For everyone's information, all the missionaries in Liberia are safe and sound. During the elections, they are staying inside and no one goes out. We fly into Liberia Friday to see everyone and have Zone Conferences to conclude the rest of our Mission Tour with Elder Mensah. We have two District Conferences as well.

A few years ago, a Harvard University professor contacted Wade Sperry, an agricultural specialist in the Church’s welfare department.

A native Virginian, Molly converted to the church her senior year of high school. She met her sweetheart while she was a foreign exchange student through Virginia Tech and he was a missionary in Malta. They reconnected after she transferred to BYU have now been married for almost 27 years. She has four children, and spent many years as a stay at home mom before, becoming an elementary music and later 5th grade teacher. She currently works on the Children and Youth team in the Priesthood and Family Department as a project coordinator for a variety of assignments including the Worldwide Broadcast events and Scriptures Media. She loves good books, movies, music, dancing, playing the piano, singing, and the dramatic arts. She fervently believes in bringing back naptime for the world at large and survives these days through the comfort of coke zero, and knowing that when God gives us a calling he has already factored in our stupidity.

Kristy Wheelwright Taylor serves as the board secretary for the Wilford Woodruff Papers Foundation and helps with transcription and writing on the Wilford Woodruff Papers Project. She has loved getting to know Wilford Woodruff better through his own words and appreciates all has taught about being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Kristy has a master's degree in humanities from Brigham Young University and has worked as an English instructor at Purdue University, copy editor, technical writer, travel writer, and historical researcher and writer, and now spends much of her time volunteering in community and church work while also writing for various websites and publications. A native of Boston, she now lives with her husband in Fort Worth, with their four amazing kids scattered across the country.

Rebecca Miller is the instructor for the Independent Study Biblical Hebrew course at BYU and serves as an assistant instructor for HEB 131–132 on campus with Dr. Donald W. Parry. Before teaching Biblical Hebrew, she worked as a licensed dental hygienist for 14 years until she felt a strong prompting from the Lord to return to school to study Biblical Hebrew. Following that impression has led her into teaching and opened doors to grow both spiritually and academically. She is also a mother of seven and loves skiing, hiking, family history, and exploring National Parks with her husband and children. Learning and teaching Biblical Hebrew has strengthened her faith in the Lord and brought the scriptures alive with new meaning, and she loves sharing that same joy with others.

“The family is the most important unit in time and in eternity and, as such, transcends every other interest in life.” The family is more important than you or me as individuals. The family is the engine of social and spiritual growth. There is nothing we can accomplish in mortality that can equal the power for good a family can provide. There is also nothing we can accomplish in mortality that a family cannot effect for far longer. The effects of a good family can reach down through many generations, affecting the lives of countless thousands. The cumulative effect of one good family after another in a family line is incalculable.

I went to an LDS church service yesterday for the first time in years.

“I have loved researching and writing about my ladies—Lucy Mack Smith, Emma Smith, Eliza R. Snow, Zina D. H. Young, and Emmeline B. Wells. But these women are just five of so many more. I invite you to learn about some whose names you may have never heard. They are worth it—you want these ladies on your team.”

Elder M. Russell Ballard was sustained as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in October 1985. Prior to that, he served in the first Quorum of the Seventy and in the presidency of that quorum. A successful businessman, he has engaged in various enterprises, including automotive, real estate, and investments. He has also served as a bishop twice and as president of the Canada Toronto Mission. Elder Ballard and his wife, Barbara Bowen Ballard, are the parents of seven children and grandparents of forty-three.

Newsletter is a new option on LDS.org that can be used by wards, stakes, branches, and districts to publish news and messages to their members. This is an online alternative to paper or email newsletters that organizations typically create. It’s also a replacement for the “News and Information” section of the old ward and stake websites (ward.lds.org) that are now replaced by the new LDS.org functions Calendar, Directory, Newsletter, and Lesson Schedules.