Learn more about
Our Mission
At Latter-day Hymn Stories, we aim to capture, preserve, and share the stories behind our Latter-day Saint hymns. We provide a platform for our songwriters to share the inspiration behind their music and some of the life experiences that helped to shape their testimonies. We hope these stories will foster in our listeners a greater understanding for, and deeper connection to, the songs in our new hymnal, “Hymns — For Home and Church.” We also discuss the beautiful, unique doctrine of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ found in these hymns, and seek to honor Him as we honor what we consider to be His sacred music.
meet our podcast host
Alaina Larsen
Alaina Larsen is a podcaster, songwriter, filmmaker, author, and certified life coach. Like many of her podcast guests, Alaina is a Christian songwriter. Her song, Believe in God, arranged by Daniel Blomberg, received an Award of Distinction in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ 2021 Music Submissions.
After producing professional recordings and music videos of her own songs, she directed and edited music videos for other LDS songwriters, including Angie Killian and Blake Gillette. She has also co-authored a sing-along picture book with her mother entitled, The First to See: Mary’s Easter Story, published by Cedar Fort Publishing and Media.
Alaina received her bachelor’s degree in Theater and Media Arts from Brigham Young University and certified as a life coach through The Life Coach School. As the Director of Community for the nonprofit organization LDSPMA (Latter-day Saints in Publishing, Media, and the Arts), she helped to create a home for the LDS musician community, whom she continues to serve with this podcast.
Alaina is passionate about the human story and the choice for faith. She hopes all those who listen to this podcast will be uplifted and strengthened in their resolve to live a faith-filled life.
MEET MEMBERS OF
Our Team
We are currently seeking people to join our team! If you would love to be a part of this historic project, please reach out to us at contact@latterdayhymnstories.org.
Director of Production
Tres Larsen
Tres played guitar in both a high school and college band, and seriously considered majoring in audio engineering when life took him to the business school. He now uses his technical audiovisual skills by running all of our film shoot equipment and ensuring quality post-production sound. As the husband of our host, Alaina Larsen, Tres not only sits behind the cameras whiling filming, he also provides a valuable audience reaction to each conversation, guiding each interview to what listeners would most want to hear. Tres is also a LinkedIn IT influencer creating his own video content right here in our studio.
Director of Research
Cris Conerty
Cris is a hymn enthusiast who has been a ward music chairman and choir director many times and loves helping others learn to sing and appreciate our sacred music. She assists our team in pre-production research, gathering information on guests’ works, life experiences, and collaborators, and providing resources on the gospel topics their songs discuss. As the mother and arranging partner of our host, Alaina Larsen, Cris has also written and arranged many faith-promoting songs to bring comfort and courage to followers of Christ as well as many other songs.
Director of Operations
Todd Ebbert
Todd loves the word of God, whether it be found in the scriptures, our hymns, or the words of current church leaders. As the host of the “Words of the Prophets” podcast, he and his daughter Alia Ebbert, share their take on each and every general conference talk. Todd helps our team as an administrator over contacting, scheduling, and record-keeping. Feel free to contact him with any ideas or suggestions for the podcast at toddebbert@gmail.com
podcast theme composer
Jarom Hansen
Jarom is a BYU Commercial Music grad. He created our podcast intro and outro theme music to fit both the feeling of our authentic, person-to-person interviews and to reflect the melody of the beloved and much-anticipated hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” We are so happy with what he created for our podcast! You can listen to other music he has created in multiple genres on his SoundCloud account.