SEPTEMBER 2015
Conference Mourns Passing of Longtime Worker
e have lost a most caring, thoughtful, dedicated and very positive Christian lady,” shares Larry Boggess, Mountain View Conference (MVC) president. “Feryl Harris’ inspirational, think outside-of-the-box attitude will be missed by those who knew her.” Feryl E. Moorhouse Harris was a Bible instructor, singer, poet and composer who served the conference as director of Sabbath School, Children’s and Women’s ministries, and the Trust Services Department for many years. She last resided in Honolulu, where she was director of Children’s Ministries and Trust Services in that conference. She was a talented musician, and had the distinction of being the youngest student at the New England Music Conservatory (Mass.). Her love of music and willingness to sing for Christ took many forms and took her many places. In the early 1970s, she and her husband of 55 years, Mahlon, accepted a mission call to Taiwan. While there, she was the vocalist for the South China Island Union Mission’s Voice of Prophecy and learned to sing in Mandarin Chinese. She also performed for thousands of people during one of Billy Graham’s evangelistic series in Taipei. Randall Murphy, retired MVC president, says, “She had a wonderful singing voice and added to musical programs at camp meeting and other functions. She, along with Kingsley Whitsett, former conference president, Bunny Abbot Peterson, my former secretary, and I helped celebrate the opening of the new church in Vladimir, Russia—a church built largely by funds collected at Mountain View Camp Meeting.”
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Most of Harris’ music was written for Children’s Ministries needs. She wrote the theme song for the Adventist Children’s Ministries Association, for a Vacation Bible School program produced by the now defunct Review and Herald Publishing Association, and the song for the Multi-Generational Children’s Church resource. Harris also contributed to 99 New Songs, a songbook edited by Evelyn Pursley Kopitzke released in 2003. Both Feryl and Mahlon worked at the Doddridge County and Pennsboro medical centers in West Virginia in the late 1970s. She was also very active in various roles and church offices at the Toll Gate (W.Va.) church, and donated her time ministering to the students and staff at the Miracle Meadows School in Salem, W.Va. Feryl died from injuries sustained in an automobile crash June 15 in Riverside, Calif., where she and her husband were visiting family. Recently retired, they were in the process of moving back to West Virginia. Feryl is survived by Mahlon; daughters, Liesl Clark and Sherylin Jackson; five grandchildren; sister, Audray Johnson; and three brothers, Walter, John and Kenneth Moorhouse. “We were all looking forward to the day [the Harrises] would move back from Hawaii and settle again here in West Virginia and the Mountain View Conference,” says Murphy. “Now we must wait [for the resurrection morning to see Feryl].”
Feryl Harris and Judi Rogers, retreat speaker, enjoy the 2007 MVC Women’s Retreat. September 2015 VISITOR | 23