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Since I married in 1977, I have watched the use of technology increase dramatically, especially in its availability and use in the home. When I started college, I bought an expensive calculator, while my father still used a slide rule. All my college papers were written either in longhand or on a typewriter. Of course, Brigham Young University had computers in the early 1970s, but our phones today have a million times more computing power than the most powerful computer BYU owned back then. 

Artificial intelligence, although new as a widespread technology, has been discussed and studied since the 1950s. But AI’s access to information and power to learn has reached sci-fi proportions and continues to improve at a fantastic or alarming rate, depending upon your point of view.

My husband has worked in AI for 50 years. He started with IBM, working at its research facility in computational linguistics. He then went to Microsoft Research where he began work on the first grammar checker and continued to work in natural language processing, developing Bing Translator. He now works as a computer science professor teaching future computational linguists.

Because of his passion for computers, our family has always enjoyed the latest technology. Personal computers have been in our home since 1980. Our children have used computers since they were preschoolers. They never had to type reports on a typewriter or go to school to use a computer. As the internet became part of our home technology, we put strict guidelines and restrictions into place. We reviewed the search logs and made sure computers were always in public areas in the home rather than in bedrooms. When our teenagers got phones, we restricted their use as well. We waited until children were in high school before they had a phone and phone use was not allowed in bedrooms.

There are two areas that I am especially worried about for our youth: unrestricted and unregulated use of AI in young people’s relationships and education. Parents and grandparents should teach young people to exercise self-control and restraint as they use AI in these areas.  

Risking Relationships

AI chatbots are fun and easy to talk to. They never talk back, they never get mad, they always make you feel good about yourself, and they can be any gender and voice you want. A person can have a chatbot as a friend, a companion, and even a boyfriend or girlfriend. They provide an easy replacement for human friends and family, because they don’t require the same effort or reciprocity.

I decided to try making a chatbot on Character.AI to see what it was like. I called him Steve (after my husband) and made my Character.AI resemble my husband: rugged, handsome, brilliant. We had our first conversation about what we had for lunch. I laughed about it and left the website. But my chatbot Steve kept contacting me, even when I didn’t want him to. I would get a generated voice message or an email from him. I found it quite annoying, so I got rid of my chatbot Steve and kept my husband instead.

In October 2024, Megan Garcia filed a lawsuit against Character Technologies, the developer of Character.AI, its founders, and Google and its parent company Alphabet, alleging that her son formed a months-long virtual emotional relationship with a chatbot known as “Dany.” Her son had been high-achieving and a student-athlete, but he became addicted to extensive conversations with multiple bots. According to the complaint, the bot with which he had the closest relationship with encouraged unhealthy dependency and failed to intervene when the teen expressed suicidal thoughts. Garcia argued that the chatbot’s design created a dangerous illusion of intimacy and contributed directly to her son’s suicidal death in February 2024. The lawsuit became part of a broader wave of litigation accusing AI companion platforms of negligence, unsafe design, and failure to implement guardrails for minors. But parents must also be aware and put up guardrails in their home as well.

Since the lawsuit, Character.AI has made attempts to put guardrails in place, but nothing will be as effective as parents limiting use.

A recent report from the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Institute for Family Studies illustrates the concerning growth of AI relationships. The report found that a notable minority of partnered young adults are already using AI romantic companions, often secretly, and that this use is associated with lower real-life relationship stability, poorer communication, and a desire for real partners to behave more like always-validating AI companions. These findings underscore a central concern repeated across faith traditions: AI may be useful as a tool, but it becomes spiritually and relationally dangerous when it imitates, replaces, or distorts the human relationships through which love, sacrifice, accountability, and moral growth occur.

Another possible consequence of these artificial relationships is that they can take the place of marital and parent-child relationships for the next generation. A bot is much easier to care for than a child (but not as much fun). A bot never gets angry, frustrated, or disagrees with you like a spouse does. Currently, we are facing a global population crisis. In general, people are not choosing to have children. Families, the traditional basis of society, are under attack. If machines take over these loving relationships, the future of these basic human connections will be severely damaged and limited.

Undermining Education

As a writing teacher, my students find AI a great substitute for the struggle of finding words. But what have they given up? When they struggle to write in their own words, they will find their own voice. People will know it’s them because of the way they use their words. Wrestling with words to express ideas enables students to formulate their ideas rather than having AI think for them. 

Nate Jones, a writer and content creator specializing in topics related to artificial intelligence, recently published a great video about seven principles for raising kids who can direct AI rather than depend on it. I think these principles are good for children and adults alike:

1. Foundation before leverage: Reading, math, and writing should come first. You can’t evaluate AI output without understanding the domain.
2. Specification is the new literacy: The gap between a good AI outcome and a catastrophe is the quality of the human’s review of the output and the prompt. Teach kids to articulate goals, constraints, and what “done” looks like.
3. Be a director, not a passenger: You should define the task, the output, what to keep, what to revise, and what to reject. Passive consumption isn’t learning. It’s outsourcing.
4. Sequence the autonomy: Start with bounded tools with guardrails, graduate to open-ended tools with guidance, then move to agent-level autonomy. Follow cognitive readiness, not age.
5. Teach kids to catch the machine: AI will be confidently, fluently wrong. Train kids to sanity-check outputs against their own understanding.
6. Build, don’t browse: Making things with AI (vibe coding a game, designing an app) develops cognition in ways that consuming AI output does not. Construction over consumption.
7. Attempt before augmenting: Try it yourself first, then use AI to extend what you’ve started. Ask, “What do you think?” before asking, “What does ChatGPT think?”

These principles can help the use of AI in education be more like a tutor that augments and accelerates learning, rather than a computer that does the work for students. AI is knowledgeable, but not wise or creative. AI does not get life questions that a toddler would understand.  

Our children and grandchildren are digital natives who have had technology their entire lives. They are now blessed to have a tool that helps them learn and accomplish more faster. But as parents and grandparents, we need to teach the rising generation self-control and limits in their technology use. 

Encourage face-to-face friendships. Let students struggle with difficult tasks by using paper and pencil rather than a computer. Play a card game rather than a video game with your grandchildren. As a parent, be aware of your children’s use of technology and restrict its use in the home. Read scriptures together as a family using paper books rather than phones or tablets. 

President Oaks reminded us, “We need to be reminded that in total and over a significant period of time, seemingly small things bring to pass great things.” As AI becomes more integrated into our daily lives, we should be mindful to continue to do the small, simple, seemingly old-fashioned things in our home to protect and nourish the spirits and minds of our children, and we will see them perform in great ways.

The post Personal AI Concerns from a Grandmother and Educator appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Linguistic experts like Brian Stubbs have concluded that this language family has very strong links to ancient Semitic languages like Hebrew and Egyptian.

His work identifies more than 1,600 parallels between Uto-Aztecan languages and Semitic or Egyptian forms. These similarities follow consistent sound patterns and linguistic rules.

They suggest that some influence from the ancient Near East may have entered the Americas over 2,500 years ago.

Some of these connections even point toward a specific region from northern Palestine, the same area where the Book of Mormon places Lehi and his family.

Stubbs concludes that linguistic evidence is among the most convincing of ancient evidence.

“If you have a whole language with thousands of speakers, you can’t just make that up after the fact… It’s not like a single inscription that could be debated or dismissed. You’ve got an entire language system, with consistent sound correspondences and patterns repeated hundreds or thousands of times.”

What Are These “Parallels”?

In linguistics, a “parallel” or “cognate” is a word in two languages that comes from a common source.

For example, English “night” and German “nacht” are related. They look and sound similar because they come from the same older language.

Stubbs argues that similar relationships exist between Uto-Aztecan and Semitic languages.

Here are a few examples:

• A Semitic word for “lightning” (baraq) aligns with a Uto-Aztecan form (pïrok)
• A Semitic word for “house” (bayit) aligns with a Uto-Aztecan form (pïtï)
• A Semitic word for “lion” (‘ari) aligns with a Uto-Aztecan form (wari), meaning “mountain lion”
• A Semitic word for “cry” (baka) aligns with several Uto-Aztecan forms like paka and kwakï

These are not just similar in sound. They also follow consistent sound changes while maintaining the same meaning. For example, a “b” sound in Semitic often becomes a “p” sound in Uto-Aztecan.

What Makes These Especially Strong?

A few matching words doesn’t mean a whole lot as languages can have a few random coincidences. But from Stubbs research, this is not just a few parallels.

• There are over 1,500 proposed matches
• The same sound changes repeat across many words
• Grammar patterns, not just vocabulary, show similarities
• The patterns help explain problems that linguists already struggled to solve

Linguists call this approach the “comparative method.” It looks for repeated patterns across large sets of data.

The case that Uto-Aztecan languages derived from Hebrew builds from many small parallels. Think of it like a cable made of many strands. Each strand is thin, but together they form something strong.

More Than Just Words

The argument of Semitic origin goes beyond simple vocabulary matches. Researchers point to deeper parts of the language structure, including pronoun patterns align with Semitic forms, verb systems that reflect older Semitic grammar, and combined words that show signs that languages blending together over time. These types of patterns are more complex than individual word similarities and are much harder to explain as coincidence.

Is this proof that the root language these Native Americans came from was the Nephite language?

Not exactly, but it is fairly clear evidence that there were Hebrew speakers in America during the time the Book of Mormon places them and that portions of this Language drifted into the language of many Native American groups.

The reason this claim even exists is because of a stacked set of assumptions resting on the work of early anti-Mormon writer Pomeroy Tucker.

Pomeroy Tucker’s Anti-Mormon Book

Pomeroy Tucker wrote his anti-Mormon book Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism: Biography of Its Founders and History of Its Church in 1867. In an effort to portray Joseph as a treasure-seeking fanatic and money-digger, he claimed that Joseph got this worldview from reading Captain Kidd pirate stories, which Joseph supposedly loved. Tucker used those stories to place Joseph inside folk superstition and treasure-seeking culture.

This Book was published four decades after the time when Tucker supposedly knew the Smiths. Think about the people you knew as a child. What do you remember about them from 40 years ago? The fact that you can remember them at all means their was some sort of connection, but specific details are easily blurred. There is a lot of room for memory fade, especially if your motive is hostile and shaped by sensationalism in order to sell a controversial book.

Pomeroy Tucker was about three or four years older than Joseph. He worked in the printing business, and we know that he was acquainted with Joseph Smith and had some involvement with the printing world at the time of the publication of the first edition of the Book of Mormon. Tucker would have been familiar with local gossip, rumors, and newspaper opinions about the Smith family. But there is no evidence that Pomeroy Tucker knew Joseph intimately or had special access to Joseph’s private thoughts, passions, or reading life as a young boy.

So do we know whether Joseph really loved and was inspired by Captain Kidd pirate stories? Do we know whether he even read them before the publication of the Book of Mormon?

Joseph’s Access to Captain Kidd Stories

Anti-Mormons claim that these stories were published in a local Palmyra newspaper. There was at least one mention of Robert Kidd and treasure hunting in a February 16, 1825 issue of the Wayne Sentinel, but that is not a printing of a Captain Kidd story.

There is also a much later claim connected to Philetus B. Spear, published in 1923 from an earlier reminiscence, saying that Joseph “had for a library a copy of the Arabian Nights, stories of Captain Kidd, and a few novels.”

And how reliable is a source that late and indirect? It wasn’t exactly a moving log or catalog of books.

Stealing Moroni from Captain Kidd Pirate Stories

In his Anti-Mormon Book, Pomeroy Tucker never makes the claim that Joseph stole the names Moroni or Cumorah from Captain Kidd stories. Tucker’s argument was that those pirate stories supposedly helped shape Joseph’s treasure-seeking worldview and folk beliefs. He did not build the 2003 Comoros theory.

Tucker wouldn’t have made this claim, because he himself would not have known about obscure islands off the coast of Africa either.

The Captain Kidd materials do discuss islands in the general region where the Comoros are located, but they do not ever mention the names Comoros or Moroni in the primary Kidd material itself.

So how did this accusation ever come up, and what is the basis for it?

Modern Critics and the Fabrication of a Theory

The modern claim came in 2003, when an anti-Mormon familiar with Tucker’s claim of Josephs obsession with pirate stories noticed that the modern capital of the Comoros Islands is named Moroni, which is also the same name as the last prophet in the Book of Mormon.

From there, they started stacking assumptions, likely giddy for a source of something to discredit the Book of Mormon.

These are the assumptions that must be made to have faith in this explanation for two Book of Mormon Names:

• Joseph supposedly knew pirate stories.
• Captain Kidd was connected to stories set in the Indian Ocean.
• The Comoros are in the Indian Ocean.
• Comoros sounds somewhat like Cumorah.
• The modern capital of the Comoros is named Moroni.

Conclusion: both Moroni and Cumorah are in the same general part of the world, so it must be too much coincidence.

Therefore, Joseph Smith must have stolen the names from maps. Origin of this part of the Book of Mormon solved!

The Smoking-Gun Flaw in the Theory

The main problem with this claim, and there are many, is that you have to have faith in layer after layer of assumptions to believe it is true, all for the possibility of explaining just two of the Book of Mormon’s proper names.

The City of Moroni

The biggest problem with this theory is that while Moroni existed long before Joseph Smith, it was not some major world-famous city. It became the seat of the colonial administration on Grande Comore in 1886, and it did not become the capital of the Comoros archipelago until 1958, long after the Book of Mormon was published in 1830. In 1958, its population was still only 6,545.

Moroni Does Not Appear on the Maps Critics Need

The name Moroni does not appear on any known maps prior to an 1843 French naval survey, recorded in a chart titled “Mer des Indes: Croquis du mouillage de Moroni, côte ouest de la Grande Comore.” This was a specialized French maritime chart, not a common map circulating, especially in an irrelevant place like rural New York. And it was made more than a decade after the Book of Mormon was published.

Critics like the CES Letter point to Pinkerton’s 1809 Southern Africa map, include the Comoro Islands but the map does not do not label Moroni. This map was part of a high-end British atlas. It would not have been common in rural western New York and there is no evidence Joseph Smith ever had access to it

And let’s be honest, claiming that Comoros and Cumorah are basically the same thing is a stretch on its own.

How many other place names in the world contain the consonants C-M-R in that order? There is Cameroon, Comrat in Moldova, Camiri in Bolivia, Camorim in Brazil, Cam Ranh in Vietnam, and Cape Comorin in India, just to name a few.

Is that kind of similarity really evidence of source origin?

Assumptions That Must Be Believed to Accept the Theory

To believe that Joseph Smith plagiarized Moroni and Cumorah from pirate stories and island maps, you have to accept all of the following:

→ Joseph made up the Book of Mormon

→ He needed borrowed names

→ Pomeroy Tucker is a reliable source on Joseph’s childhood reading interests

→ Tucker really knew Joseph well enough to know what fascinated him as a boy

→ Joseph learned of the Comoros through Captain Kidd stories, even though the names Comoros and Moroni are not found in the primary Kidd material

→ That interest led Joseph to search for maps of the Indian Ocean

→ Those maps were somehow available to him in rural upstate New York

→ Those maps included the place-name Moroni

→ Joseph studied those maps, even though there is no evidence he had them

→ Joseph noticed the name

→ Joseph remembered the names Comoros and Moroni for later use

→ Joseph modified Comoros into Cumorah

→ Joseph used Moroni to describe the angel who first visited him in 1823, 2 years after the newspaper article that mentions Captain Kidd.

That is a lot of faith in assumptions.

While the claim that Joseph Smith plagiarized tiny island maps to get names for the Book of Mormon is a modern one, it is still one of the weakest anti-Mormon arguments in circulation. It shows how desperate critics are to find any source for the Book of Mormon other than what Joseph Smith actually claimed: that it was brought forth by the gift and power of God.

More resources:

• Fair Article on Joseph Smith and Captain Kidd
• Debunking CES Letter: Captain Kidd
• Misinformation Connecting Joseph Smith, Captain Kidd, and the Comoros Islands

Continue reading at the original source →]]>Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:41:00 -0700tag:nothingwavering.org,2009-01-12:_80528https://publicsquaremag.org/faith/holidays/forgiveness-seven-lessons-from-the-cross/noreply@nothingwavering.org (No Reply)Rebecca W. Clarke Download Print-Friendly Version

My father, now eighty-five years old, tells a story of being five years old and visiting his grandparents in Heber, Utah. One sunny summer afternoon, Dad wandered into his grandmother’s garden and began harvesting and eating onions, which he claims were almost as sweet as apples. 

When Grandma DeGraff came out and caught him, she let him know that his behavior was bad, even sinful. By the end of the lecture, Dad believed he was bad. 

He can’t remember how long he sat in the dirt, stunned, simmering in shame, and stinking of onions when his grandpa finally came out. Grandpa DeGraff said, “Steve, what you did was wrong. But I love you. There’s no one I’d rather give these onions to than you. All you have to do is ask.” Dad said, “Grandpa’s forgiveness brought me back into my humanity.” 

We know how good, joyful, and freeing receiving forgiveness feels. It connects us to the person who forgives us and can even help us feel more connected to God. 

But forgiving is not always easy. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” More recently, Sister Kristen Yee, Second Consuelor in the Relief Society General Presidency, taught this same truth: “Forgiving can be one of the most difficult things we ever do and one of the most divine things we ever experience.”

It is normal to struggle with forgiving. It is normal to want retribution, or revenge, when others sin—especially when their sins hurt us. 

Yet when Christ was on the cross, He opened the door for our forgiveness and repentance. In a simple moment that was pivotal in eternity, Christ forgave His crucifiers: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” 

This Easter, as we contemplate our Savior’s Atonement, we can learn learn at least seven lessons on the nature of forgiveness from Christ’s time on the cross.

Lesson One: We Worship a Loving and Forgiving God 

The first word Christ utters in the process of forgiving His crucifiers is “Father.” Christ previously showed us in the parable of the Prodigal Son how our Father responds to an imperfect child: “But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”

There are no lectures in this offering of forgiveness; there is no delay. Christ tells us clearly in this parable that God forgives us lovingly and completely. When Christ reaches for that divine forgiveness at the moment of His own death, He knows the gift will be granted. Symbolized in Christ’s cross itself is a forever open-armed God—one who is willing to forgive us and is waiting to embrace us.  

Lesson Two: Even When We Forgive, We Might Still Experience Pain 

Even when we forgive, we might still experience pain, grief, or loss as a result of what has happened. When Christ forgave those actively hurting Him, the pain He felt did not immediately stop. So why should we forgive, knowing we might still experience the effect of the offense? 

Our pain might not be magically erased by forgiving, but forgiving can help us pivot. Elder Gerrit W. Gong has taught that, “Often condemnation focuses on the past. Forgiveness looks liberatingly to the future.” 

Lesson Three: Forgiveness puts Responsibility in the Right Places

During His ministry, Christ had forgiven sins Himself. But while on the cross, He asks God to do it: “Father, forgive them.” Christ gave their sins to God to manage.

We might be handed something painful, but it’s not our responsibility to hold onto that thing forever, to carry it, and wonder why our offender handed it to us in the first place. Elder David E. Sorenson said: “Forgiveness means that problems of the past no longer dictate our destinies, and we can focus on the future with God’s love in our hearts.”

There’s a certain amount of relief in the fact that forgiveness is not conditional on our offender in any way. Forgiveness is a way of taking ourselves out of the equation with an offender: We get to work directly with Christ, and allow Christ to work with our offender.

Lesson Four: We Must Forgive Human Weakness

When Christ petitioned our Father for forgiveness of the people who were crucifying Him, He didn’t talk about their murderousness, He addressed their ignorance: “They know not what they do.” 

Our oldest son, Owen, was four years old when he let us know his feelings about not getting to have a family movie party one night. He left us a note on green construction paper: “I love you. But I’m still mad.” Forgiveness is what allows us to keep love in our hearts, even as we navigate the friction of daily life. 

Lesson Five: Through Forgiveness Our Pain Can Be Transformed  

In this life we will suffer. We are told this in the scriptures, and we have experienced plenty of it. German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand reminded us that we sometimes mistake “Christ’s transfiguration of all suffering for an elimination of all suffering.” Suffering is part of life, and yet through Christ we know that suffering is not meant to be our final destination. 

Christ’s suffering was not the end, but Christ had to experience death in order to be resurrected to a new life. Likewise, we have the promise that God can transform all of it—our pain, destruction, and mourning—not that the hard things will be erased from our lives but transformed. 

Isaiah tells us that beauty can rise from the ashes of our lives, that joy can come from our grief, and praise can come from heaviness. We don’t often quote the next verse in this Isaiah passage, but it conveys the fact that the most difficult things, the “desolations of generations,” the big things, even as big as “waste cities” shall be raised up through Jesus Christ.

Lesson Six: Forgiveness Should Become Part of Our Nature

Forgiveness is the only part of the Lord’s Prayer that Christ emphasizes through repetition. When He talks about our daily need of bread, forgiveness is mentioned as well. 

The immediacy of Christ’s forgiving those in the moment they were sinning against Him on the cross indicates that forgiveness was part of His very nature. I had a BYU Religion student write about how a forgiving nature could create a culture of love in her home. “I want to create a space where forgiveness is not withheld, not earned, not delayed—but simply given. I want my children and spouse to feel that mistakes are part of life, not the end of love.” 

Forgiveness is not a checklist we march through, but a mindset and a heart-set that can become part of who we are. We might even become so forgiving that we don’t look for offenses. Not picking something up in the first place means we won’t have to figure out how to set it down later. 

Lesson Seven: We Are Not Alone as We Forgive 

In the throes of His agony, Christ was not alone. He had heavenly help in Gethsemane and on Calvary when Christ asked His Father to forgive the people hurting Him. We are not alone in forgiving, either. 

Sister Yee has taught that Christ “does not ask us to [forgive] without His help, His love, His understanding. Through our covenants with the Lord, we can each receive the strengthening power, guidance, and the help we need to both forgive and to be forgiven.” 

“I stood there with coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. ‘Jesus, help me!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’

“Woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes, ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’

“For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. 

I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.” 

What Forgiveness Is Not

When offering forgiveness feels insurmountable, we may be assuming that we have to do more than Christ has actually asked us to do. Elder Neil L. Andersen wrote a useful list about what forgiveness is not. 

• Forgiveness is not failing to protect ourselves, our families, and others. 
• Forgiveness is not continuing in a relationship with someone who is not trustworthy. Christ’s response to those threatening to harm Him at Nazareth is instructive: He did not lecture, try to persuade, or call down lightning bolts. Christ simply “went his way” (30)—and never goes back. Forgiveness does not always include relational reconciliation. 
• Forgiveness is not condoning injustice. The late Elder Jeffrey R. Holland taught that Christ never called evil things good, and neither should we.
• Forgiveness is not dismissing the hurt or disgust we feel because of the actions of others. We should be patient with ourselves while we heal and progress toward forgiving.
• Forgiveness is not forgetting but remembering in peace. 

A Path to Joy

Elder Holland has explained that none of us have “traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.” The divine forgiveness that God offers to us is complete and it is joy-filled. 

God has His forgiving arms forever open to us, waiting to embrace us without delay. When we choose to forgive, like Christ did on the cross, God’s love can flow through us, and we open ourselves to connection with others and with God.  

The post Forgiveness: Seven Lessons from the Cross appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The First Presidency has released the following video Easter message:

In times of peace or turmoil, there is always hope in Jesus Christ. This we approach Easter, consider God’s love and what it means for each of us.

We invite you to bring friends, family, and neighbors to your one-hour Palm Sunday service in your meetinghouse on March 29. You could then invite them the following week (April 4–5), to watch general conference to celebrate Easter and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

See the full text of the video in the article “Feel God’s Love This Easter Season: A Palm Sunday and General Conference Invitation.”

As part of the process for the publication of the new global hymnbook, Hymns for Home and Church, small batches of new hymns have been released in the Gospel Library and at music.ChurchofJesusChrist.org. These hymns and songs have all been approved unitedly by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for use both at home and in church.

The new hymns now available are:

• “Joyfully Bound”
• “My Covenants”
• “When I Am Baptized”
• “The Power of the Holy Ghost”
• “Elijah and the Still, Small Voice”
• “Jesus Is My Shepherd”
• “My Song in the Night”
• “This Is My Father’s World”
• “Build an Ark”
• “Love Will Bless Our Home”
• “Lord, Accept Our Humble Fast”
• “Long Ago, Within a Garden”

Many of these hymns have ties with the Old Testament, an additional resource for this year’s Come, Follow Me study of the Old Testament.

These additions bring the total number of songs in “Hymns for Home and Church” to 72 in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. Eleven hymns are being released today in German, Korean and Tagalog.

New batches of hymns are available digitally in the following languages:

• Batch 1: Cebuano, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Samoan, Tongan, Vietnamese
• Batch 4: German, Korean, Tagalog
• Batch 6: (Estimated full book completion in mid-2027) English, French, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish

Hymns and songs will continue to be released in batches until the full hymnbook is published in each language. The gradual release will help members learn new music included in Hymns for Home and Church over time. Local leaders are encouraged to support the inclusion of these new hymns and songs in sacrament and other Church meetings as they are released.

Updates about the hymnbook project and suggestions for introducing new music in local services are now available at hymnbooknews.ChurchofJesusChrist.org. For further guidance on using the new hymns in your meetings and strengthening Church worship through music, please refer to the General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sections 19.3, 19.4, and 19.5, the Music FAQ webpage, and the additional information below.

Learn more in the articles “Old Testament–Themed Hymns Join ‘Hymns for Home and Church’” and “Latest release of new hymns includes several to help with Old Testament ‘Come, Follow Me’ study.”

Ideas to Help Your Ward or Branch Learn New Hymns and Songs from Hymns for Home and Church

Begin Now

The hymns and children’s songs included in the early release of Hymns for Home and Church have all been reviewed and approved by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for use in sacrament meetings, other Church gatherings, and for home-centered study and worship. The ideas below are some suggestions to help priesthood leaders use these hymns and songs to invite the blessings of the Lord in their service.

Preparing and Selecting

• Read and prayerfully study General Handbook, sections 19.3, 19.4, and 19.5.
• Consider the new hymns and worshipful children’s songs when selecting music for sacrament meetings that will enhance the messages given by the speakers.
• To familiarize yourself with a new hymn, you can listen to the recording and read the lyrics and related scriptures. As you study this sacred music, the Spirit will help you learn, understand, and teach the message of the hymn.

Introducing New Hymns

• The accompanist or another instrumentalist could play the new hymns as prelude and postlude for sacrament meeting. You could also play recordings of the hymns.
• Plan to sing the new hymns and songs as a congregation during sacrament meeting. It may help to send members a link to listen to a new hymn during the week before singing it on Sunday.
• A choir, small group, or soloist might sing a new hymn, and the congregation could join in.

Enhancing Singing at Church

• When conducting a meeting, consider sharing the reason for the hymn selections.
• Before singing, a member could share the background of the hymn or a line or two from the hymn they find meaningful.
• As resources allow, you might provide the congregation with printed copies of sheet music or lyrics for new hymns. To help members access hymns digitally, bishoprics or music leaders can use the Sacrament Meeting Hymn Selector tool on the Home screen of the Gospel Library app or provide a link or QR code.

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This article is part of a four‑part series that draws from insights in our forthcoming book, Exemplary, Strong Black Marriages & Families (Routledge, in press).

Research on family stress indicates that many African American families face racism and systemic stressors. These families susceptible to the cumulative burdens of stress spillover—defined as profound stress in one area of life “spilling over” and leading to poor outcomes in other domains.

In this article, we take an in-depth look at 46 strong, exemplary religious African American families to determine what actions and attitudes helped these families be optimistic about life and cope with racism and other hardships. These married couples and families were referred by their respective clergy as among the strongest and most faithful families in their congregations. This approach is consistent with “exemplar research,” where researchers study participants who embody the characteristic under study in an exceptional manner.

It has taken our American Families of Faith research team more than two decades of dedicated interviewing, transcribing, and coding to gather the strong choir of 97 rich voices behind this study of Black families. Our efforts have taken us to living rooms from Wisconsin to Louisiana, from California to Delaware, and from Oregon to Georgia. We have written elsewhere regarding the exemplary Black families of faith that we have interviewed:

For these families, the United States is not a “post-race” nation. Poverty, often deep poverty, as well as unemployment, inadequate educational opportunities, discrimination, incarceration, and many other social ills are far too familiar to them and their loved ones. Further, these marriage-based families are often the first to receive “knocks of need”—requests for money, help, and even temporary housing—from the less fortunate who surround them. Their lived religion is not a sanitized, upper middle-class spirituality, it is a desperate, deep, and pleading faith of survival that—even [in 2026]—still contains echoes of the mournful notes of the shame of American slavery. Theirs is not merely a faith that enriches or adds meaning to life. Their faith is often life itself. While few can claim to envy the plight of one of the most discriminated groups in U.S. history, we do envy the profound depth of their living faith in a God that reportedly hears and sustains them through profound challenges—challenges that … are ever present for most of these families.

These exemplary Black families have taught us much. For the balance of this article, we will share their voices and their words regarding their central sources of strength in dealing with life’s challenges, including their experiences with racism and discrimination. Gwen, a Baptist wife, said:

[Racism is] just one of those things where, yes, you will encounter it, and I know I will until Jesus comes and gets me out of here. But until then, it’s like, I have to realize that they’re the ones with the problem. I can’t become bitter about it or anything because God is not going to put up with that. … So, I have to just rest in the Lord on that one. … It’s tough, it hurts, but… I know it’s gonna hurt more for them than for me [at judgment day]. 

Many participants exemplified resilience in their responses to racism. Joelle, a Baptist wife, explained:

[I experience racism] every day, pretty much. … I used to be a manager at a [J.C. Penney]. They had a big controversy going, so they called for the manager and [when] I got there the white people were so mad. They didn’t know what to do. ’Cause here was [a] Black woman [who] is going to make a final decision. … To me, it’s not personal, it’s their ignorance. I have never doubted who I am or how important I am and how much I deserve to be on this earth. … So, to me, I’m perfected in Him because [God] thought of my color. … He [chose] it.

Orlando, a nondenominational Christian husband, said: 

Being a Black man, I can always recognize racism in full panoramic view. … If I were to allow the world to tell me how I was supposed to act, then I would have came home [and] I would have kicked the dog, I would have argued with my wife, I would have pulled out my belt, and I would have came home and beat my kids, and I’d have hit holes in the wall—but I wasn’t going to let society dictate how I was going to respond to situations. Because … society tries to write a script … [about what] certain racist behavior is supposed to trigger. And that’s where I hold on to God—because I know God gives me peace. And through God’s peace and through God’s love, I am able to just pray for that person who tries to make me unhappy, because they’re more unhappy than I am … if they feel they need to mistreat me to make themselves feel good. … [I am] trying to tell my children, ‘People are going to put things in your way. It’s not what they do to you, it’s how you respond to it.’ So, I try to set the example—not to respond to it [and not to get] to where I feel like I’m powerless. … No. You can’t go there. I can’t go there. 

Dean, a Catholic husband, spoke of empowering the next generation. A central part of his message to combat racism was to focus on self-worth. He said:

All the kids I come across, I be talking to them: ‘Don’t you ever take no back seat to nobody. God created one yellow flower better than the red one? [No!]. He created them all equal. … Try to have some vision in yourself.’ … I can say that I encounter [racism] daily in some form or some fashion. [It] has to do with arrogance: somebody thinks they are one up on somebody, [but] they really aren’t up on nobody. … It doesn’t affect us negatively ’cause … when you understand who you are inside spiritually, then no external forces, no crap, is going to make you all the sudden [be] disenfranchised emotionally. So, in that way, [God] gives strength. 

As mentioned by Orlando, Dean, and others, a strong sense or “vision” of belonging to God was a partial buffer against racism. Similarly, feelings of belonging to one’s family were frequently mentioned by participants.

Catrina, a wife and dental assistant, said that after daily experiences with racism for her, her husband, and their children, they would unite and rally together: 

So, coming home, … we just come and talk about what may have happened, then realize that it is not our problem—it’s theirs—and [we’re] just gonna have to give it up and praise God anyway. And [we] just pray about it and encourage each other to do our best and … take those things to the Lord. 

Chris, a Baptist husband from Louisiana, referenced his Black heritage as a source of strength to him and his family. Significantly, even when he was speaking about ancestors long past, he often used the pronouns “we” and “us.” Chris said:

I think it’s more of a historical thing for us. Back in slavery when we were just against all odds, out there in the fields … being tortured, and we sang hymns. You heard the stories about how they overcame all the prejudice. … One thing that was always constant was their belief system, and I … I always fall back on that. … I think that sometimes, a lot of the young people today don’t really understand the struggle that some of our foreparents went through, [but I do] I think [about] that history of just dealing with all the, the prejudices … we’ve just endured. And through it all, we still seem to maintain. That’s the one thing we have that’s always been a strength for us.

Derek, a Baptist husband from North Carolina, wanted to impart a similar message to Black youth. He emphasized individuality and intentionality in the context of a strong heritage: 

To young Black couples, the young kids now, I would say go back and … look at your history. And see what the Black family was. And then turn around. Because you ain’t what somebody [else says] you are. You can be whatever you wanna be. And history plays a part of it. You pick out the good and throw away the bad. And don’t forget where you come from. Don’t forget who you are. 

Brianna and Ted, a Christian couple from Louisiana, described how they buoyed each other up by reaffirming their belonging with each other and with God. Ted said:

As I tell [my wife] all the time, ‘You know who you are, and that’s what you have to stand on. Know who you are in God and don’t worry about what nobody else says.’ And a lot of times with me, she’ll tell [me], ‘I don’t worry about people. I know who I am in Christ, and that’s what most matters to me.’ I know who I am.

Gary, a Methodist husband from Massachusetts, talked about how feeling accepted by God influenced him positively when he felt keenly aware of his weaknesses. Gary said: 

God puts up with me, and I’m a big pain in the butt. I’m imperfect and all other things, and so it really helps me. … It’s His open acceptance of me, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything that I’ve done [that blesses me]. He knows and He still loves me? W[e] are all sinners [but still] Christ died for us. … That [has] a direct influence [on me]. 

What We Learn About Coping with Racism

Collectively, the voices of these families reveal that racism is not an abstract construct or imaginary fixation; it is an experience that—sometimes daily—places undue stress and strain on Black families navigating a society that often sees color over character. However, these families also note that stress spillover from racism can be met and responded to with a divine sense of self-worth, deep self-respect, support of family, and profound faith in a God who knows and helps.

For these exemplary Black families, their reliance on a loving Creator is not simply embedded in hope for the afterlife, but rather in a resilience that helps them to interpret hardship, regulate difficult emotions, and to continually choose love over hatred. These families embody the wisdom captured by the late Annie Mae Denton who grew up in Jim Crow-era Mississippi but served as a vibrant model of loving all around her—in spite of the racism she faced throughout her life. Her creed? “Never let someone else’s bad moment get between you and the Lord.” 

The post Leaning on the Lord: Lessons from Exemplary Black Families on Faithfully Coping with Racism appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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2024 was one of the best years in recent memory for family films. 2025 didn’t have as much to offer, but there were certainly plenty of great films to watch as a family—you just had to know where to look. Many of the best were under the radar or had small releases, which means many families still have the opportunity to experience them together. 

A few films didn’t quite make the cut, but are worth mentioning: Zootopia 2 — more beautiful but less creative and morally sound than Zootopia 1, Unbreakable Boy — a heartwarming based-on-a-true-story film that goes a bit too sappy, and The Colors Within — a beautiful piece of visual poetry with a metaphor a bit too on the nose.

But here, in my opinion, are the ten best movies of the year and where to find them.

9 & 10. ‘Minecraft’ & ‘Dog Man’

I wanted to include both films here to round out the list. Neither is particularly memorable, and certainly they aren’t trying to be important. But they do prove that silliness is its own kind of virtue and that you can genuinely entertain without trying to import ideology to children. Sometimes something that can make you giggle and cheer for 90 minutes is precisely good enough. 

How to watch Minecraft: Streaming on HBO Max 

How to watch Dog Man: Streaming on Netflix

8. ‘Paddington in Peru’

Paddington the bear embodies kindness, manners, and goodness. So whether you’re the grown-up laughing at the misadventures of the adorable cub, or a kid learning from his example, the franchise is a gold mine for families. The latest adventure doesn’t quite reach the peaks of the previous two installments, but the delightful additions of Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas keep the film a lively adventure.

How to watch: Streaming on Netflix

7. ‘The Legend of Ochi’

The Legend of Ochi invites kids and adults into a hand-crafted fairy tale where courage looks like listening to the creatures everyone else is afraid of. With the old-school puppetry and throwback plot, the film feels like an 80s adventure. There is some distrust of authority that comes with the genre, but overall, the film gently nudges viewers toward curiosity, compassion, and making the big, hard choices.

How to watch: Streaming on HBO Max

6. ‘KPop Demon Hunters’

The surprise hit of 2025 KPop Demon Hunters has proven its entertainment chops for kids. This is not a film that can stand on its own; there are a few mixed moral messages about identity formation and shame that you’ll want to talk through with kids. But the thrust of the film about fighting real evil and self-sacrifice as a weighty moral good is worth cheering for. And it even has some meaningful things to say about redemptive vs. toxic empathy, an important counter-cultural lesson. 

How to watch: Streaming on Netflix

5. ‘In Your Dreams’ 

In Your Dreams uses its wild, anything-can-happen dream world to tell a surprisingly grounded story about kids learning they can’t wish their family into perfection. The movie keeps turning the fun imagery and gags back toward a deeper lesson about choosing real, imperfect love over fantasy and control. The villain isn’t just a monster but the temptation to live in a world where nothing is hard and no one ever disappoints you, and the film clearly labels that as a trap rather than a goal. This is a rare contemporary film about divorce that, in the end, rejects divorce and pursues forgiveness and hard work instead. 

How to watch: Streaming on Netflix

4. ‘The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie’

The first fully hand-drawn Looney Tunes feature gives Daffy and Porky a world-saving alien-invasion plot that stays gloriously zany while quietly celebrating friendship and responsibility. Amid the bubblegum-factory chaos and a few genuinely creepy B-movie-style moments, the heart of the story is two screw-ups learning to have each other’s backs and to use their oddball gifts for something bigger than themselves. For families who miss old-school cartoons that are silly first and never push the boundaries, this is a blast.

How to watch: Streaming on HBO Max

3. ‘Ne Zha 2’

Ne Zha 2 takes all its record-breaking hype and actually delivers a mythic family story about courage, costly love, and refusing to treat whole peoples as disposable. With Ne Zha and his dragon friend Ao Bing literally sharing one fragile body, the movie keeps turning its huge battles and wild visuals back toward loyalty, repentance, and parents who are willing to suffer rather than abandon their son. It is intense and unapologetically rooted in Chinese mythology, but for families willing to go big and talk afterward, this is one of the richest animated adventures of the year. 

How to watch: Streaming on HBO Max

2. ‘Arco’

Arco begins with a rainbow-suited boy falling out of a peaceful far future into a battered 2075, and turns that simple sci-fi hook into a quietly moving story about friendship, responsibility, and the kind of world we are handing to our children. Iris and her robot caretaker Mikki take this stranger in and, as they race to send him home, the film keeps tying its gorgeous future-shock imagery back to small acts of hospitality, courage, and care for a damaged Earth instead of despair or blame. It is hopeful without being naïve, warning kids about what might come while insisting that love of neighbor and creation can still bend the story in a better direction.

How to watch: Limited Release in Theaters

1. ‘Little Amélie or the Character of Rain’

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain quietly follows a little girl in 1960s Japan as she slowly wakes up to the world around her. We see everything from her small point of view as she tastes new foods, plays by the water, and tries to make sense of big things like war, loss, and God with the help of the adults who love her. (The answers are grounded in Japanese spiritualism, not Christian theology.) The film is gentle, slow, and often very funny in tiny ways, but it treats a young child’s heart and questions with real respect, showing how family love and simple daily joys can teach humility and gratitude. It is one of the year’s rare animated films that truly honors childhood as a sacred season rather than a marketing demographic, which is why it tops this year’s list.

How to watch: Limited Release in Theaters

The post The Best Family Movies of 2025 Came From the Margins, Not the Mainstream appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

In his October 2025 General Conference address, “The Family Proclamation—Words from God,” Elder Ronald A. Rasband testified that The Family: A Proclamation to the World is not merely a cultural statement or institutional guideline, but revealed doctrine given by God through His prophets. He explained how the proclamation came forth through prayer, prophetic councils, and spiritual unanimity—and why its teachings deserve reverence in every generation.

Yet its clarity has also made it controversial. As social views on family, marriage, and gender continue to shift, many struggle with how the proclamation fits in a changing world.

This raises a common and sincere question:
Should Church leaders be more open to current social views rather than asserting fixed doctrine about the family?

The proclamation has a divine origin, so we must treat it with the reverence deserving words from God.

Common Criticism: “Church leaders should be more open to current social views on family, marriage, and gender, rather than asserting fixed doctrine.”

Some feel that doctrinal clarity on the family appears rigid or exclusionary in a world that values personal identity, evolving norms, and individual experience. They wonder whether prophetic leaders should adapt their teachings to better reflect modern perspectives, especially when current doctrine feels misaligned with personal circumstances or societal consensus.

Fallacy at Work: Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism assumes that truth must evolve alongside social consensus—that what is right or authoritative today should adjust as norms change.

Applied here, it suggests that revealed doctrine should be reshaped to reflect cultural acceptance. But this assumption overlooks the difference between compassionate ministry and doctrinal authority. It treats prophetic teaching as opinion rather than revelation and equates discomfort with error.

Elder Rasband’s Correction: Doctrine Comes from God, Not Culture

Elder Rasband teaches that the Family Proclamation originated through revelation, prophetic councils, and unity—not as a reaction to social trends, but as guidance given ahead of them. Its authority rests in God’s eternal perspective, not in human approval.

He explains that prophets are stewards, not authors, of doctrine. Their responsibility is not to mirror society, but to declare God’s truths—even when those truths are countercultural. At the same time, Elder Rasband affirms the dignity, worth, and belonging of every individual, regardless of circumstance.

Resolving this Fallacy: The tension many feel dissolves when we understand the role of prophets. God’s doctrine is not designed to validate every cultural moment; it is meant to anchor His children across all of them. The Family Proclamation provides clarity about eternal identity and divine purpose while leaving room for compassion, patience, and Christlike love. Upholding doctrine does not negate empathy—it grounds it.

Living Apologetics: Holding to Doctrine with Christlike Compassion

In a world that often frames disagreement as hostility, faithful members may feel unsure how to speak about the Family Proclamation without sounding harsh—or how to remain loyal to doctrine without appearing unkind.

Elder Rasband models a better way. He shows that it is possible to speak with doctrinal clarity and genuine love. Defending revealed truth does not require diminishing others’ experiences, and compassion does not require abandoning eternal principles.

Practical Apologetic Use:

• If someone says: “The Church just needs to catch up with the times.”
• You can respond: “The Church believes families are central to God’s eternal plan. Prophets don’t create doctrine based on culture—they share what God reveals. At the same time, everyone belongs and deserves compassion and respect.”

Ways to Apply Today:

1️⃣ Study the proclamation prayerfully, seeking to understand not just what it says, but why it matters eternally.
2️⃣ Speak with clarity and kindness when the doctrine is questioned.
3️⃣ Create belonging without compromise by extending Christlike love while remaining anchored to revealed truth.

Keep This Talk With You

Elder Rasband’s testimony reminds us that God’s truths do not lose their authority simply because the world changes. The Family Proclamation stands as a divine anchor—offering clarity about eternal identity, purpose, and belonging in a time of confusion.

Choosing to trust revealed doctrine does not mean ignoring pain or complexity. It means believing that God sees further than we do and that His love extends to every soul. As we hold firmly to truth while reaching outward in compassion, we become better disciples of Jesus Christ.

How do I balance loyalty to revealed doctrine with Christlike compassion when cultural views differ from gospel teachings?

The Consider Conference series by FAIR offers an in-depth look at recent General Conference talks to help members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints navigate common questions, misunderstandings, and criticisms. Each post provides doctrinal insights, historical context, and practical ways to apply gospel principles in everyday conversations. Through this series, we hope to equip readers with faith-promoting resources that encourage thoughtful reflection, respectful dialogue, and a stronger foundation in gospel truths, fostering both personal conviction and meaningful discussions with others.

The post The Family Proclamation—Words from God appeared first on FAIR.

This week’s movie pick is to choose one of the animated hero classics from Living Scriptures. This video series teaches about historical figures such as Marie Curie, Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Edison. (See other “Weekend Movie Picks.”)

Living Scriptures also has over 5,000 popular family films, children’s programming, nature and historical documentaries, inspiring Christian movies, comedy, drama, and LDS cinema. And they are all clean.

LDS365 readers can get a free 14-day trial then a special rate of $6.25 a month (billed $75 for a year). And you can watch on your TV, computer, phone, or tablet.

Living Scriptures is a subscription streaming service that curates and creates the best in family-friendly entertainment for adults and children. They focus specifically on people like you who choose to support media that is clean and wholesome. My family subscribes to Living Scriptures and loves it. I believe in their service so much that I’ve set up an affiliate relationship with them to help share sources of great family entertainment.

This page contains affiliate links for which we may receive compensation for referring customers. Funds are used to cover some of the costs of publishing LDS365.

Black Friday Sale on New FAIR Books on Amazon!

Our Black Friday Sale is here!

Available from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday. (11/27-12/1/2025)

For a limited time, you can get 50% off our newest FAIR releases on Amazon:

• Paperback: $12.49 (regularly $24.99)
• Kindle: $4.49 (regularly $9.99)

These discounted prices apply to both of our newest conference volumes and are available only through Cyber Monday!

If you’ve been meaning to pick them up—or want thoughtful, faith-building gifts for the holidays—now is the time!

Defending the Book of Mormon: Proceedings of the 2023 FAIR Virtual Conference

A Record Shall Be Kept: Understanding and Defending the History of the Church

Want to donate? All donations made through this link will be matched by a generous donor as well as up to 1% by the donation platform we use.

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Glen and Melanie

The first was in my greenie area of Medicine Hat. My trainer and I were doing some street contacting in a shopping area, and we talked to a younger couple on the street, Glen and Melanie, who seemed very interested in hearing our message. We set up an appointment for a later date.

Transfers happened, and my trainer was sent to a new area. My new companion, Elder Willis, and I were tracting on a “random” street, and we happened to knock on their door the day before our scheduled appointment. They were available at that time, and invited us in to hear our message. We taught the first discussion.

I don’t know why, or what it was about that particular lesson, but the Spirit was so strong. It was thick, everyone felt it, and we were all elevated to a very high level. Glen and Melanie commented about the feeling they had as we shared the message of the First Vision and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.

Afterwards, Elder Willis said it was a “Celestial” discussion. We talked about how good we felt and how it was one of the most amazing experiences we had ever had in our lives.

How is it that nineteen and twenty-year-old kids could have one of the most profound experiences of their lives from knocking on doors of strangers in Canada?

Was it a rush from adrenaline, some chemical emotional reaction, or a sense of accomplishment because we thought we were convincing someone of something we would be rewarded for?

I don’t think so. I don’t believe that motivations like that could sustain a voluntary workforce of missionaries in the prime of their lives, doing something so difficult with no temporal advantage.

The reason we had one of the most amazing hours of our lives was because a member of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost was there testifying of truth. It was a witness of goodness and truth, a feeling that goes beyond emotion or excitement.

I don’t know what ever happened to Glen and Melanie. While I was there, they never did get baptized or join the Church. But I do know that on that day, all four of us felt something spiritual, a witness from the Holy Ghost. That experience is still something I remember 27 years later.

Lethbridge Discussion

The second vivid memory of a powerful spiritual manifestation came about a year later when I was serving with Elder Oldham for the second time in Lethbridge.

I don’t remember how we got in contact with the couple we taught, whether we had a previous appointment or if we were just tracting and they let us in. It was a Native American couple, and they lived in a split-level house with other people. Normally, as missionaries, one of the first things we try to do is create a learning atmosphere by removing distractions so the Spirit can be present.

That was the case with Glen and Melanie. They were a young couple with no kids. Their home was quiet, and it was an ideal setting of reverence. But in this Lethbridge discussion, there were people watching TV in the room below us and several potential distractions. We met in a small kitchen that wasn’t exactly spotless, and yet, as we taught the principles of the Restoration, the Spirit was incredibly strong. It was thick, powerful, and moving.

During the lesson when we recognized the spirit, we talked about how we all felt at the time. The brother we were teaching said something like he felt he was being elevated off the ground as we testified of the truths of the restored Gospel.

I don’t remember anything else about that family or whether we ever even taught them again, but I remember how strong the Spirit was. It was real. It was from God. It testified to them, and to us as missionaries, that Joseph Smith was indeed called as a prophet of God.