby stone. On the opposing side were the numerals ’71. It was gold and heavy and showy, and I liked it when it was new. But, the most durable feature of the ring didn’t come from the skillful hand of a jeweler. It came from church ball. It was during my sophomore year. Winter. A cold junior varsity locker room was being used by the local church basketball teams for a tournament. Earlier in the year I’d had a locker in that room as part of the school football team. The locks securing the faded green cubicles now belonged to the players not skilled enough to make the varsity hoops squad.

You may have read our article on 6 things you DON’T need to be happy. Well, here are some reasons why the happiest returned missionaries, (and most people) are the way they are. I’m not saying that you have to have all of these to be happy, but I am saying that applying any one of these will make you a happier person, whether or not you served a full-time mission.

Jokes about sacred underpants have reached epidemic proportions, thanks to Mitt Romney’s presidential bid and the musical masterpiece by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, “The Book of Mormon”. But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to give it its full name, is fighting back. A huge advertising campaign features ordinary people doing ordinary things—a white man sporting a beard, a black man sporting a moustache and a young skateboarder flying through the air—with the tag line: “I’m a Mormon.” The snag is, not everyone will buy the idea that Mormons are just like the rest of us. They don’t get drunk. They have large families, stable marriages and a three-month supply of food in the larder in case of Armageddon. They are usually clean-cut and neatly dressed (the facial hair in the “I’m a Mormon” ads is thankfully atypical). And they have a passion for business.

I attended Brigham Young University back in the 1970s (yep, it dates me), when the Osmonds and their television variety program — “The Donny & Marie Show” — were a hit. BYU students filled the audience seats at the Osmonds’ television studio, and Donnie and Marie and family put on a popular, high-energy musical show every week for three years, to the delight of screaming teens and young adults (and, no, I didn’t scream). And, when you think about it, the Osmonds’ longevity is pretty amazing — more than 50 years in show business, since the early days when the Osmond brothers were regulars on Andy Williams’ TV show.

Today was ward conference, and as is typical in ward conference sacrament meeting, we had two speakers: the bishop and the stake president. Both of their talks were excellent, and they both happened to do the same thing in such a way that I thought there was a lesson there for good public speaking that I commented on at the beginning of my Sunday School class.

Mormon, our beloved narrative guide through the Book of Mormon, was described by Ammaron, another record keeper, this way, “I perceive that thou art a sober child, and art quick to observe” (Mormon 1:2).

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the September/October 2020 issue of LDS Living magazine.

I first became acquainted with the Jewish Passover feast on a study-abroad semester at the BYU Jerusalem Center. We had a Jewish rabbi take us through an abbreviated Seder meal which is a central part of the Passover celebration. I was enchanted. I felt some pangs of righteous “holy envy” for the rich symbolism of this ancient feast practiced by faithful Jews for thousands of years.

As Donny Osmond recently discovered, when life gets stressful, there's always one unusual but effective way of loosening up—goat yoga.