The BYU-Idaho Devotional speaker for August 14, 2018 was Sister Amy Staiger, a career and academic advisor at BYU-Idaho.
Staiger graduated from Ricks College and completed a Bachelor’s degree in Geology from Brigham Young University. She is a returned missionary from the Chile Vina del Mar Mission and is the current Relief Society President of her ward.
Staiger’s devotional address, “Then are They Glad,” is divided into three parts: faith, family, and forgiveness.
“I encourage you to read the scriptures… [and] the talks I have referenced. When the talk is published, there will be many, many footnotes,” she told listeners of BYU-Idaho Radio.
Staiger never married, she doesn’t have children of her own, yet she has been promised a family of her own. She shared in her talk how she lives a life of faith.
“I act as if I already have a husband to whom I am bound in a covenant, eternal relationship,” Staiger said. “I stay faithful to our eternal companionship.”
She was inspired by a talk by Elder Kim B. Clark who talked about eternal companions and how they are real, as real as we are.
“I also strive to act as if my children know me, are aware of me, and are supporting me,” she explained.
In her talk, she told of an experience where she read a letter from her ancestor. She felt it was a message of encouragement sent just to her.
The letter was written in 1870 by her cousin Sarah Elizabeth McDonald Baskin Patterson after the U.S. Civil War. She wrote,
“Whenever troubles innumerable assailed me I could just open my Bible and find something…showing me that my troubles were nothing more than the common lot of man and I can truly say today that every trial and temptation through which I have passed has been profitable to me,” [emphasis added].
Staiger said she has thought more about her own record-keeping and how she may give courage to the posterity of her siblings.
Leading up to her talk, she invited students to download the FamilyTree app, and allow location-access to the app.
During the devotional, she asked for everyone to open the app and select the option to see “Relatives Near Me” in the menu. She then asked for a raise of hands of how many people have relatives there at the Manwaring Center. She also encourage those listening or viewing from a different location to try the experiment with their stake or ward.
Lastly, she talked about how forgiveness can lead to gladness.
She shared a lesson she learned from Silly and Mr. Teece of Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles.” Silly was bound by contract to Mr. Teece who will not let him leave to fulfill his dreams of starting his own store on Mars. But one of Teece’s friends offers to take over Silly’s place.
“Which for me is like Heavenly Father or Christ coming in and saying, ‘I’ll take care of the debt, let Silly go.’”
After Silly is let go, as he and his friends are driving and moving towards a higher ideal by leaving the planet, they notice along the road toward the rockets there are objects placed carefully on the roadside.
“It’s this idea of consciously setting aside, not throwing haphazardly, not being naïve about it…and saying ‘In this situation I choose the Lord.’”
Staiger finished her comments on forgiveness by saying, “Let it take time. It’s a conscious decision…Let Him [the Lord] do what He was assigned to do.”