As a whole, mission reunions are a decades-old tradition accompanying the LDS Church's general conference weekends. However, the likelihood of each individual reunion having such a long shelf life is small.
Stories about mission reunions are as varied as the stories shared during the social gathering composed of returned missionaries who served several years together in the same assigned area. The greatest participation comes in the first years after missionaries and their respective mission president return home.
As an early 1980s missionary in Chile and more recently as Texas Houston mission president (2005-08), Travis Steward has seen both sides of a mission reunion. "My feeling is you've had a real bonding experience with a group of special people in your life and you want to get back to that," he said.
His reunion tonight is one of the 340 recently listed in the Deseret News and on the deseretnews.com/reunions Web site. A total that seems considerable, it is actually eight fewer than the number of current missions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Deseret News reunion notices published 50 years ago totaled 80-plus reunions; the church had 47 missions then.
Held anywhere from meetinghouses and residences to campus locations and restaurants, a reunion is identified by the mission name and generally specified by a single president and his three-year service tenure. More reunions are becoming "combo" affairs — combining several consecutive presidents or combining several regional reunions into a single-country gathering.
This week's listings show the tapering of reunion frequency. Some 160 of the 340 publicized were for missionaries who served in the past decade, another 50-plus during the 1990s. It drops into the 20s each for those from the '70s and '80s.
However, some reunions still hold strong — some 50 reunions had time periods ranging from the 1940s through the 1960s; another dozen stated an " 'all' time span," with no specific range.
Returned mission presidents and reunion organizers contacted by the Deseret News said reunion longevity faces a number of challenges — and not necessarily the advent of social networking, such as e-mails, texting and Web sites like Facebook and Myspace. In fact, social networking is used increasingly for contact, invitations and RSVPs, with the year-round Deseret News reunion site and mission-alumni sites such as mission .net also key.
Rather, a primary challenge is the changing demographics of the missionaries and mission presidents over the years.
Decades ago, much of the mission force and leadership hailed from in and around Utah, with returned missionaries often working or attending college along the Wasatch Front. It made for prime reunion participation.
But missionaries and presidents now come from across the globe and then return home or go elsewhere than to Utah for education, work and family.
Even for those with strong local ties, mission reunions tend to lose their drawing power after a few short years.
Kay Christensen, who attended a couple of reunions after his mission in England in the late 1950s and who has regrouped with returned missionaries faithfully twice a year after his presiding over the Ukraine Donetsk Mission ended in 2005, cites the end of schooling and the start of marriage and family as being impactful.
"They finished their schooling, get married and are gone," Christensen said. "There's a natural drop-off — we saw the same thing with the previous (Donetsk mission) president when we came home, and we see it coming for us."
Still, a number of mission reunions are thriving well beyond a half-century, such as the Mexico reunion for missionaries who served from 1942 to 1956 in an area than spanned from San Antonio, Texas, to Panama. That area now has 33 current missions in Mexico and Central America.
Moreno Robins, who served in Mexico in the early '50s, toiled several years ago to recompile the list of possible participants — his list still contains some 250 current names, the oldest former missionaries now in their late 80s. Participation has only recently dropped to just under triple digits.
Meanwhile, the Tongan mission reunion lists itself as spanning "1891 to 2009," although returned missionaries from the first few decades have understandably been absent for some time.
James Christensen, who served in Tonga from 1955 to 1957 and later as mission president from 1969 to 1972, said their reunion is a two-night affair, beginning with a Sunday night fireside. Last Sunday, some 700 gathered to listen to Elder John H. Groberg, whose missionary memoirs were chronicled in a book and a feature film.
Tonight, reunion participants will gather again for the Friday night program and dance. "That's when you let your hair down," Christensen said.
E-mail: taylor@desnews.com
179th Annual General Conference
Sessions: 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday; 9:30 a.m. (includes "Music and the Spoken Word") and 2 p.m. Sunday. General priesthood meeting is 6 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are required for admission to the Conference Center. Tickets are not required for overflow seating in the Tabernacle, North Visitors Center and Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Overflow seating for Spanish speakers will be provided in the Assembly Hall.
Transportation: The Utah Transit Authority will offer expanded TRAX service for conference. There is no FrontRunner service on Sunday.
Broadcast: General sessions will be broadcast live on KSL-Ch. 5 and on cable/satellite channel BYU TV. KBYU-Ch. 11 will repeat the morning sessions at noon and the afternoon sessions at 4 p.m. On the radio, KSL (AM-1160/FM-102.7) and KBYU (FM-89.1/89.5) will broadcast all general sessions live. On the Web, live Internet video streams will be available at www.lds.org in English, Spanish, Portuguese and American Sign Language.
Special programming: KSL-TV Ch. 5 will broadcast eight special programs in between conference sessions and afterward. On Saturday: "Saints of the Friendly Islands" (noon); "The World Report of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (1 p.m.); "Love Letters of Joseph and Emma" (4 p.m.); and "The Making of 'Forever Strong' " (4:30 p.m.) On Sunday: A special production on the new Draper Temple (noon); "A Beacon Above the Seas: The Panama City Temple" (1 p.m.); "Footprints of Faith" (4 p.m.); and "Reflections of Christ" (4:30 p.m.)