Hello and welcome to the Latter-day Saint Women podcast, where we share the legacy of women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

You'll get to know the faithful women who shaped our past and hear from inspiring women of faith today.

I'm Carly Geiman.

And I'm Shailen Back. We're your co-hosts.

And today we're so excited to welcome Maiavel Amato Paneda to the studio as our guest. Maya, welcome. Thank you for having me here. It's an honor to be here. As a brief introduction to our guest, Maya was born in Guatemala and spent her growing up years in Guatemala, Mexico, and Argentina. She served a full-time mission

in the Spain-Madrid Mission and earned a bachelor's degree in political science and her

master's degrees in both French studies and instructional psychology and technology from

Brigham Young University and used her degrees and worked for the church for a couple years.

She currently serves as a member of the

Relief Society General Advisory Council. And we're especially excited today to talk to her

about her personal experiences and also the experiences she's had while serving on the Relief

Society General Advisory Council about ministering. It's such an important topic and kind of a

fun topic, but then also one that

sisters just have a lot of questions about, because it still feels a little bit new,

but it's just really important. So we're excited to talk about that today. I think you feel scary

for some of the women in the church, actually. Right. Definitely. Yeah, there's a lot of emotions around

ministering. So this will be a great conversation.

Yes. Thank you again for being here, Maya. We want to jump in by talking about some personal experiences you've had.

There was a time when you transitioned from a singles ward to family ward. And since you were still single, it really made you question. You said, you thought, why am I here? Why even go to church?

And we know that many listeners may be in a similar circumstance or a totally different circumstance,

but are still finding themselves asking that question. Why am I here and do I belong? So how did you

receive answers to the questions you were asking those questions about why I'm here and why I go to church?

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