Ana Maria De Oliveira Preto-Bay (Raposo) Obituary (1962 - 2014)

Ana Maria de Oliveira Raposo Preto-Bay died in her sleep on Monday, 22 September 2014, leaving her husband, Andrew Bay, and her children Miles, Patrick, Anton, and Owen; her parents, Silvestre de Jesus Raposo Preto and Rosa Maria de Conceicao Oliveira Preto; and her sister, Maria do Rosario Preto-Gray. Ana was 52 years old. Ana was born in Lisboa, Portugal on 6 April 1962, and raised in a restaurant in Feijo. She joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at age sixteen, attended the Universidade Classica de Lisboa, and served a mission in her home country. After graduating in English and German, she did an MA in linguistics at the University of Utah. Ana moved to Provo to continue her education and there met Andy Bay. They married in the Salt Lake Temple on 15 October 1988. After losing a young daughter, Ana Sophia, they had two sons and later adopted two more sons from Kazakhstan. Ana earned a PhD in Instructional Design and Language Acquisition at BYU and taught for more than 20 years in many departments. She also worked at, among others, Meridian School, Provo College, Middlebury Interactive Languages, and HCA Healthcare. Ana was a woman of enormous strength who overcame many sore trials to become the person she did. She cared deeply for her family above all, and spent herself in their service. She was unwilling to ever consider doing anything other than the right thing. Ana hated injustice, and was unafraid of speaking out when she saw something amiss, no matter the consequence. She shared her many talents freely and opened her home to thousands of people. She was a gifted teacher who had high expectations of others, but never expected more of anyone than she did of herself. She had the ability to influence others with her testimony of the Saviour, to lift and encourage, and to comfort those in pain. She was at once practical, a great cook, knitter, organizer, translator, careful steward of family finances, and a fine writer, among many other skills. Yet she was also visionary and brainy and principled, filled with high goals and aspirations, highly curious, capable of understanding and applying complex ideas, gifted with amazing powers of concentration and focus, and able to analyze and solve difficult problems. She attributed all she had and all she was to her Father in Heaven and her Saviour Jesus Christ. Donations may be made on Paypay through the email: pretobaymemorialfund@gmail.com