General Conference is always the time to either heed or ignore invitations to go to your mission reunion. Did you go this year? Here are the top 10 reasons to go to your mission reunion:
- To show off your hot wife (or husband).
- To show off your gastric bypass results.
- (For men) if you still have hair, to take a victory lap.
- To see who has the most kids.
- To see how well your president has aged.
- To gossip about old mission crushes.
- To see who is [fatter, balder, skinnier, has a higher calling, is more financially successful] than you.
- To see how the president’s kids look as adults.
- To find out who has gone inactive.
- To have numerous conversations in which both of you think you are talking about the same investigator, but neither of you really is.
Sounds a lot like high school reunions to me. How was your last mission reunion?
[poll id=”436″]
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
I’ve been to my reunion several times over the last 20 years. This year, I couldn’t bring myself to go. I didn’t want to hear discussions about the church and missionary work when my thoughts about those things have shifted so much. That and I’ve been in charge of it at least a half dozen times, and I knew if I went this year, I’d end up in charge of next year’s reunion. I couldn’t do it. And I deeply love my former mission pres and his wife.
Living far from Utah, it’s not an option for me. I haven’t seen a reunion announced for my mission in several years (I served mid-late 90’s). It probably doesn’t help that my president lives in Europe.
No mission myself, but we’ve never made my husbands reunions. Conference might be convenient for you Utah folk, but it’s highly inconvenient on this side of the Atlantic. October everyone’s back at school, and it’s not the half term holiday until the last week in October.
April is heavy revision time for my kids exams this year and the next few years, and given the Easter holidays move with Easter, it may or may not be a holiday. He doesn’t go alone because as it is, he visits his parents every year in Japan. Can’t afford two trips overseas in one year, both monetarily and in terms of time off for holiday without family.
Still, social media also fulfills the top ten reasons, surely.
Hedgehog – I’m not in Utah, but the reunions are, and so we haven’t been in years, although we both served in the same mission which makes it convenient when we did go. They used to have one each year in Arizona where our president lives (and we do now), but we never attended here. It was interesting to see old companions the first few years, but I feel that FB has kind of taken over that need.
I’ve tried for years to find out about a reunion for my mission, and just can’t find them. I’m beginning to think they’re hiding them from me, just to be sure I won’t attend and cause awkward conversations.
Had one this year and it was very enjoyable. Low key, good food, reminiscing etc…
Most of the elders in my mission (Mexico) were natives, so the Americans were never companions with each other. That made for awkward conversations.
I’m a long way from Utah, too, but Facebook has filled a lot of the gap (and made it much easier to find someone to stay with on those extremely rare occasions I’m forced to visit Utah). The last one I went to, I enjoyed a great deal – my mission president and his wife came, and they’re Italian, so we don’t see them in the States very often.
I haven’t been to my mission’s reunion ever…I do keep in touch with old comps, especially the group in the MTC (the “Awesome Eightsome”, six went to Italy Roma and two to Austrialia Melbourne Italian-speaking…) but as other’s pointed out, it’s a problem getting even from Northern CA to UT in October when the kids have things with school, etc.
I did my HS reunion for both the 20 and 30 year..what’s disturbing is how many have already passed on..a sobering thought.
Ever since George Lucas started the “Where are they now?” in ‘American Graffiti’, this has been a popular theme…my fave is from Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” video which itself is THIRTY years old! Curiously, VH’s portrayal of their alter egos wasnt far off!
When taking the Universal Studios Tour, ask for “Babs”…(it won’t get you a discount anymore).
I see everyone I want to see on facebook so I could do without the trip to Utah, plus I don’t care for things like that and I have never heard of our mission even having one! Mind you there are two comps I haven’t heard a peep from in over 10 years and I wonder how they are doing
Never went on a mission, but since we’re comparing it to high school reunions:
I’m not going to any high school reunion. The people I want to keep in touch with I do, and the rest I don’t really care for. Plus mission reunions as a whole seems like a very Mormon-Utah thing to do. No one plans for a mission reunion in Iowa.
Douglas, did you go to Italy where you used your language, or to Australia where you either spoke English or tried to understand some obscure rural Italian dialect that the Italo-Aussies had brought with them a generation or two earlier? 🙂 I think I served after you (and I went to Catania), but we had a guy in the MTC branch who was bound for Australia, and sort of resigned to his fate. Coincidentally, I taught an Australian couple in Siracusa on my mission. We taught them in English, since their Sicilian dialect was so thick I couldn’t comprehend more than about half of it, and their standard Italian was nonexistent.