Three Years Later

For those of you who aren't LDS, you may not be familiar with the idea of a mission reunion. Let me take a few moments to explain this phenomenon to you.

Well around this wonderful time of year aka General Conference time (which rocks btw; will post more on that later), young and sometimes not-so-young return missionaries of our church decide that it would be fun since lots of people are flocking to Utah anyway to all get together and reminisce about good times on the mission and tell everyone about their life now. Kind of like a high school reunion, but everyone is often speaking a foreign language and doesn't really remember each other.

Owen was really hard core on his mission in Joao Pessoa, Brasil

So, if you (like me) get sucked in to attending one of these things, here are a few tips to make the evening a little more bearable....

1. Eat a snack before you go. If you are supposed to bring money to pay for your food, then they likely won't serve you until everyone has paid, which will probably be an hour and a half after you arrive. By then you will be starving, but the catering probably won't have enough food for everyone, so a pre-dinner snack is a good idea.

2. Don't worry about getting there on time. Come on, we're Mormons. No one is ever on time (except me apparently).

3. Encourage everyone to wear name tags. This will help avoid a lot of awkward, "Oh, I sort of recognize you and I think we lived in the same house but I have no idea what your name is" moments. And trust me, there will be a lot of those.

4. If you are a wife, and don't know Portuguese (or whatever language), study up before you go. Learn some common phrases and church-y words, and everyone will think you are so cool.

5. If you don't have time to study up, just be prepared for a night of missing out on a lot of jokes and commentary.

6. Check the dress standards before you go, or else you will be the only one in a dress (like me)

7. Brace yourself for a night full of lots of stories that you won't understand that will appear to go on forever. But the good news is, you'll probably end up really glad that your husband (or whomever) went on a mission and will be glad that the church is true! And who knows, your mission president might even get called to the 70! (Owen's did! Wooo Presidente Fernandez!)

What a good looking missionary

P.S. We finally got our taxes all finished! Thank you to everyone who offered their help--you guys rock!