The Mormon missionaries who served in the Hong Kong China area under Presidents Jerry D. Wheat and David Chen aren't just getting together for dinner and socializing this conference season.
They're going global — starting with a satellite broadcast to seven different sites Sept. 25 from 7 to 10 p.m., a broadcast that Wheat hopes will rejuvenate friendships, renew testimonies and touch every missionary still in China and throughout the world.
"This is not your everyday mission reunion," Wheat said. "It's something else. I don't think it's ever been done before."
Wheat, who has since served as the Hong Kong China Temple president, will speak along with his wife Donnetta and President Chen's wife. (President Chen died 16 years ago.) The mission song will be sung.
The event will be broadcast to Australia; Los Angeles; Provo; Hawaii; Montreal and Vancouver in Canada into chapels; the Crabtree Building on the BYU campus and a private home in Vancouver.
Wheat is quick to give credit for planning the event to the current local missionaries, Val Hawks, Michael Kay and Wai chun Yu, in Hong Kong.
They kept inviting him to their reunion, but he told them he would only make the journey if it were truly going to matter.
Those missionaries have scheduled a series of events in Hong Kong that includes the broadcast, open house, temple session, dinner, fireside and hike to the top of Victoria Peak, where there's a marker inscribed with the date Matthew Cowley dedicated the Hong Kong mission in 1949.
Although Wheat is 74, he intends to make the hike to the top of the peak.
He and his wife have great affection for the Chinese people and especially for the missionaries who served during his and President Chen's tenures from 1974 to 1977 and from 1977 to 1980, and for those who made great personal sacrifices to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"At one time half of our missionaries were natives," Wheat said. "We want them to know we love them, admire them and respect them. We want to enlighten their minds with the spirit."
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