Our 11 Favorite Mormon Moments from 2016

As we look forward to a new year and a fresh start, there's still time to reminisce about some of the stories and memories that have touched our lives and helped us become better people this past year. Here are some of our favorite Mormon moments from 2016 that we hope will touch your heart once again and inspire you to remember the things that matter most and are worth remembering as you make your New Year's resolutions for 2017.

The August flooding in Louisiana was the worst U.S. disaster since Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012. Over 60,000 were left homeless, including many Latter-day Saints.

► You'll also like: What One Louisiana Flood Survivor Had to Say About Mormons

Local Louisiana wards and Mormon Helping Hands worked tirelessly to help muck out homes and to provide food, clothing, and care for families displaced by the flooding. 

As a result, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards thanked Mormons for their efforts at a special sacrament meeting held for volunteers.

“’I am a child of God and he has sent me here.’ That is the first line of the hymn that we sang,” Governor Edwards began his remarks. “I have no doubt that God sent you all here.”

“Even though this isn’t a named storm, every victim has a name, and they are our brothers and our sisters in Christ,” he continued.

He talked about the gratitude he saw among the flood survivors and how it brought communities closer together.

“It’s times like these that communities come together, and not just the community from here in Baton Rouge,” he said. “I know that we have folks who have traveled from hundreds of miles to be here to help.”

In 2014, shortly after Paul Cardall performed at the missionary department’s Fall social, Elder David A. Bednar pulled the pianist aside, asking if Cardall wanted to join him for a new project.

“He pulled me aside and mentioned he had a song in him but he didn't know how to get it out and would I be interested in helping him,” Cardall shares. 

That night was the genesis of a new song, one that focuses on the Savior’s ministry—and the ministry of His chosen apostles and missionaries—to each person individually.

“’The Lord rescues each of us, one by one. His apostles look for opportunities to teach and serve, one by one,’ he taught me,” Cardall recalls. “In a way, he was mentoring me in a one by one experience.”

For Cardall, the chance to work with an apostle of God has been “an ongoing, life-changing, sacred experience. Without sounding awkward or disrespectful, I have to tell you, Elder Bednar is really cool. He is so down to earth and gets it. He knows what is going on.”

Elder Bednar and Paul Cardall’s new song, “One by One,” is featured on Cardall’s newest CD, A New Creation, which released September 16.

In the Saturday morning session of April general conference, Church members across the world were moved when the image of a Mormon Tabernacle Choir member, tears streaming down his face, came across their TV screens.

Image a screenshot from YouTube.

After conference weekend and a flurry of social media posts about that touching moment, LDS Daily sat down with the choir member, C. David Belt, to ask him about the experience. 

“Every time I sing with the Choir, I am so very profoundly grateful," he shared. "I am amazed that, out of all the very talented people out there who would love to sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, I get to stand before my Maker and sing His praises with this marvelous group of people.”

But this conference, his 19th, was something special. “Elder Renlund had just told that story about the Aaronic priesthood administering the sacrament for one person, and that the Savior performed the Atonement for each of us individually," Belt said. "I began to weep as soon as the song began. I love songs about the grace of Jesus Christ, how He paid for my sins. It’s very personal to me. We had just sung, 'He to rescue me from danger interposed His precious blood.' He paid for MY sins, for ME. Then we sang, 'Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love! Here’s my heart. Oh, take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above.'

"I love my Savior and I am so very grateful for what He did for me. Songs like that one really touch me. . . . I pray that I will be able to help someone in some small way. I’m just one of 360 voices, and we all love the Lord and love to sing His praises.”

Photo by Jed Wells.

A decade ago, Michael McLean’s youngest son told his family that he was gay.

“It’s tough enough to be a gay kid in a straight world, but being the son of the songwriting icon of the Mormon Church was impossible for him," shares McLean. "The pain was so deep that he’d considered suicide.”

He continues, “This would have been tough for any parent, but for the songwriting apologist filmmaker for the Church, this was simply an impossible spot to be in. I needed answers to save my family. I prayed like I had never prayed before.”

But nothing came. “It was like somebody decided to bolt heaven shut,” McLean explains.

That's when McLean came across a book about Mother Teresa with letters written by the nun that shared her struggles with faith and the many times she felt abandoned by God. After reading the book, McLean had a dream about Mother Teresa where she sang, "I choose to pray to one who doesn’t hear me, I choose to wait for love that He conceals . . ."

McLean says, “So here’s a Mormon songwriter having a dream about a dead Catholic nun who sings a song that begs the questions: Am I willing to keep the promises I’ve made to God even when I feel nothing in response to my deepest yearnings? In the most difficult trial of my faith journey, would I hold on to faith or give in to despair?”

McLean decided to cling to the Church, to hang on until his prayers were answered.

Years later, his answer did come in a way perfect for McLean—through song.

Read more about Michael McLean's incredible spiritual journey here.

"Before my sister Annie left on her LDS mission a few years ago, we wrote a song together about her leaving. Life happened and we never got around to finishing it. Months before she passed, we fell back in love with the song and were working towards finishing it," writes Spencer Schmidt, the brother of Annie Schmidt who died in a hiking accident in Oregon this October.

"Perhaps because the whole experience was so surreal, I never cried during the past two weeks... until I listened to this song. I sat in my basement and just wept, because the words weren't just sending her off to Georgia for a year and a half but they were now sending her off to the next life. The timing of the song for me was a powerful witness to me that God lives and that he wanted to give my family and I a gift that we could cherish for the rest of our mortal lives. It is not yet finished but I wanted to share with everyone a 30-second clip of it, in the hope that anyone (especially those who have lost a loved one) could draw strength from it's message."

"Many of you remember in 2010 when the temple was burned to the ground. It was literally nothing but ashes," Elder Larry Y. Wilson of the Second Quorum of the Seventy said. "But, when I look around me today, I am reminded of the phrase in Isaiah . . . 'To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes'" (Isaiah 61:3).

On March 20, 2016, the Church dedicated its 150th temple—the Provo City Center Temple. Here are a few things you might not have known about this sacred building that rose "like a phoenix out of the ashes," as Elder Holland so poetically stated.

More than half the temple is underground.

Because the temple was designed with the intent to preserve as much of the historical integrity of the Provo Tabernacle as possible, most of the expansion of the temple occurred below ground. The Provo City Temple consists of four levels: two underground and two above ground. 

The temple contains multiple inscriptions of "Holiness to the Lord, the House of the Lord."

Photo from Mormon Newsroom.

This unique underground entrance makes the Provo City Center Temple rare in another way as well. Instead of just one inscription of "Holiness to the Lord, the House of the Lord" over the main temple entrance, the Provo City Center Temple has three such inscriptions: one above the south, underground entrance; one above the south, street-level entrance; and one above the east door, which used to function as the main entrance to the tabernacle.

The temple has a stained glass picture of Christ rescued from a Presbyterian church.

Inside the main, street-level entrance of the temple hangs a vivid and luminous stained glass depiction of Christ cradling a lost lamb. This stained glass is 120 years old and originated from a Presbyterian church in New York. A member of the Church bought and donated this artwork for the temple. Despite its age, the stained glass was in excellent condition, save for two strips of glass that were missing in the top and the bottom. The Church commissioned a local artist to repair and replace the missing pieces.

Image from Mormon Newsroom.

The temple is filled with Columbines.

Many temples integrate themes or motifs that add to their beauty as well as their unique culture. For instance, the Provo City Center Temple carries throughout its walls a theme and depictions of columbines—one of God's simple, yet beautiful creations that celebrate the unique flora of Utah County.

Read more fascinating facts about the Provo City Center Temple here.

Photo posted on Tyler Glenn's Twitter account with this message: "My mom has the kind of love for me that you can feel in the atmosphere. Unrelenting and pure. I love you mom."

When Neon Trees' lead singer Tyler Glenn decided to distance himself from the Church, he did so in a public way, with a solo video he titled "Trash."

In response to Tyler Glenn's controversial video, his mother Deb Glenn posted this heartfelt and beautiful response, demonstrating how we can love and accept those who disagree with us while still standing strong in our faith.

While in Spain on Church business in May, Elder David A. Bednar was approached by a man who had been inactive in the Church for 25 years. He asked the Apostle, “Are you from the Church?"

That's when Elder Bednar gave his priceless response: “It is time to come back.”

Photo from the Deseret News.

“Elder Bednar introduced himself to the man, expressed his love, and invited him now to come back—with his family,” President Kevin B. Pack of the Madrid Spain Mission told the Deseret News. “It was a moving experience to participate in this very tender moment and watch a special witness of the Savior’s name minister to one of His sheep.”

He continues, "Wherever he went, I noticed that he looked for opportunities to minister to ‘the one.’ That one person was different wherever he went. The one included a bishop leading a small congregation and feeling the weight of his calling, a missionary wanting to know he was in fact called of God, a less active member he met on the street of Las Palmas, a non-member of the Church wanting to know what he needed to do to believe, and even my own children. I believe Elder Bednar came to Spain to minister to individuals and I observed this first hand on multiple occasions while with him."

In an interview with Broadly, Elizabeth Smart shared some of the unintentional but devastating and potentially crippling side effects that can result from the way Mormon culture addresses chastity.

"I think the power of faith is amazing, the hope and the healing that it can bring to people," Elizabeth Smart said in the interview, crediting her LDS faith for helping her survive and overcome the nightmare of her abduction.

"But I also think there's another side of it that can be potentially very harmful, especially when a lot of religions teach that sexual relations are meant for marriage... It's so stressed that, girls in particular, tie their worth to their virginity, or, for lack of a better word, purity."

And Elizabeth Smart had been one of those girls.

Shortly after being kidnapped and raped, Smart recalled a lesson she had as a young woman, in which she was told, "You're like this stick of gum, and if you have sex before you're married, it's like someone chews up that piece of gum, and then when you're done, who wants a piece of gum that's already chewed up? No one."

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

While the intention of the lesson was to teach uplifting, eternal values, the overall message failed to communicate that she was a daughter of loving Heavenly Parents who would love and want her, no matter what. The lesson also simplified chastity and purity to mean "not having sex before marriage," something that limits those values and sends harmful messages to victims of sexual assault.

Even after her rescue, Smart sat through another such lesson, in which she was told: "You're like this beautiful fence, and you hammer these nails in, and then every time you have sex with someone else, it's like you're hammering in another nail. And you can take them out, you can repent of them, but the holes are still there."

Another analogy that misses the point of the gospel and our Savior Jesus Christ, who came to this world to atone for our sins and to experience our pains so that in every circumstance He can make us pure, make us whole, and heal our broken hearts. Analogies like these can not only limit our divine worth and power, they also can limit His.

"The way we talk about [sex and abstinence] needs to change," Elizabeth Smart said. "People need to realize there is nothing that can detract from your worth. When it comes to rape and sexual violence and abuse, that can never detract from who you are."

After boyfriend and girlfriend Simon Olsen (18) and Hailie Godfrey (18) died on impact in a car crash in August, their story gained attention on social media not as a message of loss, but one of hope, love, and forgiveness. 

Within a day of the crash, Simon Olsen's father, Lane Olsen, posted a message on Facebook forgiving the returned missionary who killed his son, one that reached over 13,000 people and shared this beautiful testimony of the Plan of Salvation:

After performing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for their 2013 Christmas concert and starring in a new BYUtv movie that premiered this Thanksgiving, John Rhys-Davies has had more exposure to Mormons and LDS culture than most in the movie industry.

Rhys-Davies, best known for his roles as Gimli in Lord of the Rings and Sallah in Indiana Jones, shared what he thinks about Latter-day Saints and some of their unique traditions.

"You're a strange community to us on the outside, but I find you very warm and very welcoming and very friendly—a considerate people," Rhys-Davies says.

"I like you. And you make it very clear you are willing to put up with me despite the fact that I am far less godly than you guys are . . .

"I'm not just blowing smoke at you—it's true. You are an odd lot. But you make me welcome and I like you . . . Some of the answers you have found are so interesting."

Photo from digitalspy.com.

One particularly interesting Mormon practice that Rhys-Davies has come to admire is that of LDS missions.

"[You] send people away from home with no contact with home except on birthdays or Christmas or something like that—to go to an alien country and to have to go out and meet people and make contacts. I meet these young men and they must go home night after night with a sense of abject failure. And [then they] have to get up the next morning and try and do better. When they finally manage to go home they will have matured and nothing again in their lives will ever be as hard and difficult as that.

"The ones that survive—and I imagine most of them do—turn out very splendid and very successful and quietly confident men. Nothing can be as bad. If I can do that, I can do anything, and that's a very significant ritual you have evolved. Very impressive."