Welcome Home, Gunner Forsyth

Gunner Forsyth, the son of B7 Ward member Nicole Forsyth, recently returned home with honor from two years of fulltime missionary service in the Idaho Boise Spanish-speaking Mission.  

Prior to receiving a mission call, this impressive young returned missionary told his friends he was going to serve in Pocatello, ID so when he was actually called to Boise, he says “no one believed me.”  What made him decide to serve a mission?  “I was into some ‘bad things’ in high school, so when I decided to turn my life around, a mission seemed like a beneficial thing to do,” states the young elder.  "It was everything I had hoped for and getting to learn a language was an added bonus."

His future plans include playing “Red Storm” football for Dixie State University while working toward a degree in Physical Therapy.  He also plans to find work and eventually get married, although he has no prospects in sight for either at the moment. 

In 1855, Church President Brigham Young asked 26 early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to settle among the Native Americans on the Salmon River, where they established Fort Lemhi in June 1855. Latter-day Saint settlers came to the Franklin area in 1860, where they dug canals in the winter snows to be ready for summer irrigation. Church members taught agriculture, preached the gospel, and shared supplies with the Native Americans. A prominent chief, Shoshone Chief Washakie, was baptized during the early colonization efforts.

When Idaho was given statehood in 1890, Latter-day Saints comprised about one-fifth of the state's population; and through the years the state has been the birthplace of several Church presidents (Harold B. Lee, Ezra Taft Benson, and Howard W. Hunter).  It is also the location of BYU-Idaho, a four-year university in Rexburg, originally known as Ricks College.

Today, Idaho has nearly 431,000 members; 4 missions (Idaho Boise, Idaho Twin Falls, Idaho Nampa and Idaho Pocatello Missions) and 4 operating temples (Boise, Idaho Falls, Rexburg and Twin Falls Temples … with a 5^th currently under construction (to be called the Meridian Temple).

The Forsyth family are recent transplants to the Bloomington 7^th Ward from St. George’s Boulder Ridge Stake.  Welcome to the Forsyth family and welcome home to Elder Gunner Forsyth.