Michelle Amos: Partnering with the Savior in "a Higher Calling”

Morgan Jones 0:00
Some people grow up their whole lives dreaming of working for NASA–not Michelle Amos. It wasn't that she didn't have big dreams, she just wanted to work for IBM. But in college she fell in love with a boy named John Amos, and in an effort to be close to him, she applied for a job at NASA. 30 years into her career at the Kennedy Space Center, she still loved going to work every day until she received what she calls "A higher calling,” the call to serve with her husband as mission leaders of the Louisiana Baton Rouge mission.

Michelle Amos is an electronics design engineer for NASA. In 2002 she won an All-Star Award at NASA's women of color government and defense technology awards conference. She was the chairperson of NASA's Black employee Strategy Team, and she worked on Perseverance, the Mars 2020 rover, as a systems engineer. She and her husband, John, are the parents of three children.

This is All In an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be all in the Gospel of Jesus Christ? I'm Morgan Jones, and I am so thrilled to be with Sister Amos today. Sister Amos, thank you so much for being willing to do this.

Michelle Amos 1:18
Thank you for inviting me.

Morgan Jones 1:20
Well, this is so fun to be here in Louisiana and with you, and I want to start out–because your story starts in Louisiana, but really the story of you joining the Church starts in the northeast with your aunt. So I wondered if we could start there, and if you could tell me a little bit about your aunt's conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Michelle Amos 1:40
Okay. Yes, Aunt Rene, her name is Katherine Warren. She is my mother's sister, and she was living in Connecticut in the late 1960s. And the Lord put it in her heart to find another book. And so Aunt Rene started reading different religious books, like the Quran, and other religious organization documents.

And she just couldn't–she wasn't satisfied with any of them. And a friend eventually gave her a Book of Mormon. And so Aunt Rene starts reading the Book of Mormon, and she loves what she's reading. And she started reading about baptisms, and they weren't baptizing the people in the name of Jesus Christ, and we were raised Baptist, and so we believe that you should be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

And so, Aunt Rene said, when she got to that part of the Book of Mormon, she felt that it was really good but it wasn't the book. And so she went to throw it away. And as she stretched out her hands to throw the book into the trash, she said something shocked her. And she couldn't let the book go. And she was flooded with scriptures that she had read, and at the end of the voice that was telling her all these scriptures that she had read it said, "Catherine, believe all things."

So she had a divine revelation that the Book of Mormon was true and that it was something that she should believe. She didn't know at the time that there was a church associated with that book. Eventually she gets back to her home in New Orleans, Louisiana, and she finds the Church, and she's baptized on Christmas Day in 1976.

Morgan Jones 3:29
And when she originally came to Church, people wouldn't even speak to her. Is that right?

Michelle Amos 3:36
Yeah.

Morgan Jones 3:37
And she had to write President Kimball to get permission to be taught by missionaries.

Michelle Amos 3:41
Yes, that's correct.

Morgan Jones 3:43
And this is because this was pre-1978, is that your understanding?

Michelle Amos 3:47
Yeah, I would think so. I think that people weren't ready to receive African Americans in the Church. This was the early–this was like 1976 timeframe, and so the revelation had not been received where all worthy males could receive the priesthood. And so I guess they weren't ready for African Americans to be in the Church.

So when she joined the Church, they weren't welcoming her. But Aunt Rene had already had her divine revelation. She–all of her life she's been a very religious person, and she's one of those people that has the gifts of the Spirit. She can see visions, and she can have divine revelations. The Lord was guiding her and she knew that she was doing the right thing by joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Morgan Jones 4:33
And is she still living?

Michelle Amos 4:35
She has passed away.

Morgan Jones 4:36
Okay. So when she came back to Louisiana, from what I understand, she began teaching members of your family what she was learning.

Michelle Amos 4:47
Yeah.

Morgan Jones 4:48
You were a little girl at this time, do you remember much about what she taught?

Michelle Amos 4:53
I remember Aunt Rene telling us that she had another vision, and in this vision, she saw that members of our family were going to join the Church. But she didn't know which members were going to join the Church. And so she organized a Bible study. Because we were Baptist, we love the Bible. And we also knew that Aunt Rene was very gifted in the Gospel, and so we loved hearing her talk about, you know, the churches and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So she organized a Bible study with our family, my mother being the oldest of 12. So there's a lot of siblings there, and then all of their children would come and we would–she would come from New Orleans to teach us in Baton Rouge and we would sit outside underneath a big oak tree and have a gospel study through the Bible.

But she was also teaching us out of the Book of Mormon. We didn't know the book, we weren't familiar with it, but it was talking about Jesus Christ. And so we believed what she was teaching us. I remember feeling love and feeling the power of the Holy Ghost when Aunt Rene would talk. She had a way of speaking with power in her voice and conviction. And the things that she taught us she knew were true. And so I felt that and I knew that what she was teaching us was truth.

Morgan Jones 6:16
That's so neat. So at what point did your parents and you and your siblings start to investigate the Church for yourselves?

Michelle Amos 6:27
The Lord was working on us. The vision that Aunt Rene had to come up to Baton Rouge and teach her family was also a time of movement for our family. So, my immediate siblings, we were all raised Baptist, and we were going to church with our mom and dad at a Baptist Church near our home. And the older siblings decided that they wanted to do something different. They wanted to find a different church.

Morgan Jones 6:52
Okay.

Michelle Amos 6:52
So we went looking through, I would guess, maybe four or five different churches that we ended up in. And every time the group of us– we were moving together as a family–someone would say, "Oh, no, this is not right." We were looking for the truth. We were looking for a church that was teaching us that gospel principles as we understood them out of the Holy Bible, and we couldn't find it.

One of my sisters and her husband invited us–a friend had invited my sister's husband, to come over to have the missionaries come to their home, to teach our family the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so my brother in law asked if my wife's family could also come. And so we were all there together. And so we walk into my sister's home, and the missionaries came into the home and the room was filled with African Americans, waiting to hear what these missionaries had to tell us.

And so as they began to teach us the lessons, we were making connections with some of the things that Aunt Rene had been teaching us. And we eventually discovered that the church that she had joined was the same church that these missionaries were teaching us. And we were so excited that we had found the church that Aunt Rene had found.

And so 13 members of the family were baptized, and it was the largest baptism in the south at that time. I don't know if anybody has broken our record, but it was 13 members of one family that was baptized at one time as a result of Aunt Rene, being a great member missionary and sharing the gospel with her family.

Morgan Jones 8:37
One thing that struck me as I prepared for this interview was learning that in 1976, when Aunt Rene joined the Church, like we said, people wouldn't even speak to her at church, which I just . . . my heart feels so much gratitude to her for joining even under those circumstances. Then fast forward three years, and when your family joins the Church–in this family baptism of 13 people–over 100 people were there at the Church. So do you think that the 1978 revelation created a change in terms of the welcoming nature of members of the Church toward African Americans at that time?

Michelle Amos 9:22
Hmm. I think the revelation was good. And it did open up some hearts, there's always going to be people ready to receive revelation and accept it right away. There were still some people that weren't ready to accept African Americans being in the Church. And so I think with time and with love, we'll be able to–I believe that revelation will be more accepted by more people.

It's still a challenge today. It . . . African Americans have a big struggle with that revelation. It's like why did it even have to occur? You know, but I think we have to accept that the Lord has his own timetable. And so I believe as people begin to learn to love the gospel of Jesus Christ and open up their hearts to the truth, like our family did, it didn't matter to us about the revelation, it didn't matter. We heard the true gospel being preached to us and we wanted to follow Jesus Christ.

So I think when people hear the truth, they recognize the Savior's voice in the Bible, in the Book of Mormon, in the words that the missionaries bring to them. They will be more open and receptive to it. So I don't think the revelation itself did make that big of a difference, I think people's hearts have to be right. And then they'll be receptive to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Morgan Jones 11:04
Sister Amos, you were–was it 10 or 11 years old when you were baptized?

Michelle Amos  11:09
Oh! 12.

Morgan Jones 11:10
12? Okay. So do you feel like at that time, you had a pretty strong testimony of the gospel, or were there points as you grew older that you can look back and pinpoint and say, "That's when I started to gain that testimony for myself"?

Michelle Amos 11:27
Hmm. All of the above. We were raised Baptist, my dad was a Baptist Deacon. And so our family went to church every Sunday, just like we do now as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

So I grew up knowing who Jesus Christ was, that he was my Savior. And I grew up knowing about the 10 commandments and being a good citizen, we were taught by our parents to be obedient to the commandments, and also to be good people in the world.

And so I had a testimony of Jesus Christ. I was a very different kind of child. I read scriptures, I was looking for something to help me to overcome my fears that I had in my youth. As a small child I had some spiritual experiences that were frightening, and so I was really wanting to find Jesus, the power of Jesus to help me to overcome those fears.

And when I heard the Joseph Smith story, it clicked, because I had a similar type experience. And so I knew that this is the Church that would help me to develop that strength in Jesus Christ. So maybe my level was, you know, a little lower, but then I kept increasing. And so this was another step to increase my testimony of Jesus Christ and to have a stronger faith in Him, to help me to overcome any fears that I might have in this life.

Morgan Jones 12:57
I love that. So tell me a little bit about the family that you grew up in. You're the youngest of 10 children. So, how did your siblings–and from what I understand all of your siblings are incredible, and have done incredible things–so how did that push you to succeed? How did your parents encourage that kind of ambition? And just tell me a little bit about that family that you grew up in?

Michelle Amos 13:25
Yeah. Growing up the youngest of 10 children, every time we go to school, all the teachers knew all of my other siblings. They knew they were smart, they knew they were outstanding in sports, just good people. And so I had to walk in these footsteps of my older siblings, and it was pretty tough.

Morgan Jones 13:45
Yeah, no pressure.

Michelle Amos 13:45
No pressure, no pressure. I did pretty good. I did pretty good. I followed in their footsteps, and I listened to them. Our home–related to education, my parents, and neither one of them graduated high school, but in our home, we were all encouraged to go to college.

And so at the dinner table, we would be discussing things like what are you going to major in? And so I hadn't figured that out yet. And so my brothers were telling me, "Study engineering!" They were already in school at Southern University studying engineering and so they said, "You need to study this, there's not many females in this field and you would be great. You can do it," you know, "You've already taken all the math and the science, you're smart," you know, and so they encouraged me to study engineering and the rest is history.

Morgan Jones 14:37
And here you are. Okay. so when you–you now work, well, I shouldn't say now, you're a mission president's wife now, but you worked for how many years for NASA?

Michelle Amos 14:51
Thirty.

Morgan Jones 14:52
Thirty years. So did you want to work for NASA? Was that the dream?

Michelle Amos 14:59
It's so funny. No, it's not. It was not my dream. When I interviewed for the NASA–when I had the NASA interview, I had to look up what NASA stood for.

Morgan Jones 15:10
No way.

Michelle Amos 15:11

Yes, I was colored blue. That's what–when you want to work for IBM, that's what you call your color blue.

Morgan Jones 15:17
Okay.

Michelle Amos 15:18
Because IBM was the place where I had done my year and a half internship, and so I thought I was going to North Carolina to work for IBM and be colored blue. However, I met President Amos–I met John Amos in college. And so in our last–my last–semester we got engaged. And so I had to find a job where he was going to be stationed. He was in the Navy and he was in the Navy nuclear power school. And we were going to be moving to Orlando, and so I needed to find work in Florida.

And so he calls me up one day, and he says, "Hey, NASA's over here at the university recruiting. Get over here–bring your resume!" And so I rushed over there and went in for the interview, and I got a second interview. And so she–the lady who was doing the interview–she liked it, and she passed it forward. And so I was eventually offered a job in February of 1990, my first day of work at Kennedy Space Center.

Morgan Jones 16:19
Okay, before we go too far into NASA, I want to back up for a second. Tell me how you and President Amos met.

Michelle Amos 16:27
Oh, boy. Well, we were both studying Electrical Engineering at Southern University. We were in–we had several classes together. But in one particular class, he got the courage to talk to me one day, and he says, "So when are you going to take me out?" I know, so funny. And I said, "Friday night," and he said, "What should I wear?" and I said, "Wear a suit." And so I picked him up Friday night, he was dressed in a suit, and I took him to a church dance.

[Laughter]

So we went to a constitutional ball that was held at our church and many members of my family were at the ball in so he got to meet my mom and dad and my sisters, all on the first date. But we had fun dancing, and it led to many other dates.

Morgan Jones 17:18
And was he a member of the Church at the time?

Michelle Amos 17:21
He was not a member of the Church.

Morgan Jones 17:23
Okay.

Michelle Amos 17:23
Eventually we introduced–talked to him about the Church. And he had the lessons, he studied on his own. He went to some early seminary classes all on his own, so he could learn the gospel. He's an early riser, being I guess, military and being in the military. So he would get up early and go to seminary.

And so he was learning through seminary, he was having lessons from the missionaries, and he was baptized. And so it was great. I wanted–my goal was to be married and sealed in the holy temple of the Lord. And I knew that whoever I dated, I would have to introduce to the Church, and many did not accept the gospel the way he did. And so he was a good person, he was smart, we had a lot of fun together. And so it was just right for us to be together.

Morgan Jones 18:17
Amazing. So you get to Florida, you start at Kennedy Space Center, what was that first day like? And then as you worked more and more, how did you develop a love for what NASA does? Especially for somebody that didn't even know what NASA stood for.

Michelle Amos 18:38
Okay, NASA stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Morgan Jones 18:44
Now we know.

Michelle Amos 18:45
Now we know. Now we know. My first job was in a special projects lab. So we were developing a digital communication system for the launch control system. The older system was all analog, and we were converting it all to digital technology. And so it was great to have a job as an electrical engineer learning and actually doing design work.

So we go to school to learn how to do design, and I was actually in a job. And that's why I accepted the job because my manager at the time offered me to do engineering design work. And I knew that was going to give me a really good experience that I needed to help my career advance.

So it was just amazing to know that I could have worked for IBM and I would have been, you know, developing maybe chips and computer systems that many people would use, but working for NASA is like a different level of work, because what we do at NASA is benefit all mankind. And so to work on a communication system that was going to help launch rockets and to put humans into space was more than I could ever have hoped for.

And my career at NASA has been one great project after another. I've been able to develop inventions that had never been done before. I've led teams of engineers that will launch the new rocket. We have a new Space Launch System rocket that's in development right now. In 2024 NASA will put the next man and the first woman on the moon. And so I lead the team of engineers to develop the T minus zero signal that will release the umbilical’s of the rocket. We will release the rocket and allow it to fly into space.

And also the opportunity to work on the Mars 2020 rover. That was–I believe it was divine. That Heavenly Father was answering my prayers and allowed me that opportunity to actually work on a piece of spacecraft, flight hardware, that has landed on another planet in our solar system and is now performing operations to help us to discover if there was life on Mars, and possibly for future humans to explore Mars, like we have robots doing the exploration right now. But the goal is to eventually send man to Mars.

Morgan Jones 21:15
So cool.

Michelle Amos 21:16
It is. It's so cool. We think it's cool too. Everybody at NASA–the people there are the work, like I said, it's a love for the work. I would tell my boss, sometimes, "You don't have to pay me, I'm coming back to work anyway." And so there's a lot of people there that just has that loyalty, where they just love what they're doing. And they know what we're doing is beyond anything that we could do as one group of people, but together, we can actually make a huge difference for making our planet safer, our planet better, and for making life for human beings on the earth better.

Morgan Jones 21:56
Sister Amos, what would you say–I love hearing you talk about this, because you're clearly so passionate about it and you can almost–I can almost feel it. What would you say is the religious significance or the spiritual significance of the work that is being done right now at NASA?

Michelle Amos 22:16
Wow, I've had to–I've had some time to think about this. NASA's mission is to discover new worlds. To explore the unknown and to create or innovate, to benefit human life on earth. To work for an organization that has such a high mission, a high calling–and it's very relative to what we learn in Moses 1:33 where Heavenly Father says, "Worlds without end have I created, and I've created through my only begotten Son." And he says, "For my own purpose have I done this." And then he later goes on to say, I think in verse 39, "This is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."

So we know through divine scripture everything Heavenly Father does is to benefit us. Is to help us to become one with him. And so NASA's purpose is nearly the same, to benefit human life. And as Heavenly Father through His only begotten is creating worlds, we can think–we know through Genesis that He created the earth and the sun, and the moon, and the stars. But there's so much more to our solar system. Did Christ create Mars, Jupiter, Saturn?

And so you have to believe, because He's told us worlds without end. And so I relate that work that we do in NASA to discover these planets, the pictures that we have, the knowledge that we have now, man on the earth, we know what the earth looks like because a NASA astronaut stood on the moon and took a picture of the earth.

We know what the solar system looks like because NASA spacecraft have flown throughout the solar system and have taking beautiful pictures of Saturn. You know, everybody loves Saturn. And we know that Jupiter's huge compared to all the other planets and we know all of this because of the work that NASA is doing. So we are in essence learning about the work that is the work and the glory.

Morgan Jones 24:44
It's amazing.

Michelle Amos 24:44
It is amazing.

Morgan Jones 24:46
What a neat thing to be a part of. Sister Amos one thing that I know is difficult for some people is striking a balance between science and religion. It seems like this is something that you have been able to do personally in your life, how would you say that you've been able to find that balance?

Michelle Amos 25:09
The balance is: our Heavenly Father is intelligent. The knowledge that we have on this earth is because what He has shared with man. So there is no difference. The more you come to know God and Jesus Christ, the more you're going to appreciate knowledge.

And so that light–Jesus says He is truth, He is light. And light clings to light. Knowledge clings to knowledge. Truth clings to truth. So what we're looking for is truth. If the religion is true, and secular knowledge is true, they're going to unite. They will support each other. So I don't see a difference. I don't think there's a difference between knowledge and religion. I believe if you found religion, and it is true religion, then it will support knowledge.

Morgan Jones 26:11
Well said. Sister Amos, in the middle of this incredible career that you are having, you and your husband received a call to serve here in Baton Rouge, your home. Tell me a little bit about that call. Did it come as a surprise? What was your reaction? etc, etc.

Michelle Amos 26:31
This call came at the time when I had finished my work with the Mars 2020 rover. I had gotten back from Jet Propulsion Lab, I was on a about a year–almost a year assignment in California working on the Mars 2020 rover.

And I was back now in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center and I just gotten a new job. The new job was working on the gateway, which is the habitat that's going to orbit the moon and allow astronauts to live and work on the moon for more than just three days, like Neil Armstrong and the Apollo astronauts.

The new program is Artemis, and it's going to have sustained presence on the moon. We will allow men and women to live on the moon for months at a time exploring the unknown, you know, discovering who knows what we're going to discover while we're up there.

So I was on this project to develop the requirements for the logistics module that will bring up the supplies and the pieces of the–and experiments and equipment that the astronauts would use while working on the moon.

And so we get a call. We had a video conference with President Eyring. And it was about an hour long and we just enjoyed it. We were just having a great time with President Eyring. And in the middle of the conversation, we had no reason–we did not know why we had been selected to have this video conference with an apostle of the Lord.

But midway through he tells us that he had just left President Nelson, and President Nelson asked him to extend a call to us that was to be a mission president of a mission. President Amos would serve as president, and I would serve as his companion. And so we said yes.

We said yes, because we knew that it was a part of the covenants that we had made with Heavenly Father in the holy temples to do whatever he asked us to do. To dedicate our whole lives in service to building up of his kingdom up on the earth. And so it wasn't a difficult decision. I thought about the work that I would have to leave and the friends that I would have to leave at NASA and Kennedy Space Center.

But I knew that Heavenly Father had given me so many blessings. I had a wonderful career I was now doing, you know, the work that I love doing. And I think that was a part of the sacrifice. Will you let go? And will you come and work with me in the vineyard to help save souls? And so it was a higher calling. NASA is a high calling.

[Laughter]

Morgan Jones 29:18
It feels about as high as it can get.

Michelle Amos 29:20
Yes, NASA is a high calling. And you know what, it gave me an opportunity to talk to many of my NASA coworkers, to let them know that I was leaving this work that we all love that we all know is benefiting mankind, to go and serve the Lord. To help exalt man, not just benefit man, but to be a partner with the Savior.

Morgan Jones 29:48
Amazing. Sister Amos, what has it been like to be here on the mission? And–well first of all, actually, let me back up for a second. At the time that you accepted the call, you didn't know where you would be assigned.

Michelle Amos 30:04
That's correct.

Morgan Jones 30:05
What was your reaction when you found out that you would have the chance to come to Baton Rouge?

Michelle Amos 30:10
I couldn't believe it. The Lord has a sense of humor. I couldn't believe that we were being called to serve in our hometown. I was like, "Oh, okay. I'll go where you want me to go." So, it was a surprise.

President Amos, you know, we had gotten the call that we knew we were going to serve as a mission president, we didn't know where. And so we did like a lot of missionaries come up with your top five places that where you would think you might want to go where the Lord is going to send you, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana was not on my list.

[Laughter]

President Amos immediately said, "We're going to Baton Rouge." So I know the Lord was with him, and he knew where we were going. And I said, there's no way, they don't send you home to serve a mission. But we were sent home. It's been wonderful. It's been amazing being here. We know that–I have family here, both of our moms live within the mission boundaries. I have a lot of brothers and sisters that live here. So our missionaries have family that love them.

We get a little–little bit challenging, though, at times when the family expects you to be at an activity and we can't because we are on a mission. And so we do have that challenge of juggling, do we go to this party or this event? Or, you know, we have to, we have to do our mission calling. And so we tell them a lot, "We can't make it, we have to do our mission calling." So it's been great being here serving the Lord in the south. We're already familiar with the culture, the food, we sound like the people that are here, so it's been really great.

Morgan Jones 31:53
Sister Amos you've had the chance since you've been here, the Mars rover landed, right?

Michelle Amos 32:00
Yes.

Morgan Jones 32:00
So you had the chance to share that with your missionaries over Zoom. What was it like to share that–I can imagine that you probably had envisioned that moment a little bit differently, so what was it like for you to experience it in that way?

Michelle Amos 32:19
I knew a secret. The secret that I shared with you earlier, about–I believe that Jesus Christ created the entire solar system and all of the masses of planets. There's billions of them out there. We've learned that through another–through the Hubble Space Telescope.

And so I believe this. I believe that I could use this opportunity to help the missionaries to learn a few things. The first thing was to learn that worlds without end Heavenly Father has created through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and that we would be able to see another sphere or another planet that Jesus Christ created.

I wanted to also emphasize to them the importance of knowledge and intelligence. And so I found scriptures that talked about gaining knowledge, that knowledge would rise with us in the resurrection. And that it was–that it would be to our advantage to gain as much knowledge and intelligence in this life as we possibly could.

And so I shared these things with them in a presentation, a PowerPoint presentation, before we watched live streaming of the rover landing and it was amazing. They all cheered and yelled, and we were just so excited to actually witness the landing of the rover on Mars.

And they were just excited that I was there with them to share with them those moments. As we watched the stream on YouTube, I knew many of the people that were talking on the YouTube, like the JPL chief engineer–good friends. And so–the other, the chief engineer for the Mars 2020 rover, he just worked around the cube for me. So I had worked with a lot of these people. And I was able to tell them, "This is this person and this is what he did." And so I was able to share with them some of my friends that worked on the project and tell them a little bit about the project as it was happening and as it was occurring, narrating for them.

And then afterwards, we gave the missionaries about 30 minutes to discuss how they felt by watching these NASA experts, you know, use their knowledge, use their intelligence to do something so spectacular, like put another robot on another planet. And it was amazing to me what they came up with. I never expected to hear some of the comments, but we do have some missionaries now that want to be NASA engineers.

Morgan Jones 34:52
Can you hook them up?

[Laughter]

Michelle Amos 34:55
They want to be NASA engineers. They want to study, you know, the science and the math and engineering. And that was great. And then we had some talk about priesthood. That they held the priesthood power, that same power that Jesus Christ has who created the Earth and Mars. And so they began to open up and to see things that I never, I never even thought about myself. And so when you introduce these, when you help people raise their level of thinking, expand their level of thinking, by giving them something that they've never thought about before, I think that's when the Holy Spirit can teach us and help us to come to understand the truthfulness of the Scriptures as they are meant to be.

Morgan Jones 35:41
When you think about Aunt Rene and her joining the Church and introducing your family into the Church, what kind of gratitude do you feel toward her? And what kind of gratitude do you feel for being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Michelle Amos 36:02
I love my Aunt Rene. I'm so grateful to her for having the courage to join the Church at a time when it wasn't popular, or it wasn't very well known about the Restored Church of Jesus Christ. So she was courageous in that feat, that she did something all by herself. And she stood alone in the Church by herself. And she was able to do this because of her love for Jesus Christ.

She used to bear her testimony on love in the Church where she went, because she felt like that's what they needed to hear more. So I'm so grateful for her for all of my life, I grew up with her, you know, sharing, you know, some of her spiritual visions and stories with us. And so I'm just forever grateful for her courage and for her love for Jesus Christ and for her love for us, that she would share the gospel with us and not have any fear about doing that.

Morgan Jones 37:02
That's beautiful. My last question for you–and I want to start by saying, I think you are such a good example of this principle of being all in. I think you epitomize that. Your willingness to walk away from a dream job–and it may not have been your dream job initially, but it's a lot of people's dream job. So what does it mean to you to be all in the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Michelle Amos 37:31
I think of the Savior, He gave us all. He sacrificed everything for us so that we could be with Him forever, and be able to return back into the presence of our Heavenly Father, because of His Atonement. So because He gave everything–He was a god, He came and lived upon this earth that He created. And He made himself subject to mortality. So He sacrificed everything, and even gave His life.

To be all in is to give him everything. Is to not hold back anything from Him. If He asked me to do anything, I'm all in–I'm with you. And I know that I can do whatever He asks me to do. If He's with me and I know that He's with me. Through our faith in Jesus Christ, we can do all things.

Morgan Jones 38:35
Thank you so much. This has been such a treat.

Michelle Amos 38:38
Thank you.

Morgan Jones 38:42
We are so grateful to Sister Amos for joining us on today's episode, be sure to check out the All In television special if you haven't already on the KSL TV app. Thanks to Derek Campbell of Mix at Six studios for his help with this episode. And thank you for listening