LDS Media Talk

The popular printed books with colorfully illustrated scripture stories are now available online: Book of Mormon Stories, Doctrine and Covenants Stories, Old Testament Stories, and New Testament Stories.

Each of the four books is available online in downloadable text, audio, and video formats. These are written on a basic reading level for children and are also a valuable resource for others who may not yet be familiar with the standard works. The Church has also released a video version (not animated) of the books on a new DVD set.

Consider getting the printed books or the DVD set as Christmas gifts for children.

How helpful is it to your family for the Church to provide the HTML, PDF, MP3, and downloadable video formats, in addition to the printed books and DVD formats?

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English text of all the sessions from the recent LDS General Conference is now available online.

Read more information about audio, video, and non-English text.

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Have you checked out some of the recent online offerings from the New Era?

• The New Era has posted a video promoting its October issue, which is a special issue on the pamphlet For the Strength of Youth. Check out the video, and get a glimpse of this special issue.
•  The New Era home page has downloadable MP3 recordings of the song “Steadfast and Immovable” whose sheet music appears in the October issue.
• The New Era is also conducting an online survey on dating with questions like “In your opinion, what is the difference between dating and hanging out?” and “In your opinion, what makes somebody a ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’?” Come on, teens, voice your opinions!

Read the Mormon Magz blog to keep up with the latest about Church magazines.

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The LDS Church magazines are begining to post galleries of images to enhance articles in the Liahona, Ensign, New Era, and the Friend.

• The New Era has posted a gallery of photos from the article “From Generation to Generation“ in the September issue. The article centers on two teenage members of a family in Guatemala. They tell the story of a hard-working family trying to pass along important life skills to the next generation.
• The Friend’s Web site has posted a slideshow of “Our Creative Friends” drawings from the September issue.
• You can always find the gallery of Mormonads from the New Era organized by topic.
• And the Friend coloring pages are also online by topic.

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The Church has just distributed the 140 millionth copy of the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ according to a news release on Newsroom.lds.org. The Church currently sells about 5 million copies a year.

The Book of Mormon is currently available in 107 languages. You can read The Book of Mormon online in nine languages: Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. While there (at scriptures.lds.org), you can also listen to it (by clicking Listen at the top of any page) or download the audio files in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Audio files in more languages are being prepared now.

The Newsroom also has a great story about Understanding the Process of Publishing the Book of Mormon. You can also read a general story about translating Church materials.

In 2003, Book magazine searched for the twenty novels and nonfiction titles that have had the greatest impact on the history of America–the ones that have led to concrete, definable changes in the way Americans live their lives. They named the Book of Mormon one of the “20 Books That Changed America.”

Have you personally taken Elder Craig C. Christensen’s challenge from last conference to use The Book of Mormon to share the gospel message with family and friends?

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The Church has announced a new manual for Primary nursery classes titled Behold Your Little Ones. In addition, this manual has been designed to be a great resource to help parents teach basic gospel doctrines to small children.

Each lesson contains activities that help children HEAR, SEE, SING, DO a physical activity, andVERBALIZE the doctrine of the lesson. Each lesson has two pages of visuals (a color picture and a line drawing) to visually reinforce the principles taught. Each page also has tips on how to teach the lesson successfully. Read pages 2-4 of the manual for more details about the features of the manual.

• Order a printed copy from LDSCatalog.com.
• Access the PDF (full graphic layout) in English and in multiple languages.
• Access the text online in English. (Language text will be available later.)
• View a short introductory video about this new nursery manual.

This manual will be translated into the following 25 languages: Cebuano, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, English Braille, Fijian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Tongan, and Ukrainian.

It will also be available in audio format in the following 10 languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish.

A notice about the manual has been sent to English-speaking units, and wards/branches will receive one copy automatically by August 29th. Units can order more copies on the annual ward/branch order. Individuals can order their own copy anytime at LDSCatalog.com.

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Tell the New Era magazine what you think of their most recent covers by filling out an online survey. 

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The Church’s Ensign magazine has just posted on online survey to gather information to help make the Ensign even better. Please take a moment to take the survey.

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LDS.org provides a simple program that let you enter an address anywhere in the world and find the nearest LDS meetinghouse (place of worship). We are pleased to announce an upgrade to this program, which can be accessed beginning today through many links on LDS.org and Mormon.org, as well as directly at maps.lds.org.

This upgraded program provides many new features not available previously, including:

• A more visual, dynamic user experience. You can enter an address or simply point to a location on a map.
• On the map, you can switch between road, satellite, or aerial views. You can also zoom in or out and drag the map around.
• You can switch between Google and Microsoft maps to get the best map for a given location.
• When you search for a location, results are provided in two categories: “Closest Meetinghouses” shows the three meetinghouse locations physically nearest to your location. “Assigned Congregations” displays a list of available congregations you may attend for the selected location, such as language-specific wards/branches, Young Single Adult (YSA) units, and Student wards.
• You can select a ward/branch and get additional contact information (such as phone numbers), go to the unit Web site, or get driving directions.
• In places where accurate street information does not exist, you can locate meetinghouse chapels by using the “Place Marker” on the map to select the location rather than typing an address.
• Maps.lds.org also works on mobile devices through a simplified user interface.
• If you find a data error, you can report it directly using the Feedback button on the page.
• With each new selection, information on the page changes without reloading, thus speeding up response time.
• When you find a location, you can send a link to it to a friend.
• You can access the program directly at maps.lds.org.

Please feel free to try this new program and share it with your friends and neighbors.  Feedback, suggestions, and corrections to the data are welcomed and encouraged by using the Feedback link on the application.

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Brazil is the Church’s most popular country Web site, with 250,000 visitors a year. Brazil is followed by Germany, which ranks very high, especially considering the relative number of members in that country. 

The top 12 country sites in 2007, in terms of unique visitors, are shown in the graph below.

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The New Era magazine has begun posting online some of the comics from its humor section, The Extra Smile. You can find them on the New Era’s home page.

Thanks to the MormonMagz blog for pointing this out.

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On June 16, 2004, the New Zealand/Pacific Islands area launched an English site for all the countries in the area.

On August 4, 2008 they lauched a site in French specifically for Tahiti.

The Church has 64 country sites with 8 more under construction. You can see a list of all the Church country sites at www.lds.org/countries.

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The Ensign magazine is including more articles for young single adults. The August 2008 issue contains a mini-package of articles for unmarried Church members who are between 18 and 30.  Learn more about this issue at Mormon Magz.

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