October 13

 

October 13

This week was transfers! I was moved to a small branch in Union South Carolina. This Sunday there were 11 people that attended church! In total! And 3 of them were from outside of the branch boundaries.  The Branch President is from a different ward and just asked to serve in the branch.  

It is really cool serving here because I have never been in an area like this! But my new companion is Elder Espinoza. He's a recent convert. He was baptized about 3 years ago and is now a missionary. He has some great insights!

Email sent from a member in Greenville, 

Hello Gurney Family,

I thought I’d share a good story about your very tall and very nice missionary son who, sadly, was just transferred from our ward!  

I’m the RS president of the Greenville Ward and the mission rules for eating meals in members’ homes is that only the president of an organization can host all 3 sets of Elders at a time.  All six of the Elders serving in our ward came to our house for the afternoon session of conference.  While they were here I got a lengthy message from our Bishop who is really overwhelmed at the moment with the re-formation of our ward.  We have many new members, a Spanish group and the loss of virtually 75% of our leadership.  It’s a tall order.  He also lost both counselors, the ward clerk and 2 of the three EQ presidency.  He can’t possibly visit all the new people who have come to his attention so he was asking if anybody could make visits to the people on the list or give him current information.  Since I had 6 very capable missionaries at the dinner table I thought I’d ask them about each person.

Here’s where your son, Elder Gurney, comes in. . .  

Me:  Do you know anything about (fill in a name)?

Elder Gurney:  (consults his phone) Yes, we visited her on September 2nd (then he filled in details).

Me:  What about (fill in a name)?

Elder Gurney:  We just watched a session of conference at her house yesterday (more details).

Me:  Anybody heard of (fill in a name)?

Elder Gurney:  Yes, he’s really welcoming to the missionaries and we saw him a couple of weeks ago.  We’ll reach out again.

My husband:  So far, Elder Gurney seems to be the only one contributing—Keep it up, Elder Gurney!

Me:  More of the same Q and A for about a dozen more  people.

Elder Gurney:  More of the same accurate and incredibly helpful information.

Truthfully, it began to be a bit comical because he was the ONLY one who had made careful notes to report and that’s saying something because the other 5 Elders are excellent.  I told them I’d be writing up a report to send to the Bishop and the Ward Council and, unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to take credit for a single thing because it all went to Elder Gurney.

Our Bishop was so grateful.  The whole Ward Council was impressed.  You must be smiling.

I thought about it later and realized that the whole exercise was probably quite instructive to the other missionaries.  As I said, they’re all hard, dedicated workers but he was the only one who was documenting the visits.  He’s quite unassuming—always on the quiet side with a kind of shy smile but he’s getting the work done, that’s for sure.

When you speak with him next, please send our love and best wishes to him.  Whatever ward he’s in will be so fortunate.

Fondly,

Karen Julian