Cyndi Bird faithfully writes to four missionaries every week. She sends care packages in shoe boxes and thinks fondly of them in their absence.

But she's not a twitterpated Laurel. She's their mother.

Half of Cyndi and Randy Bird's eight children are simultaneously serving Mormon missions across the world and will be until October, when their son Matthew comes home from his mission in Dallas, Texas.

"We just didn't think that we would ever have them out at the same time," Cyndi said.

The Birds, of Wenatchee, Wash., never thought they'd have more than two children in the mission field at the same time. But in June, when fraternal twins Michael and Mitchell entered the Missionary Training Center, an older brother and an older sister had beaten them to it within the past two years.

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