Welcome to Closer to Christ Through Conference, where two friends who love Jesus share our
own approach to studying general conference.
Today we get to break into the Saturday evening session that was kicked off by Elder Shane
M. Bowen of the Seventy.
His talk was titled, Miracles, Angels, and Priesthood Power.
Oh, Amy, I know this talk was for you.
We today say that miracles no longer exist, that angels are fictional, and that the heavens
are closed.
Elder Bowen testified that miracles have not ceased.
Angels are among us, and the heavens truly are open.
And I want to add my testimony to this.
I know, Amy, you'll do the same.
What caught your attention?
Oh my gosh, Abby.
I absolutely love that from the beginning, the whole talk is standing on a framework
that we understand why we have the ministering of angels.
So first of all, God is a God of order.
He follows laws of nature and his own laws.
And I love that Elder Bowen reminds us that the heavens were opened by the reestablishment
of priesthood keys.
He says, Through the Savior's Church, we receive the blessings of the priesthood, including
the power of God, to help us in our own lives.
Now I have to tell you, Abby, a younger version of myself didn't realize that angelic help
was available because of the priesthood being restored upon the earth.
I didn't put those two things together.
The ministering of angels is a direct blessing of the priesthood.
And I'm a visual person.
I like to know how things work.
And I like to know by what authority I'm being blessed.
I like to know which of God's laws is being enacted as I receive heavenly blessings.
And part of that, I think, is because I like to know what I can do to opt into those blessings.
I like to know what my part is.
And Elder Bowen says this.
He says, If you desire the blessings of the priesthood, including miracles and the ministering
of angels, walk the path of covenants that God's made available.
And I do want to say right now that I absolutely understand that I'm not saying God is an ending
machine.
I'm not saying I do this and out comes a very specific blessing that I'm after.
What I am saying is that it's more like I identify that I love heavenly blessings.
I walk the covenant path with God and Jesus.
And I'm blessed according to my needs, my desires, and my choices along the way.
And I'm definitely going to say that these blessings often come in the form of trials,
hard work, and experiences that we'd rather not have.
And then our lives are sprinkled with little glimpses of heaven as God lets us know that
He's not left us.
And that often comes through heavenly assistance, through angelic assistance.
As this is maybe a new thought or idea for somebody, I would say most of us have experienced
this, like when you've lost a loved one and you're doing the last thing, the funeral,
you feel like an extra abundance of the spirit and you feel the presence of that relative
helping guide making some decisions.
You're kind of in a different state.
100%.
The veil is very thin.
It's super thin.
And so I would say, no, it doesn't have to be a unique experience to just that.
And like, okay, we finished the funeral and we've laid them to rest or whatever their
end of right things are.
And then that feeling is going to be gone.
Sometimes we do that and then you'll find people will find themselves at the cemetery
like laying on the grave and just hoping to fill that connection again.
And they may feel some peace there, but I would say more in recent years and through
my association with you, I've learned that there are ways to access priesthood power
and know the ancestors that are there and available for us to call on for help.
And when you have ears that you're listening to that, you can listen back to just like
the last year on conference house, like, whoa, there are so many references to that angelic
help.
We're helping them do things that they can't do for themselves.
And when they're recognizing that from us, you'll feel that when you're doing family
history.
I totally agree.
So many different ways.
And I don't want to sit and list out like for people how they're going to find that.
I think let's keep delving into this awesome talk.
Did you fill an overarching theme with this talk?
Yes, Abby.
So this is one of those talks that like you listen to it the first time and you're like,
wow, that was a great talk.
And then you really go back and look at it or listen again.
And I wanted to cry the whole time for him, like bawl my eyes out, because he talks about
this first amazing experience that happened with his grandfather, right?
Where he was able to call back his mother from the other side, like she had passed.
And then how he had this accident with his family.
And honestly, as he was talking about it, I was like, oh, no, is he the one that talked
about the baby that that passed?
And I was like, I mean, you just kind of want to like push pause and just cry and just mourn
for this man.
Because the thing he's testifying of has come from a hard one lesson of experience.
And so this is what I think is so beautiful, Abby, like this, if for me, this is me through
my own eyes.
If I were to look at this talk, I would say what a shining example he is because what
is he testify of the entire time?
He testifies of the goodness of God.
He testifies of the power of the atonement.
He testifies of prayers being answered and also in God's way and timing.
Like we, as a parent, I can imagine that his prayer was that his baby was going to survive,
right?
That didn't happen.
But that's not what this talk was even about.
He had a child die.
He also raised another child from the dead.
Like do we, like there is profound information in this talk.
And if we're going to take it at face value, it would be a very depressing talk in my mind.
However, if we're thinking celestial, if we are taking this at spiritual face value, then
it's just kind of a mirror for all of our lives.
We're all going to go through crap.
We're all going to have really sad, hard things happen that we wish never came to our doorstep.
And I just feel like he is a wonderful example, Elder Bowen, of showing us that you can focus
on Christ.
You can focus on the positive aspect.
Yes, the shining moments, the fact that there are glimmers of heaven, the fact that there
were miracles that happened and that there was angelic assistance.
One of the things he said was when there was this accident with his family and his sweet
little daughter got stuck under their car.
He talked about how there were people who came to lift the car up.
It's a big car.
I think it was a van.
And he said there was like this most perfect-
High calculation.
They shouldn't be able to.
Right.
Because, and so like, I love the way that he reframed that picture for me and very visual
again.
He said there were heavenly angels that assisted earthly angels because he said each one of
them noted that that car was much lighter than it should have been.
So that's what I feel like that's the whole thing is that our burdens can be much lighter
than they should have been when we are calling on the powers of heaven, when we are living
covenant lives.
And really that's like the, that's the payoff.
There is no, there's nothing that's going to say that you're not going to have tragic,
sad things happen in your life, but you are the one.
I am the one.
Our listeners are the ones that can reach up to heaven, claim our blessings, claim those
blessings, pray and ask for that spirit or the power of the Aaronic priesthood to flow
into your life through the ministering of angels.
I want everyone to claim that blessing.
That's the one thing that makes life sweet is heavenly assistance.
Sometimes mortal life can just be so mortal and so hard.
So that's, that's really the overarching theme for me, Abby.
I just felt over and over the deep testimony that he shared.
He didn't focus on death and near death.
He focused on angelic help and the atonement.
And I love how he has that story in his, in his past of the grandfather that did raise
his mother from the dead.
And that would, I don't think it was coincidental that that thought would come to him as he
is looking at his daughter's lifeless form.
That would be like, we have claimed these blessings in our heritage and now is it as
good of opportunity to try as any.
And so he did that.
And that we do know that he did lose a child later, but that he's not saying that negated
the blessing that he'd received or that it was like, well, he saved one and didn't save
the other and was angry about it.
It's just from, from the way that he's living his life, he just, he, he has to know he's
able to more comfortably live with the idea that it wasn't his daughter's time to go.
And that because he was righteously holding the priesthood that he could claim those blessings
and that it must have been absolutely the time for those little guy to go.
Absolutely.
And that's hard.
I remember when that talk was shared a while back and like, I'm always like texting my
sisters during conference and like, it's just lots of cry emojis on that.
Cause it's just like, that's not what you were expecting the outcome of that story to
be.
Yeah.
It got your parent heart, your mama heart.
It just tugged at it.
I'm terrified every time like when your kids are in that stage where they're just putting
everything in their, in their mouths.
But I don't know when it started for you on, on this connection that you have with your
ancestors and the angelic and I know when, so I think maybe you should share that.
What, what experiences have you had?
What angelic help have you had before?
Do you have anything you can specifically share about that?
Because I know it's kind of my overall arching filling with you.
You've taught me that more than anybody else in my life.
And then as my ears have been open to it, I hear the apostles and prophets talk about
all the time and I'm like, how did I miss that?
And I think it was because I wasn't ready to accept the idea of the veil being so thin.
I will say like in my patriarchal blessing, it does talk about the veil becoming thin
in the later years of my life as I work on temple work and stuff.
So I'm like, well, in my mind, like I was thinking like 80.
Right.
So I'm like only halfway there.
That was the number I was going to throw out.
Yeah.
But I think it's already must be the later years of my life because I'm definitely, definitely
feeling that in the family history work that I'm doing or connecting with ancestors that
I'm taking to temple.
It's a different experience.
And then we never said this before, but a couple of talks ago, we talked about preparing
for the temple differently.
Sometimes you go with a question and we didn't say it in that thing.
But since I've re-listened to the thing, I was like, when I prepare and I print a family
member's name and I look and quickly see how I'm related to them, it changes the experience
in the temple for me.
It does.
So I think that it makes sense to insert that thought.
I totally agree with that.
I totally agree.
So Abby, it's interesting that you say that about, you know, like when did it start or
whatever.
I think what's really interesting for me is that mine happened with a car accident.
It was my Chile car accident.
And without going into all the details, it was miraculous.
It truly was miraculous.
The way that my car turned, we didn't go into oncoming traffic.
We didn't hit a pole that was right there in front of our car.
Was it slow motion for you?
Yes, totally slow motion.
We spun around perfectly in the lane.
So not even any other cars, not in my lane, not in the oncoming lane, none of that.
Yes, we had injuries.
We suffered burns.
Yeah, three of us left in separate ambulances.
But this is my point.
That was enough to get my attention.
Because as I thought on it, after I was recovering from burns, I had some time to think about
it and I just kept thinking it shouldn't have ended that way.
Like it didn't have to end so perfectly.
There were so many things that happened.
My point is this.
After thinking about it, I only had one conclusion is that there was heavenly assistance.
We had more than one angel helping us.
And from that point, probably the next few years didn't think about it too much.
And then it really accelerated.
We had another accident.
But my point is this.
I feel like every single one of us has these things happen in our lives.
And when I say these things, I mean angelic ministering from our ancestors who love us.
We're just not aware of it.
And as soon as we become aware of it, I mean, we can even have a prayer in our heart that
says, Heavenly Father, help me to recognize your hand.
And sometimes that means angelic assistance.
Sometimes when I just have my grandpa's name come to mind or his song comes on my playlist,
I could just go about my day and keep doing it.
Or I could stop and say, is there something that I could learn from this situation?
Is this a time when the veil is thin?
So there are small things that have happened to every single one of us.
We just have to stop and be aware.
We've mentioned your, well, should we call it a hobby farm?
I don't even know what you have here.
But as you're creating it and we know stories of your ancestors, it's something that they
have already paid the price to learn about how to run.
They were farmers.
Yeah.
And they had some of these same animals that you're caring for.
And so what better person to tutor you?
I mean, it's not going to be like this real heavy conversation.
They're like, okay, this is what you need to do A, B and C.
No, it comes as a thought.
Just as a thought.
And it feels like the Holy Ghost because angels speak by the power of Holy Ghost.
So it's literally just a thought of how about you do this with the animals?
How about you?
How am I going to get the sheep back in?
How about you go grab this?
It makes things more fluid.
And it's just a beautiful thing that I just thinking of my ancestors helping me in this
way because this is very new to me.
I'm a city girl.
I've only ever had more than no more than one dog in the family.
So thinking in this way is very different for me.
And I'm not telling you that they're around all the time, but I do have thoughts and impressions.
And I absolutely that night in my prayers, I thank Heavenly Father for sending an ancestor
in that moment that just helped things to move smoothly for me.
Nicole Sade The subject is really dear to Amy's heart.
And she's made it a gift in the lives of her friends, those around her.
Now she's making it part of the podcast.
Like kind of a process on recognizing those ancestors and some of those experiences, they're
ones that you can share.
And some of them are maybe a little more sacred and you have to kind of, you're best holding
them like a little closer to your heart.
Like you know that they existed in there, but they're not really to share.
I have one that I'll share.
On my fifth child, I had Benson and I've already told the audience, we've got two kids with
cystic fibrosis, we shut the family thing down, and then we were blessed with two more
children.
So he comes along.
My mother instinct was pretty sure he had CF at birth.
Kind of there are just some things that I'm looking for and I'd experienced it a couple
of times before and I had two with no CF and two with CS that I was like, okay, pretty
sure Benson has this.
And he had some respiratory things kind of right from the beginning.
And so I was exhausted from giving birth.
I sent my husband home so he wasn't there with me, but we had four other kids to take
care of and therapy and some myriad of things.
It makes more sense to send him home.
So I'm there by myself and he'd kind of had like a little respiratory issue.
And so the team comes in, this is like late at night and I'm like trying to hold my eyes
open because like my worst fear is my child stopping breathing.
Like just probably like post-traumatic stress just for different things.
So that's happening.
And so we did the first thing and then I was just like, the respiratory team comes in,
they suction some things and then it was like so exhausted, but like I could not feel good
about sleeping.
And so because I had some training from you, I thought I invited my ancestors to join me.
And I said, I'm exhausted and I need some sleep, but I can't rest comfortably unless
I know Benson's looked over for.
I'll tell you who came.
I don't know every, I don't, I feel like there were more than one person, but because I don't
know everybody's name, I'm like, yeah, but my grandma Wolfly came to help that night.
And then you sit and you question, you're like, was it really her that came?
But as I was thinking of sharing the experience, I was like, grandma, I thought you were there
for me.
And she's like, yeah, I was there for you.
Why that's special and unique is that she passed away a month before I was born.
So I never knew her in this life, but it's special to me that we can have a connection
in a different way, even though we didn't.
We must have crossed paths or whatever.
And I got her, I'm blue eyed and like, it's pretty random, like in my family.
So I'm like, she shared some things with me and I think she was a bigger woman.
That's what I am too.
So, and I don't know, I think I physically maybe look like her and I'm kind of, I'm
hoping that I have some of her qualities, but she's been there for me.
Yeah.
I love that, Abby.
They don't have to be huge experiences.
Sometimes it's just as special as getting a confirmation when you're doing like temple
work and you feel that person acknowledge that you were there for them that day.
I'm just like that the veil was very thin for me.
You were ready and waiting.
I'm always looking at the date.
I'm looking at the location.
I do love when I'm opening it up, like how closely am I related?
And they're not super close oftentimes, but it doesn't matter.
But you know where they fit in your family and where you fit.
I love clicking on that little button that says how you're related and you can just,
you can see it.
You know, Abby, as you were talking, you know, one thing I do want to share is, is
so something that came.
Was it something about family history?
It was, you know, it was something about, so when I was going through my cancer, there
was a point where I recognized, there was a point where I recognized that ancestors
were helping me through it.
Oh, that's cool.
I just had a thought and a feeling, but I wasn't sure.
And so Abby, I didn't know.
I was unfamiliar with this world.
I'm unfamiliar with the rules of it.
So I just prayed and said, heavenly father, is it appropriate that I know who's helping
me?
Oh, that's good.
The feeling that I got was absolutely it is.
And since then, I've learned more and more reasons why it's appropriate that you know
who's helping you from the other side.
But for me, what happened in that very instance is my niece was helping me to wash and care
for my cancer that day.
And all of a sudden I just had a thought and I prayed out loud and asked heavenly father,
and I literally said my aunt's name out loud.
I said, aunt Shirley.
And as soon as I said it, we both just started crying.
There was like an overwhelming feeling of peace and love and reassurance through the
Holy Ghost that that's who it was.
So I know that sounds a little bit interesting and perhaps odd to some people, but the name
came to my mind.
And as soon as it came, I said it.
And it was kind of like when you bear your testimony, when you say those words out loud,
the Holy Ghost confirms it to you and it's like locked in your heart, like you know,
right?
And so that's kind of how it was for me.
So I've kind of followed that pattern of I would love to know who is helping me.
I would love to know because I feel like that forms a stronger bond.
Think of your ministering sisters.
You probably would like to know when they acknowledge something that you do, it's the
same thing.
They're like our ministering brothers and sisters.
And when we are able to thank heavenly father for dispatching them on our behalf, it grows
that bond.
Absolutely, there's so many thoughts in my mind, but let me ask you one more question,
okay?
Because I do feel like we could talk for hours on this, but we're not going to.
One more question through the lens of family history, Elder Bowen relayed a beautiful story
about his own grandpa talking about healing.
What you just said, and this question that I'm asking is, what tips can you give listeners
on how better to know who's present, who you're calling on?
How can we make that connection?
This kind of feels like the action item for the talk.
I agree.
It's such a foreign thing.
And some people are going to be like, I'm shutting this office.
It's feeling very weird, but it's such a beautiful thing.
It really is.
And it can be so very simple.
I do love just, I would love to draw your attention to one thing quickly.
He first shares the story of his grandfather.
And if you think of it, he had the same spiritual gift that Elder Bowen had.
So how would he know that this gift of healing that was even part of it, how would he know,
how would it even come to his mind when it was time for him to raise his daughter?
How would that even come to mind had that not already been planted by someone in his
family who had this gift of experience?
And who had recorded it for him to read later.
So that's another reason, like get to know your family, jump onto family search and click
on if there are any stories, read the stories.
If you don't have stories, just looking at dates, when did they die?
When were they born?
Did they lose parents at an early age?
They lose a spouse or a sibling or a child.
You can also see where did they come from?
When did they come to the US?
What was their occupation?
All of these things are available and it just helps us to get to know them a little bit
better.
And then the last thing, this is just something personal that I've done in the past four years.
I've actually compiled a kind of a family, it's an ancestor playlist.
So I have favorite hymns.
I've asked my parents what hymn reminds you of your grandpa, of your parents who've passed.
And then I've also, if I've had them accessible, I've looked at funeral programs and on there
I put those lists on there, you know, those hymns on there too, because that's their favorites.
And then I've also just like opened up the Christian hymns, you know, on Spotify for
me.
And I've just kind of like done-
What feels right.
What feels good.
What resonates and I add, I add, I add.
And what I do is I just listen to this as I do laundry, as I prep dinner, as I drive
my kids from place to place.
And for me what it does is it first invites the Holy Ghost to be there and it's a comfortable
place for the Holy Ghost to be.
And then also wherever the Holy Ghost is, that's where ancestors are.
So if maybe sometimes a song comes on that just resonates a little bit more, I'm like,
oh, that was kind of a nod or a wink for my great grandma.
Like she sees what's going on.
She saw this hard thing that happened today when I was crying in the corner, whatever,
you know what I mean?
And it just, it opens up, I guess it's a small effort that we can do to let the heavens know
that we're listening and let the Lord know that we're looking for His hand in our lives.
And the best that we can, you're in like the thick of motherhood right now when you share
those experiences and point those things out to your kids, it's going to make a difference
in their lives through experience.
Like anecdotally, I had a daughter that turned old enough to start doing proxies baptisms.
And so we specifically took family names the first time that she went and she very felt
close to the Spirit and the experience was great for her.
And then another time, pretty shortly after we went and I think we did some names for
somebody else, which there's nothing wrong with that, but we get in the car and she's
like, it felt a little bit different.
And I was like, well, it's still beautiful and you still did service, but it does make
me feel like she's already recognizing that when you're linking yourself and you're doing
work for your ancestors, it's changing the temple experience.
So we got that at 11.
Yeah, there's that connection.
She might have been 12 because her birthday's in February, but you know, her first experience
was as an 11 year old.
So there's so much power when we get to know our people and maybe have an idea of who.
We don't pray, I don't say grandma, wolf, like mom to me.
Right.
So whatever random name, like you're praying heavenly father for assistance.
When you're open to those ancestors being the ones to be the ministering angels, then
that's right.
You ask him to dispatch someone on your half, just like your ministering sister might call
you when you've had a horrible week and say, Hey, I'm going to bring dinner.
It's the same thing.
They are also on the other side.
They opt in to minister to us amid the other things they have going on.
I love that.
So in closing, just get to know your people.
Who do we think our angels are?
There are army of ancestors on the other side of the veil.
The heavens are open because priesthood keys are restored on this earth.
We have access to these blessings as we walk the covenant path in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We're so happy you were here with us today.
We hope that you have some food for thought and ponder on these things and see where they
fit into your life.
Have a great one.
Catch you next time.