{"id":79814,"date":"2025-06-06T00:52:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T00:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/79814\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T00:52:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T00:52:12","slug":"how-former-byu-star-travis-hansen-found-purpose-beyond-basketball-in-faith-service-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/79814\/","title":{"rendered":"How former BYU star Travis Hansen found purpose beyond basketball in faith, service \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">One of the greatest blessings and miracles of Travis Hansen\u2019s life came simply because he was in the right place at the right time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">In 1999, shortly after returning from his mission, the future BYU and professional basketball player walked into the Utah Valley Institute of Religion and saw LaRee Merrell for the first time. She wasn\u2019t just beautiful, he said, there was something different and special about her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">They kept running into each other over the next few weeks. One thing led to another, and soon they were dating. Not long after, they were sealed in the Mount Timpanogos Utah Temple.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">To read the full story, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thechurchnews.com\/members\/2025\/06\/04\/former-byu-star-travis-hansen-purpose-basketball-faith-service-spain-russia-egor-demin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.thechurchnews.com\/members\/2025\/06\/04\/former-byu-star-travis-hansen-purpose-basketball-faith-service-spain-russia-egor-demin\/\">TheChurchNews.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the greatest blessings and miracles of Travis Hansen\u2019s life came simply because he was in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,18039,3384],"class_list":{"0":"post-79814","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-church-of-jesus-christ","10":"tag-faith"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114633686697173601","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}