Reader comments
It's a small Mormon world

Lisa | 4:13 a.m. Sept. 22, 2009

While serving a mission in Indiana, I was asked what part of California I was from. After answering that and a few follow-up questions, the member pulled out a picture of my house back home and told me that she was cousins with the people my parents had purchased the home from and had spent a summer there.

Some time after my mission, I was talking with a missionary who was living with my parents, and asking her about where she was from. After a few more questions we realized that she was the daughter of a woman who had grown up in our home as part of the family who owned the home 2 families before my parents bought it. She was living in the same bedroom her mother did while growing up.

And those are just two stories. It IS a small mormon world.

GEORGE H.HILL | 5:49 a.m. Sept. 22, 2009

Since I have known Bro.Walsh and his son while they were in Midlothian,I could run into him nxt.week in Ut.But am always asrounded how often I run into someone I know-like at Palmyra.This year the total was in the dozens.I always play spot the Mormon where ever I may be.Last year in Yankee stadium,in our cheap seat area,I spotted four groups of LDS people.My companions said I was nuts,so I had to prove mt point.One year at Williamsburg,I told my wife that the bunch of young people I saw at a distance HAD to be LDS.AS they got closer,the words on various shirts showed that my first empression was spot on.Mormons often LOOK different.

georgiaonmymind | 6:41 a.m. Sept. 22, 2009

I love it when that happens! We have met people who know people we know and my cousin even served his mission out here.

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IndyMeg | 7:35 a.m. Sept. 22, 2009

My older sister served a mission to Honduras several years before I also got a call to Honduras. Since we were in different missions, I didn't think I'd run into anyone who knew her. But in my first area, I found a family that remembered her and even took out a photo album and showed me a picture of them with my sister. Being so far from home, it was so nice to see a little of that Mormon small world.

John Pack Lambert | 9:11 a.m. Sept. 22, 2009

My story is when I went to Ciudad Obregon for a week with a BYU group a met a local girl there who I had danced with at a dance at BYU.
There there was a guy from Mexico in my singles ward here in Michigan last fall for two months doing some training for his job who knew a family who had been in my home ward, I think the husband in that family had been his stake president back in Mexico.
Then in one of my areas on my mission in Las Vegas there was a family who had been in my ward here in Michigan when I was about 8. There was in another ward a family whose son had been roommates with my brother when they were on their missions in San Jose. That is, my brother was assigned English speaking, and the younger David Torres was assigned Spanish speaking, but since they basically covered the same area they lived in the same apartment.

Maggie Mormon | 9:28 a.m. Sept. 22, 2009

After a few years of travel with my non-member husband, he blurted out "You meet someone you know every where we go". He was genuinely confused about how I could run into friends or distant relatives everywhere from Boston, MA to Ogden, UT. When you add the mobility of the Church, our tendency to know people of all ages due to working in the Church, and the people you meet doing family history, its really not that surprising but it is one of the happy benefits of Church membership.

Farleysmiles | 12:44 p.m. Sept. 22, 2009

We recently moved to a new house, but were helping our landlords show the previous house to potential renters. After showing the house to a nice lady we started talking about where we were from and found out that her husband was from the same area as me, we still hadn't established a church connection at the point, but soon realized that her father-in-law went to the same high school as my dad, finally I asked the name and realized I had been on a date with her husband in high school, our dad's were best friends growing up in the same ward and had set us up. That date led to my high school sweetheart to let me know he was interested (and jealous) and we've now been married for 11 years. We were very grateful to reconnect with him and his family and to welcome them to our ward.

ER in AF | 1:38 p.m. Sept. 22, 2009

There I was sitting at the dinner table with my 1st Councilor as the Branch President in Kigali, Rwanda. He is from Kenya and I from Utah. I mention the nicest senior missionary couple I had know while I lived in Beijing, China. "The Shumways?" Yes! So I had only known him for weeks and this was the first time they had been over.

Today we went out to help distribute some goods the church had donated to refugees and had some seniors from Nairobi to help. After 5 minutes we found out they lived next door to the grandparent of a boy currently visiting us from American Fork. Especially overseas you run into people that know people all the time just like this.

Debbie | 1:39 p.m. Sept. 22, 2009

This is very true about knowing someone who may know someone else that you know. A good reason not to backbite, spread rumors nor tell lies. What goes around comes around.

ER in AF | 1:48 p.m. Sept. 22, 2009

DUH!!! My 1st Councilor knew them in Kenya where the Shumways had been missionaries too. Oh and in China, the seniors are not missionaries, they are Kennedy Center volunteers and they do no missionary work. Just live in tiny apartments and usually teach English in universities. Tough job, tough senior couples. But they are happy! It is a great blessing to go on senior missions and boy do they get stuff done. Usually if you rent your house out it can cost the same on a mission as it does to stay home and watch TV. Do it!!!!

East Coast Observer | 3:01 p.m. Sept. 22, 2009

It's not so surprising that this happens in Utah b/c so many LDS live there, go to school there, move there, move back there, visit there, etc. Same with church sites. It's really freaky, though, when it happens in other random parts of the country. Among thousands waiting to get into a concert in Washington DC, my son's BYU roomie's girlfriend got into a conversation w/ one of my daughter's high school friends. And one of my daughter's roomies was visiting her grandparents in a distant state when the missionaries were there for dinner. Out of the thousands of BYU students whom he could have been trying to impress with a somewhat creative version of his life story, this guy found himself sitting across the table from a girl whose roomie had known him practically since birth. He was busted. Gotta love this small Mormon world!

michaelm | 9:41 p.m. Sept. 22, 2009

Living in WI we have met an Elder who is a cousin from LV. We visited Nauvoo and met a Senior Sister Missionary who is my Mom's best friend in NV, While living in GA we moved into a ward where my Mission Pres. from 25 years earlier lived and half the ward was either from CA or UT. One of my best friends from 30 years earlier lives up the road we clicked right away as if never apart. In our NE Ward we run into a Sister who lived near me as a teen in CA, we went to the same dances, and on and on.

The biggest factor in my being able to move all over is the foundation I find anywhere I go from the church. I may be a stranger and where others feel lonely or disconnected I instantly have a family when I walk into the church. We are never alone, we are never without friends quickly, we are not without a connection to the area. Often within a year I know more and have seen more than most locals, in part because of networking, service, and activities within the church.

Sam | 10:39 p.m. Sept. 22, 2009

I like the endowment card stories better.

Hey | 11:12 p.m. Sept. 22, 2009

I know her! We went to school together! Small world!

Ben Ten | 11:20 p.m. Sept. 22, 2009

We are truly blessed fo miracles. The mormon church just rocks.

In Boston | 4:02 p.m. Sept. 23, 2009

A few years ago my husband and I took a trip to Boston. I remembered that one of the girls I taught in Young Women's was living there with her young family for the summer but we were tightly scheduled and were using public transportation so I didn't really think much about it. Three days into the trip we stepped onto a "T" car in Cambridge. The only other passengers were my friend and her small children. It had been raining for days and she had been pinned in and discouraged. On this first sunny day she decided to take the kids downtown to a museum. We had a great catching up visit. By the time we got back home she had already told her parents she saw us and that it had made her day to see someone from home. I can still feel how warm and happy it made me to see her.

Bryan Hansen | 11:35 p.m. Sept. 23, 2009

Some years ago the mission president here in Portland was president Balliff. I did not realize it until attending the wedding of one of his misionaries, my cousin's son, that I went to Weber High School with his son, Brian. Also when my brother was in the navy, his ship put in at Hong Kong. He went to church. In Priesthood meeting, the visitors were introducing themselves. A brother introduced himslf as Bart Bethers and said that they were there with their son Brian touring after his mission. My brother stood up, introduced himself and pointed out that Bart Bethers had been his bishop when he was a teenager.
Sometimes it is a very small world

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