Elder and Sister Williams' Nevada Reno Mission: Ely (ee'-lee) Nevada

Hard to believe we have been in Ely for nearly a month! It’s a unique town (in our experience anyway). Lots of blue-collar workers who work variable rotating shifts in the mines or at the state prison. Also many older people, and a smaller population of middle-aged people. Our stake president told us this morning that 20 years ago the big mine closed, and most young families had to move out to find employment, then when the mine reopened several years later, many of the families didn’t come back. He also said that many miners now commute from other areas (like St George, UT, or Elko, NV, etc.), coming to Ely for their 4 or 5 12-hour shifts, then returning home for their 4 days off. All this makes for an interesting demographic profile—many of the people have been here their whole life, and the town is full of their relatives. Often when we look in our electronic area book (which includes the whole town) for a family, we find 6 or 8 or more other families with the same last name. And everyone seems to know everyone, with many connections!

From our front porch 12/2/19. 12" of snow and another storm coming Wednesday.

We went to breakfast this morning at the stake president’s home with the six young elders. He has been hosting the breakfasts once a transfer since the mission was formed 7 or 8 years ago. He mentioned an interesting thing. He said our missions in Ely will be more like Alma and Amulek than Ammon and the sons of Mosiah! The sons of Mosiah taught mostly people who had no familiarity with the church (the Lamanites), while Alma and Amulek taught many people who had connections with the church and its members. President Fullmer said only 30% of the stake members are active, and that many of the non-members may be only first and second generation non-members, with many active relatives. It was an interesting perspective, and opened our eyes to some of the things we have begun to see! We just want to do good in any way we can for the stake!

When we arrived, we were assigned to work first in the Ely Second ward, and the Bishop gave us a list of 18 members to begin working with. As we’ve met them we realized that they are mostly older (60-91 years old, in fact), with maybe two exceptions we haven’t met yet. We thought they had assigned us old people since we are older (and they would give us some younger people once they saw how cool we were…). That may still be true, but now we realize that there are many older less-active people who need our attention. In other areas (like home, or even Reno) I tended to ignore the 70-80 year old deacons because I thought they were less likely to be receptive than families or individuals who were more recently associated with the church. Here, those individuals may be our primary mission!! With the first list we’ve had varying degrees of success, from people who welcome us right in like long-lost friends, to people who are suspicious that they are on some list somewhere and would like to be off it! Our goal with people is to get to know them well enough to determine if they are ready to strengthen or rekindle their relationship with Christ.

With the ones who have welcomed us, we have started by initiating weekly sessions to study and discuss the ‘Come Follow Me’ lessons with them in their homes. It’s fun to see the different levels of knowledge and willingness to participate! And there is always a good spirit there! So far, none of the less-active people have started attending again, but it seems to start with them saying, “You know, I really should get busy and go to church again.” We’ve heard that several times, so we know there’s hope. We are thankful to be serving, even though we can never do enough! The mission that will find us in Ely seems to be shaping into a completely different mission than what our missions were in Reno and NYC, and we are confident we will learn to love it just as much!!