Photo added: Joyce Ann (Snell) Brunk of Silver City

Category: Obituaries Obituaries
Published: 26 January 2017 26 January 2017

Joyce Ann (Snell) Brunk was born to James Snell (U.S. Army) and Wanda Snell in Stuttgart, Germany on November 11, 1952 and passed away suddenly on January 25, 2017. Her childhood was the adventure of living in a military family - twice in Germany, Georgia, and the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. The family based in Indiana when her father retired from the Army and ran a lab at Purdue University. Her Mother was a nurse and Joyce followed in those footsteps. Graduating from Indiana Vocational Technical College in Lafayette, Indiana, she set out on a life calling of nursing. She loved the work and her patients loved her. She was a gifted nurse.

In 1976 she met Michael Brunk, a ministerial student who worked as a youth minister in her church in Crown Point, Indiana. They were married on November 20, 1976 at her parent's home church in West Point, Indiana, and moved to Abilene, Texas where her husband finished his undergraduate degree. They then moved to Louisville, Kentucky were her husband began his seminary degree but after 2 years, they were blessed with a child on the way, so they moved to Richmond, Virginia near her husband's family. Her first son was born at Richmond, Virginia in 1980.

The couple decided they would continue seminary in the San Francisco Bay area where again, Joyce worked as a nurse while Michael finished his seminary degree. After post graduate study for her husband, they moved to Arizona where they served several churches. She had a second son in Mesa, Arizona in 1987. She was more than a great help in her husband's ministry ... she had her own light that burned in good times and bad ... and she redeemed the bad times and made them good again. They served churches and hospitals in Texas and New Mexico and came to Silver City in July 2014.

Joyce is survived by her husband, Michael Brunk; her sons, Andrew Brunk of Silver City and Jonathan Brunk of Portales and daughter-in-law Devany; Her Mother, Wanda Snell of Indiana; her sister Sue of Valparaiso, Indiana and sister Linda Klein of Colorado Springs, nephews James and John, niece Jose; and a greater extended family in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

There is much more to her story than merely following her husband from parish to parish and working as a nurse. She was an exquisite and artful quilter, a voracious reader, a medical missionary for an AIDS clinic in Kenya, singer in church choirs, and a Sunday School teacher.
We called her GǣJoyGǥ ... it named her perfectly. Infectious smile, gregarious and yet shy ... and it is not a clich+

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