Do you ever wish you were better at building lasting friendships? One morning, I woke up to a big, long text from my ministering sister. You know the type: “Hey! I’m…[insert introduction, exclamation points!!!, and a bunch of personal questions]. What are you up to these days?” At this point,...

Even when you do not receive powerful answers to prayers, you can still gain a testimony of Christ and witness his guiding influence in your life. I can count on one hand how many times I have received an obvious answer to a prayer. As a teenager, I often felt...

On January 25, 2017, Church leaders made some big changes to missionary life, including a more flexible schedule and revised key indicators. The Mormon Newsroom article “More Flexibility Announced for Mormon Missionary Daily Schedules” discusses changes announced by Church leaders during a worldwide missionary broadcast on January 25, 2017. One...

In the aftermath of one of the world’s darkest hours, President Hinckley encouraged the world to stay optimistic. That advice still applies today.   As told in scripture, in the last days there “shall be . . . wars and rumors of wars, and the whole earth shall be in...

A sister missionary learns that just because God was blessing someone else doesn’t mean he was not blessing her. In “Why Was I Not Being Blessed?”, featured in the September 2015 Ensign, Becky Young Fawcett discusses a concern facing many new missionaries—and many of the rest of us—today. When she...

An unsung immigrant painter’s work resonates with Latter-day Saints. Individual suffering and heartache are not common themes in LDS artwork. Many of us prefer “uplifting” and familiar scenes—pioneers fearlessly crossing the plains, Helaman leading his stripling warriors, Christ descending from the heavens. Although most of the paintings by Joseph Paul...