Eighteen future sister missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gathered at Temple Square on March 7, reciting Doctrine and Covenants 4 and visiting with sisters serving at Temple Square. The experience was captured in a video produced by ldsmissionaries.com.
The event, inspired by similar missionary meetups, was organized by Sydney Johannes and Allie Eyring, who will be serving in the England London Mission and the Spain Barcelona Mission, respectively. It was advertised on the Facebook page “Many are called ... but few are sisters.”
According to Christine Bates, who manages the Facebook page and a corresponding blog, there have been five previous sister missionary meetups since December 2012. There are almost 17,000 people on the Facebook page, Bates said, including current sister missionaries, young women who are considering a mission, returned missionaries and parents of sister missionaries.
"We love the gospel of Jesus Christ and these meetups have been a wonderful way for the soon-to-be sister missionaries to share their excitement with others," Bates said.
At the March "meetup," the women answered a chorus of questions, such as "When did you get your call?” and “What are you doing to prepare?”
“We wanted the spirit of missionary work to be be with everyone and get excited for missions instead of being so nervous,” Eyring said.
Not as many people came as expected, Eyring said, but the small numbers allowed everyone to build friendships.
Andy Proctor, who manages ldsmissionaries.com and filmed and edited the YouTube video, became aware of the event through Facebook.
As he recorded the video, he said it was “neat to see them working in unity together” as a new force of sister missionaries.
“It was really inspiring to see these sisters who don’t have name tags on, but they have name tags on their hearts because they’re really excited about it,” Proctor said.
Email: ginny.l.romney@gmail.com
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