Get the entire FHE lesson series on "The Family: A Proclamation to the World."

As the sun begins to make the day's first appearance, the cattle ranch already bustles with activity. A handful of cowboys saddle up quarter horses to move herds into new pastures, while others prep corrals and chutes for branding calves. Eagles and hawks look to circle the morning sky and share it with heron and cranes, while deer and rabbits make their way back to woodland edges, as do the wild hogs. Meanwhile, massive tractors, graders and front loaders are lined up, to be used to reshape the land, while ranch airboats are primed for the waterways. Laborers prepare for the day's harvest in the citrus groves, while every mammal — including ranch hands and their dogs — will keep a wary eye out for nearby alligators.

Ruth grew up in Sandy, Utah and currently resides in South Jordan, Utah with her husband and four children. She has degrees from both the University of Utah and the University of Phoenix. Aside from that, she’s probably a lot like your Grandma. She likes to spend time with family, is addicted to the library app, and listening to audiobooks while cleaning. Her favorite hobbies are digging in the yard, doing Monday-level New York Times crossword puzzles, and taking care of her family (including extended family and those friends she claims as family). Ruth delights in thrift stores and has a talent for finding good things. Other hobbies include watching documentaries, America’s Test Kitchen, and Monty Don gardening shows. She shows her love to others by cooking and baking for them, and she is the neighborhood go-to for missing ingredients. Fun facts include that she can rarely follow a recipe exactly, and that she has a habit of tinkering in the kitchen using only what she has on hand. According to her kids, she is “really good at cooking,” the “best mom in the world,” “caring,” and “good at drawing slugs."

Scott and Ashley Laneri share the stories behind two very different adoptions and the miracles that brought their family together.

Students at Brigham Young University will begin their fall semester on August 30th. Two time-honored traditions at the university are the weekly devotionals and the forums held at the Marriott Center on campus. Devotionals are spiritual in nature, while forums tend to focus on a more secular topic. These weekly addresses cover a wide variety of topics and speakers range from local leaders to nationally recognized names, but they all bring welcome perspectives, insights, and spark discussion among students and faculty alike.

The Siebert family loves to sing together. Jim and Debbie, and their four children—Ashley, Emmie, Grant, and Dallin—enjoy sharing their testimonies of the gospel through videos of acapella hymns, which they post on social media using the hashtag #hymnselfie.

As the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous discovered, something profound can happen when addicts invite God or a power higher than themselves into their lives and efforts at recovery. Through understanding addiction as a symptom of spiritual “dis-ease” and addressing recovery as an attempt to restore a healthy balance between one’s own ego and desires to run things versus the will and wisdom of God or the universe, AA and its Big Book and Twelve-Step offspring programs have saved countless lives. What are the spiritual principles at work in addiction recovery? Do addicts at their wits’ and wills’ ends discover secrets that are also at work in others’ vital spiritual lives? Can non-addicts increase their own spirituality from interacting with recovering addicts and applying Big Book insights in their own spiritual journeys? However one ends up viewing the answers to these question, it’s undeniable that powerful things happen in addiction recovery work that are worth close examination (along, of course, with proper celebration of the returns to joy in recovering addicts’ lives). In this podcast, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and recovering addicts “Keith,” “John,” and “Bill” discuss addiction and recovery, AA’s Twelve Steps, and the spiritual powers that seem to be unleashed in the interaction of addicts sharing and teaching another. They also introduce and discuss the LDS Church’s Addition and Recovery Program (ARP) that is modeled after AA’s Twelve Steps but which has also adapted–in some ways successfully but still needing additional development–its approach to better match Mormon gospel teachings and to handle special concerns that arise when recovery programs become affiliated with institutions. The panel also discusses the special challenges Latter-day Saints often face in recovery, but also how the unprecedented levels of honesty and disclosure that operate in recovery work can help build even stronger LDS communities.

"Latter-day Saints are the Lord’s covenant people; therefore, 'LDS' or 'Latter-day Saint' should not be used to qualify objects such as temples, scriptures, or doctrine that belong to the Lord or His Church and not to Church members," a new article on ChurchofJesusChrist.org states. The Church recently updated the names of apps and channels such as Mormon Messages, LDS Tools, LDS Music, LDS Media Library, and more.

The First Presidency has reiterated its policies, guidelines, and practices “to ensure the safety of all participants and protect the Church and its volunteers.”