Behind the Scenes with the Director of Testaments
by Kieth Merrill
Meridian Magazine Film Editor

As the Joseph Smith Memorial Building gets a new film, the question is “What kind of movie can equal the legacy of Legacy?”

Twelve years ago I followed Gordon B. Hinckley into the bombed-out bowels of historic Hotel Utah. The building had been condemned. It was being dismantled to be restored. We stepped over chunks of broken concrete and evaded gnarled re-bar until we came to what was left of the elegant old ballroom.

He pointed to the north wall of the great chamber. Shafts of dusty light penetrated the dusky stillness to softly caress the otherwise dark wall. “There,” he said, ” I envision a great movie screen on which we will tell the story of our people. Their struggles, their triumphs and their faith. I want visitors to know us and to feel

The Want List
by Richard P. Halverson

How much do you want what is on your “wants list?”

Let me tell you about a conversation I had once as a bishop. A fine woman in my ward asked if we could visit. During the interview she expressed her despair that she and her husband had not been to the temple to be sealed. The issue was tithing. In this case her husband handled all the family finances. She could not understand why they were not tithe payers. I didn’t know either so I decided to ask.

Her husband wasn’t surprised when I called. In truth he was annoyed, but figured he should at least give his side of the story. He said, “Sure she wants to pay tithing, so do I. But she wants a lot of other things too!” With that he pulled out what he called “Heather’s Want

You may not need to resort to punishment to change a child’s course.

     “What?!!” I exclaimed in total shock. I had just gotten home from work on a Friday night and discovered that my two sons, ages fourteen and eleven at the time, had gone over to the pool hall to play pool. I was dumbfounded. My children off playing pool in some grimy den of iniquity with who knows who? I knew exactly what this pool hall must be like: kids smoking, hard rock music blaring, girls hanging on boys, boys hanging on girls, kids placing bets with other kids, dark lighting–Pleasure Island all over again, and my boys were over there turning themselves into vile, cigar-smoking donkeys. How could they want to do this?
     I had two choices. I could either go get Nathan and Aaron immediately and bring them home, making

Missing!
by Maurine Jensen Proctor

Two years ago in March in a bleak Russian city called Saratov, 800 miles southeast of Moscow, Elder Andrew Probst had one of those moments every missionary hopes for. He was just leaving the old rented gymnasium where church was held, when a stocky young man in his twenties approached him, who had recently read a story in the newspaper. It was a story that intrigued him and seemed to answer the financial desperation the man was feeling. The Mormon Church, he had read, was wealthy, a robust American church, whose net worth, it was guessed, would put it in the Fortune 500 if it were a business. He and his friend owed money to the mafia. They were fearful and anxious, and so

Protecting Our Children from a Plague of Pessimism
by Michael Medved
Author, Hollywood vs. America

Losing Hope
In recent years, our nation has been torn by fears that immigrants may be bad for America. In April of 1995, however, a major study at the University of Chicago suggested the profoundly depressing possibility that the reverse could be true: America just might be bad for immigrants.

Researchers surveyed more than 25,000 eighth graders and found that, in every ethnic group, children were immigrant parents perform significantly better in school than those whose parents were born here: “Their grades are superior, they score higher on standardized tests, and they aspire to college at a greater rate than their third generation peers.” Immigrant mothers and fathers generally “harbor optimism about the advantages of playing by the rules and the benefits that will occur through education…They have a greater tendency to relieve their children

Moo Money: 1858 Monetary Innovation in Utah (Moo-Tah?)
By Ray Anderson

When Brigham Young led the first company of 138 Mormon pioneers into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in July 1847, the group had a total of $50 in coin and currency among them.¹ Little did Brigham know that besides being a colonizer, religious leader and statesman, he would also become a central banker in this new land.

The new settlement was not overly concerned with the lack of money. After all, they had left the borders of the U.S. and the nearest well-stocked trading post was 600 miles to the west in California. Besides, their only neighbors, the Ute Indians, preferred buffalo pelts and gun powder, rather than gold coin, as their medium of exchange.

The need for money increased dramatically, however, as the Mormon state of Deseret² (as it was referred to by its