Sean Sheffey felt a God-shaped hole in his life. Then missionaries approached him in a skatepark.
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After a lunch meeting with his colleagues, Ryan had an unexpected spiritual experience.
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In 2024, 308,000 people joined the Church—the highest number of converts in a quarter century.
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The baptisms took place in a pristine jungle river.
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A former religion teacher shares how to give a spiritual and engaging baptism talk.
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After his granddaughter’s baptism, President Eyring shared a tender reflection about the gift of the Holy Ghost.
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Like Lehi before him, Amos Makulu started to share what brought him so much happiness with others in the refugee camp, building a “family” of interested learners.
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Here are a few of our favorite easy gift ideas for children who have decided to enter the waters of baptism.
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After years of exploring other faiths, YouTuber David Boice concluded that there was something undeniably different about Latter-day Saints.
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A series of remarkable promptings and experiences led a world-class cellist back to the faith she’d decidedly left more than 20 years earlier.
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Prepare your children for their baptism day and help them remember their baptismal covenants.
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No one is ever too old to step into the waters of baptism. Whether you’re 8 or 108, a covenant relationship with God is something to celebrate. Here are 19 products to help a friend or family member cherish their baptism and remember the promises they made.
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Eduardo Maradiaga didn’t know it then, but the photo he took of the Saratoga Springs Utah Temple was about to go on a journey that would give him and his family hope as they started new lives in the US.
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Meet Anurat Kaeocha, one of the newest members of the Church in Thailand and project manager for the Bangkok Thailand Temple.
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Marcia heard her grandmother constantly pray for her children, grandchildren, neighbors, and friends—and that example changed her life.
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When I reflect on how I found the gospel, I realize that my family’s experiences informed two important pieces of my testimony.
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Editor’s note: The following excerpt has been adapted from Voice of the Saints in Mongolia, the first comprehensive history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in that nation.
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After Batchimeg told Soyolmaa that they could serve a mission, they decided to put in their mission papers together around March or April 1995.
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When Chris Schoebinger was a senior in high school, he moved out of his home and into the home of, unbeknownst to him, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Hundreds of Mozambiquans are joyfully entering the waters of baptism as COVID restrictions ease.
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The handbook update was made in December 2021, but Primary General President Camille N. Johnson and her counselors shared a video on social media last week explaining the update and the responsibilities of Primary presidencies.
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Elder Gutierrez’s desire to serve is because of his love for the God he once didn’t believe in, and because he believes small invitations can change lives.
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Fatima Dedrickson still remembers her first day on the campus of Brigham Young University. Every person she passed was staring at her.
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Published in 1899, the first Church handbook was small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. The world has changed greatly since then, and so has the handbook.
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Ryan Blubaugh’s conversion story is filled with seeds being planted throughout his life, including by a friend in high school—a friend he would reach out to on Facebook after 29 years.
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Note: According to the Church's General Handbook, "Baptisms should be performed in a baptismal font if one is available. If there is not a font, a safe body of water may be used. It should be large enough for both the person performing the ordinance and the person being baptized to stand in. Water is not dedicated for baptisms."
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On this week’s episode of This is the Gospel, Ryan Cranney of Cranney Farms shares how one decision to donate more than two million pounds of potatoes led to an unlikely correspondence with a woman in Kenya and the miracles that have since followed.
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When Renu Singh’s mother became ill, Singh started a search for the truth—a search that eventually led her to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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When Craig Fisher first heard President Russell M. Nelson talk in conference, he never would have guessed that he had a connection to him that would change his understanding of God.
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President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a historic policy change Wednesday morning allowing women and children to serve as witnesses during sacred ordinances. For baptisms outside the temple, any baptized member of the Church can serve as a witness. For baptisms for the dead, any member of the Church, including women and young Church members, holding a limited-use temple recommend can serve as a witness. For sealing ordinances, any endowed member of the Church with a current temple recommend can serve as a witness.
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We pulled into the parking stall 10 minutes early for the baptism. As we prepared to get out, we saw that right outside the meetinghouse was the guest of honor: a jubilant little girl, swishing her new white dress proudly as her family began to gather.
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On June 1 in Cedar City, Utah, Jarom Hlebasko entered a baptismal font and faced his 8-year-old daughter, Miree, ready to baptize her a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At that moment, feelings of gratitude and fulfillment washed over him — gratitude because there was a time in his life when he didn’t think performing such baptism would be possible, and fulfillment because once again he was realizing a blessing pronounced years before.
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Twenty-four years.
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It's an unlikely conversion story. Calyann Barnett initially wanted a Book of Mormon so she "could argue with me and prove me wrong about religion," Latter-day Saint Clarke Miyasaki posted on Instagram. Barnett added, "When I made my list of things I would NEVER do last year—believe in Jesus, join a religion, and get baptized as a Mormon—were at the top spots on that list."
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Weeks after her first birthday, Mazlowe Ard started breathing quickly, her appetite decreased, and she grew lethargic. The Ards noticed their daughter's sudden change and took her to urgent care, where doctors passed off the symptoms as teething.
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President Russell M. Nelson often teaches powerfully and poetically about the symbolism found in the scriptures, the temple, and the life and Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. InTeachings of Russell M. Nelson, we find many insights about the significance of Jesus Christ's baptism that can help us with our Come, Follow Me study this week.
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This week's FHE lesson topic comes from the Come, Follow Me reading in Matthew 3, Mark 1, and Luke 3. Check out this week's Come, Follow Me study ideas on LDS Living for additional resources and suggestions.
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With the desire to strengthen children and youth, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently announced changes that allow eligible 11-year-olds to complete proxy baptisms in temples beginning January of the year they turn twelve.
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Side-eyeing Chloe. You've all seen her. In fact, you have probably shared a meme with her face on it. But I bet you didn't know she just had her eighth birthday and was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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As the aunt of 10 nieces and nephews, I love to watch my brother and sisters raise their kids. Among the grandchildren in my family, we’ve got two daredevils, two wild-childs, one bossy pants, and the sweetest autistic boy you’ll ever meet. Needless to say, wrangling—I mean, parenting—these kids is never the same for my brother and sisters. So when the children near the age of eight, how do they—and parents everywhere—decide on the best way to teach their child about the importance of baptism? And how much does the child actually understand?
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A child's baptism is one of the most important events in his or her life. These traditions will help emphasize its value and celebrate that decision whether you're a parent, Primary teacher, ward missionary, or anyone else involved.
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Editor’s note: This article was originally published to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the revelation declaring that all worthy males, regardless of race, may receive the priesthood. We are sharing it again to mark the 40th anniversary and to celebrate the continuing growth of the Church in Africa.
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What an amazing story!
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What a powerful example of following our Savior regardless of obstacles in our lives. As Elder Josh Bauman wrote in an email to his family, "The whole time [Juanita] was in [the baptismal font] she was saying 'Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus,' but with a small voice that struck right into the very center of your heart. After they baptized her, she came up and said, 'Kolabal Jesucristo,' which is Tzeltal [the Mayan language] for 'Thank you, Jesus Christ.'"
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Lindsey Stirling shared the Throw Back Thursday to end all TBTs yesterday.
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Calling proxy baptism in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "eccentric, not offensive," Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote recently that "Mormons undergoing peaceful rituals in their own temples aren't on the list" of the "very real, very dangerous enemies" to Judaism. "In Judaism, conversion after death is a concept without meaning," wrote Jacoby, who is Jewish. "No after-the-fact rites in this world can possibly change the Jewishness of the men, women, children and babies whom the Nazis, in their obsessive hatred, singled out for extermination.
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Toward the end of May, 1970, I stood waist high in water in a baptismal font of a temple in Hamilton, New Zealand, while the name of my deceased father was read aloud. Moments later, on his behalf, I was buried in the biblically mandated full-immersion baptism that is so powerfully symbolic of rebirth and entry into the kingdom of God. That first visit to a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints --and my first experience of what Mormons call “baptism for the dead”--was one of the most intensely significant religious experiences of my life.
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The Latter-day Saint practice of vicarious baptism on behalf of the dead is once again a focus of controversy. In the past few weeks, it's been portrayed in the news media and on the web as unbiblical, ghoulish, bizarre, shameful, vicious, anti-Semitic, immoral, hateful, an exercise in "black magic" and (by some extremists) possibly even illegal. A national television commentator recently named President Thomas S. Monson among "the worst people in the world" for presiding over the practice. It's high time for the view of a very respected non-Mormon scholar to be heard above the noise.
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In response to questions about violations of the Church's proxy baptism policy, the Church issued the following statement:
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The LDS Church is taking a tougher stand against the unauthorized submission of the names of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism. According to a statement that appeared Tuesday afternoon on the church's Newsroom website, official church disciplinary action may be taken against the offending parties.
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Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor whose name was inappropriately submitted to a genealogical database from which names are extracted for proxy baptisms in temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is outraged. "I think it's scandalous," Wiesel told the Huffington Post after the story broke earlier this week that his name, along with his father's and maternal grandfather's, appeared on the database. "Not only objectionable, it's scandalous."
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