“Sister Joy D. Jones,” Ensign, May 2016, 136
Sister Joy D. Jones
Primary General President
For Joy D. Jones, her loving parents were her heroes.
“I felt like my dad could do anything,” Sister Jones says of her father, an electrician. Of her mother, she says, “My mom was an amazing woman” who made everything from the food the family ate to the clothes they wore—from scratch. “To me, she was a saint, and I wanted to grow up to be like her.”
In addition to cherishing memories of her parents, Aldo Harmon and Eleanor Ellsworth Harmon, Sister Jones cherishes the childhood memory of listening to Elder Robert L. Backman as he spoke in a district conference in Oregon, USA. Elder Backman, now an emeritus General Authority Seventy, was a mission president at the time.
“I felt something very powerful when he was talking,” Sister Jones says. “I felt something really different than I had felt before. … I am so grateful for that because I received a witness from the Spirit that the things he was saying were true.”
Joy Diane Harmon was born on July 20, 1954, in The Dalles, Oregon. Both she and her future husband, Robert Bruce Jones, grew up in Oregon, but they met at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, USA. They were married on August 14, 1974, in the Manti Utah Temple. They have five children and 17 grandchildren.
Soon after she earned an associate of science degree in family living, they moved to Portland, Oregon, and later to Santa Rosa, California, USA, where Brother Jones practiced as a chiropractic physician. Brother and Sister Jones felt impressed to move to Draper, Utah, 22 years ago. Sister Jones has enjoyed the blessing of living close to a temple ever since.
“The Jordan River Utah Temple became my sacred space,” she says. “I have a testimony of the power of the temple and the peace and direction that it has brought me in my life.”
Sister Jones has served as a ward Relief Society president and Primary president and as a counselor in ward and stake Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary presidencies. She served most recently on the Primary general board.