On July 2, 2022, Vanessa Duerson and her husband packed up their family of three sons and moved from Utah to South Carolina.
No job awaited them. No family awaited them. She often refers to this move as a trek through the “wilderness” and one that required her family to trust in God.
“You read in the scriptures of Moses [crossing the Red Sea] and of the children of Israel crossing the Jordan River that the blessings don’t come until after the trial of your faith,” said Duerson reflecting on her cross-country move. “Sometimes you really have to get your feet wet before things part and open up. My husband and I have always really sought to do that.”
For Duerson and her husband, moving across the country was an act of faith. They believed it was something God was asking them to do, even though they could not yet see what would come from it.
Three weeks after arriving in South Carolina, an update to her Ancestry account appeared on her phone, prompting her to explore some of the website’s new features. Duerson began exploring the website and was shocked when she noticed a circle of ancestors hovering over the very region her family had just moved to.
“You could call it a starting point to water parting,” she said.
This discovery prompted her to dive deep into her family history. She got right to work finding deep ancestral roots all around the South Carolina area.
Duerson is of both Caucasian and African American descent. As she researched her family, she began seeing the two sides of her heritage converge in the Carolinas.
Her mother’s ancestors included people whose names appear in records from the revolutionary era, while her father’s family included several generations of formerly enslaved people who lived and worked in the same region.
In a Facebook post on the Charlotte North Carolina Temple page, Duerson explained that the convergence of these two histories, through her, is “sacred and of divine design.”
“I didn’t ask to be in the place where they converge, but a miracle has afforded me the blessing to be,” she said.
For the past four years, Duerson and her family have continued learning about their ancestors, visiting cemeteries and historical locations and searching through records.
One in particular was a woman named “Poll,” according to an 1845 North Carolina court record. Poll was Duerson’s fifth-great-grandmother. She and nine other people were named in a legal dispute concerning their enslavement. The court ultimately ordered them to be sold at a slave auction on the steps of the Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina.
On the steps of that courthouse, Poll was separated from her family and sold.
More than 180 years later, Duerson sat on those same steps with her children. As she remembered her ancestors being torn apart, she also thought about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the healing He provides.
“My testimony of the Atonement has been enhanced …” she said. “Through family history work, it provides generational healing. … What was once broken apart can be healed for eternity.”
In July 2026, Duerson, with the help of young women, performed temple ordinances for Poll in the Columbia South Carolina Temple.
Duerson described the experience as joyful.
Her work in the temple has become a way to connect with generations of ancestors and participate in God’s work to bring His children home.
Duerson often returns to an April 2024 general conference message by Elder Patrick Kearon of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, titled “God’s Intent Is to Bring You Home.” She especially remembers Elder Kearon’s statement that “God is in relentless pursuit of you.”
“Of course, [Elder Kearon] was referring to the Atonement,” she said. “But I think that also applies to each of us as individuals, but the Lord is in relentless pursuit of each of us. And I have seen that through temples and family history work.”
Duerson said God provides ways for people to help one another both during this life and beyond the grave.
Her three sons have become part of that work as well.
Whenever the family visits a cemetery or historical location connected to their ancestors, Duerson brings her children with her. She wants them to find joy in doing family history work.
She said her sons have “caught the spirit of Elijah.”
“The prophet Malachi promised that Elijah would turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, and the fathers to their children,” said Duerson. “I didn’t fully understand those verses until I started this work. It’s not just family history. It’s family, present tense, forever tense.”
What began with a cross-country move into the unknown has become a journey of discovering where Duerson’s family came from and helping bring together generations of a family that had once been forcibly separated.
As she continues her family history work, Duerson said the blessings have been greater than she could have imagined, pouring out in ways she “scarce can take it in.”
