It's a small Mormon world: Members meet in unexpected places

A private investigator helps a young woman in Chile find the missionary who taught her family before she was born.

A Haitian Mormon visiting Salt Lake City runs into a former member of his Port-au-Prince ward, as well as a former missionary companion.

A woman in Holladay reconnects — via Facebook — with a missionary she met while he was serving in New Mexico.

A member from Indiana visiting a ward in Korea meets two people who knew two of his brothers.

Those are just some of the stories that readers sent in responding to our request for experiences of Mormons meeting other Mormons in unexpected places around the world. The stories are further evidence that, yes, it is a small Mormon world.

In May 2005, my husband, George, and I made the arrangements for Jony St. Louis and his wife, Annia, to come to Salt Lake City to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. Jony and Annia live in Haiti and had never before left the island of Hispaniola or flown on an airplane. This was a dream come true for them to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple.

Jony joined the church as a young man in Haiti and had served a mission there. I first met him in 2003 while doing humanitarian work in Haiti with Healing Hands for Haiti, a Salt Lake-based charity.

__IMAGE1__When Jony and Annia arrived in Salt Lake City, they were eager to see and do everything they could during their 10-day stay. Late one evening, after a long and full day, George and I made a hasty decision to throw in one more experience: taking Jony and Annia to a restaurant to get some late-night dessert.

When we entered, we saw a man seated in the lobby. This man looked very closely at Jony, and Jony looked at him.

Within seconds, the two of them were in a full embrace, and they began to cry. They had been mission companions — and had not seen each other for 12 years. Our entire family witnessed a tender mercy from the Lord. This was no coincidence. The Lord blessed Jony to meet his mission companion.

A couple of days later, I needed to go to Costco and asked Jony if he would be interested in going with me, despite my concern that the abundance of goods there would be overwhelming to him. He eagerly said yes. While in Costco, Jony strayed away from me. He was quite interested in everything available to buy.

I was in the checkout line when a gentleman approached me. He inquired about my T-shirt, which had the Healing Hands for Haiti logo. I told him that I had been to Haiti a couple of times, and we talked about Haiti. He told me that he had lived in Haiti, was a member of the church, and was now living in Provo. When Jony returned, he immediately recognized this man, who also of course knew Jony, and they embraced.

They had attended the same ward together in Port-au-Prince many years before.

When Jony and Annia toured the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake, their tour guide was a lovely woman who took very good care of them. The next day when they were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple, this same woman was assigned to assist Annia there. Annia was overwhelmed with the spirit as she was again taken good care of by this woman.

— Charlotte Pratt, Salt Lake City

I returned home from my mission some 28 years ago. The missionaries in Chile in the late 1970s and '80s were privileged to be a part of a great conversion in that country. My mission baptized 600 to 700 people every month, so it would be impossible to remember everybody I taught and brought into the church.

A few months back, I received an e-mail from a person I did not know asking me if I was the Elder de St. Jeor who baptized the Curacao family in 1980 in Chile. I thought back and believed that I did, in fact, teach a family named Curacao. I went to my mission journal and looked up the names of those I taught and found that family's name. So, I answered the e-mail and let this person know that, yes, I was the elder who baptized this family.

The next day, I received an incredible e-mail from this same girl:

__IMAGE3__"I have been looking for you for over 5 years. You are the missionary that baptized my family. I was not born yet when you taught my parents. They have a picture of you in their curio cabinet, and that's how I have known you all these years. I want to say thank you for being a missionary and teaching my family the gospel. We have all been sealed in the temple, I served a mission to Argentina, and we are all active in the church. Thank you for serving a mission and bringing the gospel to my family. My parents are so excited that we have found you again."

A few weeks back, this young sister e-mailed me again and informed me that she would be in Southern California and would like to visit with me. It just so happened that she would be at Disneyland with some friends during the same time I would be there with my family, so I was able to meet her. It was really incredible to hear her story, her testimony, and I can't tell you how many times she told me "thank you" for bringing the gospel to her family's home those many years ago.

I asked her how she found me; she told me she had hired a private investigator to track me down.

By small things — a small black-and-white photograph in a curio cabinet — the Lord brings about great things.

— Bret de St. Jeor, Modesto, Calif.

Previously I traveled frequently to various parts of the world on business. If I knew I would be away from home over a weekend, I would look up the closest meetinghouse prior to my departure and make arrangements to attend services on Sunday if possible — whether I spoke the local language or not.

One Sunday I found myself sitting in priesthood meeting in an English-speaking branch in Seoul, Korea, with my nonmember host. As is customary during the opening announcements, visitors were welcomed and asked to stand and introduce themselves.

I gave my name as Jeff Sutton from Indiana and stated that I was in town visiting a local supplier. I was a bit surprised when a man stood up across the room and asked if I happened to have a brother named Jerry. He had known a Jerry Sutton from Indiana years before and wondered if by coincidence we were related. After a few brief comments back and forth, we were assured that my brother, Jerry, was indeed the one that he knew.

Another gentleman stood up on the other side of the room and asked if I also had a brother named Joe. Again after a brief exchange, we had identified my brother, Joe, as his long-lost acquaintance.

Knowing that I had two additional brothers and a couple of sisters and not wanting to further delay the start of priesthood, I gave their names and invited anyone who was looking for them to see me in the hall after the meeting.

It is always comforting to worship with fellow Saints when far from home and partake of familiar services among instant friends that feel like family. Although there were no other connections with siblings during the visit, I am still amazed that while visiting a ward at random on the other side of the planet, my path crossed with two individuals who knew two of my brothers. The church seemed very small that day.

— Jeff Sutton, Carmel, Ind.

In May 1981, while back home for the summer in Farmington, N.M., from school in Provo, Utah, I met a new missionary serving in our stake from the Washington, D.C., area. His name was Ricky Moyers.

We became good friends as he and his companion ate at our home often, enjoyed games and pool with me, my sisters and brothers. My mom took the missionaries to doctor appointments and gave them rides when the weather was snowy.

__IMAGE2__When I went back to school, Elder Moyers and I kept in touch by letters. As he was transferred to northern Arizona and other places, we always stayed in touch. He honorably finished his mission and went back to Virginia in October 1982. Not long after, I told him I was going to serve a mission and mailed back to him something he had given me, his expired driver's license. He thought that meant I didn't want to continue our friendship.

I thought of him often through the passing years.

In June 2009, I moved to Holladay, Utah, and was going through my scrapbooks. I saw many pictures of Elder Moyers and decided to Facebook him. I found a Ricky Moyers in D.C. and wrote to him, asking if he was the missionary who served in Farmington, N.M., in the early '80s. He wrote back and said, "I didn't but my dad did!" It was his son, Ricky.

He told Rick about me and gave me his number. I called him, and it was so good talking to my old friend. We spoke daily for three months, then I invited him to San Diego to vacation with me, my daughter and her family. He met me in San Diego on Sept 10, 2009, and we spent four days of fun, laughter and tenderness together. We held hands the entire time and spoke sweetly to each other as we walked along beaches and smiled at seals and birds while we slipped on rocks wet from the high tide. We laughed together at Padres baseball games while keeping score, eating hot dogs and trying to catch foul balls.

Rick and I parted at the airport as we left for our different destinations with an "I love you."

Since then, we have spoken every day, most of the time two or three times a day. I plan on flying to the East Coast to see him in November and again in January to see some Washington Capitals hockey games with him.

Who knows where it will go from here — but we are both hoping for a future with each other.

— Stephanie Lynne Perkins, Holladay, Utah

In 1985, I was working full-time at the MTC after returning from a mission in Seattle in 1981. In addition to working there, my ecclesiastical calling was to teach sisters meeting every Sunday morning. All the sisters met together while the elders went to their individual branch priesthood meetings.

That spring, I had the opportunity of going with a group of about 10 friends to mainland China. We went to many provinces and had a wonderful experience. This was my first time out of the United States and everything was different and interesting.

One of women and I had to leave the group after three weeks — she, to return home to work, and I to go on to Okinawa, Japan, to visit my sister and her family. We left China and went to Hong Kong to wait for our flights.

For a few days, we stayed in the apartment of my friend's cousin and explored the city. We would leave the apartment and walk to a bus stop that would then take us to a subway entrance. The first day, we made our way around just fine. The second day, we got on the wrong bus. After a short time, we realized we weren't going our usual route, but decided to stay on the bus until we saw a subway entrance so we could get off and find our way back to the apartment through the subway system.

The bus drove on and on and no subway entrance appeared at the bus stops. Pretty soon, signs in English were no longer visible, and we realized we were traveling out to the Colonies, which was a more rural area compared to downtown Hong Kong. This frightened us because neither of us spoke the native Cantonese. We had left the tourist area and English speakers.

Finally, the bus stopped and the driver gestured for us to get off. It apparently was the last stop. We stepped down from the bus and turned to look at each other.

I said, "What are we going to do?"

Before my friend could reply, I heard a sweet female voice behind me say, "Don't I know you? You taught us at the MTC."

We turned around and standing before us were two sister missionaries. One had been in Hong Kong for a short time, and the other, the senior companion, had been there more than a year.

I should point out that I didn't look like an MTC teacher at that point. I was in shorts and a T-shirt with my hair pulled up because of the hot and wet climate.

These sisters looked like angels to us. They told us that they had gotten on a bus across the street when they saw us step off our bus. They got off their bus and came over to talk with us.

We explained our predicament, and they took us around streets and down alleys and got us on a bus that would take us to the airport. From there, we could get to the subway, which got us back to the right bus stop and our apartment. We gave them a heartfelt hug of gratitude and left them to their missionary work.

— Nicki Nebeker, Orem, Utah

This past February I was on a road trip with some friends to California. We started down by San Diego on a Friday and worked our way up to Newbury Park by Sunday.
We attended the local ward there, and as we were getting settled into our seats for opening exercises, I got a tap on my shoulder and a guy says, "What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be in San Diego!"

Turns out my home teacher from our home ward in Utah was vacationing to the same ward. I knew he was going to California, too — I just thought he was in some other part. He and his wife were visiting with his wife's sister, and she happened to be a member of the ward we chose to attend that Sunday.

He later invited us over for a lunch at his sister-in-law's house, and we went there and had an enjoyable Sunday afternoon.

— Colton Critchlow, Pleasant View, Utah

After high school I continued my education at Dixie Junior College (now Dixie State College) in St. George, Utah.

In one of my music classes — this was in 1952-53 — was a student by the name of Preston Brooksby.

In 1994, my husband and I were called as an office couple to Ghana, West Africa, the Accra mission. Imagine our surprise when the mission office received notice that Preston and his wife would be joining us in the Accra Mission. But I do not think we were nearly as surprised as they were.

When we met them at the airport, his wife told us that wherever Preston went he would run into people he knew or had known. On the plane to Africa, Preston told his wife, "You can be assured that I will not meet anyone I knew — especially in Africa. In fact, I will bet you a malted milk."

He lost the bet, but we did have a good time remembering old friends and college days. As for the malted milk, they were not available in Accra.

— Pat Gardner, Leeds, Utah

Several years ago, I traveled to Dallas for two weeks of training. On Sunday, I went to the nearest LDS chapel, in north Dallas on Meandering Way.

I quietly walked in just before the meeting started and sat behind a family near the back center of the chapel. During sacrament meeting, the person conducting invited the ward mission leader to come up and tell his experiences in watching the recent general conference.

The brother sitting directly in front of me got up and walked to the podium. As he spoke, I realized it was Tommy DeMarco, a high school friend from Las Vegas who had not been a member of the church when I knew him.

After the meeting was over, I found out Tommy had accepted a scholarship to play baseball at BYU and eventually became converted and baptized, then married another high school friend.

After high school I had lost touch with Tommy. I moved to Utah for college in Ogden, served a mission, and then married and stayed in Utah. Then after many years, I found a wonderful surprise in a chapel in north Dallas.

— Bary Gammell, Midvale, Utah

My husband and I recently went to Denver to see his Cardinals baseball team play the Rockies.

We drove all day and went to one of the games that evening. Sitting in front of us were two young dating couples who didn't really come to watch the game and kept leaving back and forth to buy more beverages. Trying not to watch their activity and behavior that somewhat distracted us, we had a good time even though our team lost the game.

The next night, we sat in different seats among Rockies fans. There was a nice family behind and to the side of us, and two 30-year-young men with a boy in front of us. We noticed that the young men in front were not drinking and swearing, and they were also Cardinals fans.

After the game giving high fives because our team had won, we mentioned that we had come all the way from Salt Lake City to see this win, and the young men asked if we were LDS.

We looked at them and said, "You are LDS, too, aren't you?"

Laughing, they said, "Could you tell that easy since we weren't drinking?"

We found out they had moved from Missouri to practice dentistry in Denver and were from a place where my husband had served and attended zone conferences when he was on his mission 50 years ago. The nice couple behind us most likely heard the conversation and wished us well as they left the game. No matter where you go, example can be such a force for good.

— Jolene Nelson, Sandy, Utah

I left for a mission to New Zealand in October 1958. My first field was just outside of Auckland. The first Sunday, we attended the ward in our area and met the bishop, whose name was Bishop Garlick, and he invited my companion and me to dinner.
We had a good visit with both him and his wife. After about three months, I moved to another area and never saw Bishop Garlick after that.

In 1995, I had retired and moved to St. George, Utah. I signed up to volunteer at Dixie Regional Medical Center there, and in visiting its little snack bar, I spoke to the lady working there. She was also a volunteer.

Her accent caused me to ask where she was from and she told me she was from New Zealand and that her last name was Garlick.

She remembered meeting me and immediately called her husband on her cell phone (he was also a volunteer). When he arrived, we had a great visit after about 37 years. They had migrated to the U.S. several years before.

— David Denney, Orem, Utah

I went on my mission from Utah to Southern California in 1967. I had a sister several years older than me that I hardly ever saw living just a few miles away in Orange County from where I was laboring in Los Angeles, but that was another mission so I never gave running into her a thought.

These were the days of road shows, and as missionaries we could go to a multistake performance at the Rose Bowl if we took an investigator, so I was able to go. During intermission I went to get some refreshments. Standing in line by me was a young man who looked familiar. I thought he was from one of the wards where I'd labored so asked his name.

He looked at my name tag, saying he thought that was his mother's maiden name. I asked her name and as you figured out, it was my sister, who was there. I had an enjoyable visit with her in this place with thousands of supposed strangers.

Another "coincidence": I am originally from the small town of Elba, Idaho, population 60.

When I arrived on my mission in L.A., population several million, and knocked on my very first door, the woman answering stopped me in mid-presentation and asked, "What is your father's name?" After I told her, she indicated that he had been her bishop when she was a young woman growing up in Elba.

Sometimes I think these "coincidental meetings" are providential.

When I was serving as a stake president in Washington, I had a son graduating from BYU, so I flew to Salt Lake City.

Upon arrival at the airport, while coming down the escalator, I noticed a man from our stake waiting for me at the bottom. He was there for his daughter's wedding. Just prior to leaving home he checked his temple recommend and to his horror, it had expired.

He was able to get a quick interview with his bishop but no time to find a member of the stake presidency. He was on the high council and knew I was going to graduation, so he anxiously waited at the airport. We ducked behind the escalator, and soon he was happily on his way.

— David Ottley, Kennewick, Wash.

I served in the Australian Mission between 1957 and 1959. While there, I met another missionary by the name of Morgan Harris. We were never companions, nor did we ever serve in the same towns together. But we met at mission conferences and were aware of each other.

After our missions, our paths diverged, and I did not see or hear of him for the next 47 years.

But in 2006 and 2007, we again served together, along with our wives, as senior couple missionaries in the Kenya Nairobi Mission.

Nearly 50 years had gone by, and once again, our paths converged on yet another continent.

— John Nielson, Thayne, Wyo.

My husband and I were visiting our daughter and her family in New York City and decided to attend the temple while there. As we were in the elevator, I smiled at the couple who had entered at the same time. As the woman smiled back she reminded me of a friend we knew from our small town in Nebraska.

Our Nebraska friend had told me she had a twin sister who had married a man I had known when we were preteens in Washington and they were now living in California. Our parents had been friends and worked together in callings in the church in Washington more than 55 years ago.

I asked the woman in the elevator if she was a twin and mentioned her sister's name. I was delighted and most surprised to find out she was a twin to our Nebraska friend. It was a powerful testimony to me of how small our world is through the church.

— Sharon Ellermeier, Spencer, Neb.

I work for the research arm of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the field of surface and subsurface water resources. In October 2007 I was visiting Brasilia, Brazil, on official business that was sponsored and hosted by the U.S. State Department. I met with counterparts in various Brazilian government agencies that deal with water resources issues over a two-day period. Since I am a Department of Defense employee, my visit was also coordinated with the U.S. military officer in charge of all DoD interactions with Brazil. At the time, LTC Mitch Butikofer, a U.S. Air Force officer, was serving in that position.

Mitch and I met in the U.S. embassy in Brasilia prior to my meetings with the Brazilians, and he asked that I provide him a brief summary of my meetings after their conclusion at the end of the week.

Since one cannot flight directly from Brasilia back to the U.S. on commercial carriers, my return flights connected through Rio de Janeiro that Friday evening. I arrived early at the appropriate gate waiting area in Rio and was somewhat surprised to find Butikofer already sitting in the area with another person. We exchanged greetings and he invited me to sit next to them as he introduced me to his wife.

In the course of our conversation, several clues led me to suspect that both he and his wife were LDS — not necessarily any one thing in particular but just how they behaved, how they talked about their family and their general outlook on life. Evidently similar clues were being picked up by the Butikofers as well because they finally just came out and asked if I was LDS, especially after I mentioned that I had attended college in Utah.

We played a bit of the "where are you from" and "where/when did you go to school" game but didn't hit any immediate connections. As we conversed further, though, I mentioned that it was too bad that I hadn't been able to arrange to have one of my brothers come with me to serve as translator since two of them had served missions in Brazil.

That's when Mitch's face lit up with recognition.

He said, "Wait — which missions did your brothers serve in and when?"

When I told him that my older brother had served in Porto Allegre in 1984-1985, he exclaimed, "Elder Talbot! I should have figured it out!" He and my brother, Chad, had served together for several months in the Porto Allegre mission.

While we were getting through the customary questions of where my brother lived, how many kids he had, what he did for a living, etc., Mitch asked if I knew his e-mail address.

While I was getting it for him, we did the time-zone math and determined that since my brother lived on the West Coast, he was likely still at work counting down the last few work hours on a Friday afternoon. Mitch whipped out his BlackBerry and fired off a very unexpected "Hey Comp!" e-mail. Within seconds my brother had replied with the e-mail equivalent of stunned, dropped-jaw silence. They had not had any contact for more than 20 years.

My brother had given me a "shopping list" of goodies to bring back to him, and the Brazilian soft drink Guarana was naturally on that list.

However, with current security restrictions about liquids in carry-ons, I couldn't take any through security, and since I wasn't sure I'd be able to buy any at the gate, I had used all my Brazilian currency.

In the e-mails exchanged between Mitch and my brother as we sat there, my brother asked Mitch to again remind me to get him some Guarana. When I explained to Mitch my currency dilemma, he gave me some cash, pointed at the snack stand a few yards away and said, "Here, go get my old comp some Guarana!" My brother was most pleased when his returned-missionary Brazilian care package arrived several days later.

— Cary Talbot, Vicksburg, Miss.

I am a 37-year-old single woman, and I decided to go and volunteer in a small town on the Thai-Burma border. The nearest church was six hours away, so I hadn't had any contact with other church members for months.

One night I invited some friends and colleagues out for dinner. During the course of the evening, we were talking about our university experiences. One of the girls mentioned that she had gone to BYU. So I asked why she decided to go to that university. She then told me she was a member. I was very pleasantly surprised to meet another member in a remote border town. She was also doing volunteer work.

As there was no church, we decided to meet together once a week and have a gospel discussion. We became a great support to one another.

— Charlotte Chompff, Berwick, Victoria, Australia

After retirement, I have been substitute teaching for special education assistants in many schools in Virginia Beach, Va. At a recent kindergarten class, I had a student, Mosiah, who had written his name, Mosiai. It was printed correctly on his desk.

I asked him, "Doesn't your name end with an h?"

He replied, "How did you know my name?"

I told him that I read the Book of Mormon.

He asked me, "Are you a prophet? We are studying about prophets in Primary."

— Val John Jennings, Norfolk, Va.

While interviewing for an assistant professor position at Northern Michigan University in 1993, my future colleagues wanted me to meet a foreign language professor who was also Mormon and the local branch president.

Unfortunately, he was not on campus that day. However, they had me talk to his wife, Virginia Compton, and we had a nice chat.

After hanging up, she remembers thinking, "Well, she was very pleasant, for a career woman."

After accepting the position and moving to Marquette, Mich., Virginia and I became close friends. This was odd because we seemingly had so little in common. She was a stay-at-home mother of several children, and I was a single university professor.

After a few months, we made a startling discovery. We are both the same age — day, month, year, everything. She is about three hours older than me. In addition, our families had both lived in Bountiful, Utah, when we were born — albeit at different hospitals. We didn't meet until more than 30 years later.

She is still one of my most treasured friends, and we've always had fun discussing how we would celebrate "our" birthday.

— Krista Cook, La Cygne, Kan.

I am a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, having been baptized in 1989 in Ventura, Calif. Four of the first missionaries I met were Elder (Herman) Mackay, Elder Bantz, Elder (David) Farnsworth and Elder (Sean) McDevitt. At my very first meeting with the missionaries, Elder Mackay challenged me to be baptized. But that is a whole other story.

I had the uncanny experience of running into McDivitt several years later in what I have come to think of as "heavenly choreography." It was not on a street corner in Utah, nor at a church function in California, but deep in the jungles of southern Mexico.

Soon after I was baptized, I met Kathy Butterfield, the woman to whom I would be sealed to for time and all eternity. In the early 1990s, as a belated honeymoon, Kathy and I headed off to the sun-drenched sands of Cancun to spend a stress-free week. All was going well, at least until I unwittingly put some unfiltered ice into my filtered water.

Those who have met Montezuma and his revenge know well what I endured the next few days.

The next day, we had plans — stomach cramps and all — to take a several-hour bus ride out to Chitzen-Itza. The pyramids and ancient ruins there called to us, and no way were we going to miss this opportunity. Once there, I was only able to spend a brief amount of time before I was so ill that I had to lie down somewhere.

I found a bench that had a bit of protection from the intense sun and proceeded to rest. The thought of receiving a priesthood blessing kept coming to mind (as did a tall, cold glass of lemonade). But I knew the chance of either was slim to none.

Within 15 minutes or so, as I tried not to move, I heard a voice, "Brother Chormicle? Is that you?" When I opened my eyes, it was none other than McDevitt, one of the missionaries who had participated in my conversion and baptism. At first I thought I had been dreaming, or even hallucinating, because of the heat. After a minute or so I realized that it was not a dream, but it was real. He had been down into Central America with a BYU group and they were on the way back to the United States with a stopover at Chitzen-Itza.

— Wes Chormicle, Keller, Texas

In 1985, I was a very young newlywed and relocated to Lafayette, La., from Wyoming where I grew up and went to college. I was going with my new husband into the oil field and was very apprehensive about moving so far away to what I considered a "strange" place.

The very first Sunday in the Lafayette chapel, I saw Shauna, another gal from my hometown (Star Valley, Wyo.) and a neighboring ward — she was from the Auburn Ward and I was in the Thayne Ward. It was so nice to see a familiar face and someone who was only a year older and had been there slightly longer, because her husband was also working for an oil company.

This now happens a lot in my ward (Lilburn) in the Atlanta area. Someone will visit or move in and we will compare notes on Utah, Idaho and Wyoming.

— Allison Sullivan, Georgia

In the very early 1950s, three young men traveled to Mexico to serve as missionaries in the Mexico Mission, which included all of Mexico and part of Central America at that time. It was also during the Korean War, so the Mexico Mission had only 70-something missionaries to cover the whole mission.

These young men had to have permission from their draft boards to leave the country and serve these missions for 2 1/2 years.

In June 1984, a large group of newly called mission presidents met at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, for five days of training, after which they were to report to their missions on July 1, 1984.

The three young men spoken of earlier were now in their early 50s — delighted and amazed to see each other again at this mission presidents seminar after so many years. The big question among the three was, "Where are YOU going?"

The answers: Jack T. Beecroft to Mision Mexico Veracruz, M. Moreno Robins to Mision Mexico Guadalajara, Quinton S. Harris to Mision Mexico Mexico City North.

In their wildest dreams, those young men never imagined that they would meet up again under these circumstances and be headed for three of the greatest years of their lives.

— Marilyn Beecroft, Show Low, Ariz.

Recently, my daughter took her 7-year-old daughter and me to see the play "Wicked" in San Francisco. We were early, so after we found our seats and got comfortable, my daughter began to visit with the couple sitting next to her. The couple soon told us that they were on vacation, whereupon I asked where they were from. The woman said they lived in Utah. I asked where in Utah, since my parents live in St. George. She replied Provo.

I said, "Oh, I went to school in Provo." She asked, where, and I replied BYU.
She grinned and said, "Oh, you must be LDS."

I laughed and said, yes we were. We visited some more, finding out that we both worked in temples, she in the Provo Temple and I in the Reno Nevada Temple. We visited a little more and I finally asked what their name was.

The man answered, "James Eyre."

My daughter nearly fell out of her chair! Our name is Eyre, and going back several generations, we have a James Eyre in our line.

As we visited a little more, we found that we were related and indeed, trace our heritage back through the same people. Had we sat minding our own business, we never would have discovered that the world truly is small.

— Sharon C. Eyre, Reno, Nev.

Arriving quite early for a flight home out of Midway Airport in Chicago, my husband, Hal, and I decided to spend a little time in the food court enjoying a dish of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

It was hard to find a table, but suddenly there was one available right in the front corner of the food court. When Hal returned with the ice cream, he commented, as always, on how full of people the world is, and I replied with my usual comment, "Yes, but we're all related to everyone!"

As we prepared to leave, I glanced over to two older women sitting a few feet away at another small table. As I got up, I approached one and said, "You will think I'm crazy but my husband thinks the world is full of people, but I assured him we were all related," and then in unison we said, "But there are only six degrees of separation!" and had a good laugh over that.

Then I asked her if she knew who her immigrant ancestor was and she said "Yes, he was German." I replied "Darn, you're related to Hal! I was hoping you were Welsh!"

Thereby she said, "I am! I have a Welsh great-grandfather named Williams."

"Hey, I do, too," I replied.

So we chatted for a few more minutes, found they were on the same plane and were headed back to Portland. As we chatted, a man with a baby in a stroller took a table beyond us and as I watched him I thought to myself, 'That man could be Brett's (my grandson-in-law) twin brother.'

Then I watched one little boy, and then another and thought those could be my great-grandchildren, Patrick and Locke. Then as I got to my feet, I said to my new friends, "Wait a minute! Where's the mother?"

I turned and was face-to-face with my granddaughter, Adrienne, who was shouting "Granma, Granma, Granma!" as I shouted "Adrienne, Adrienne, Adrienne!"

There were hugs and kisses all around as we just laughed about this chance meeting.

The kids went off to get some food and we were left alone again. My new friend thought it was wonderful that we had come from Portland only to bump into each other in Chicago.

I said, "Oh, no! We're going home to Portland, they are on their way home from Disneyland to Grantham, New Hampshire. We haven't seen each other for a long time."

— Barbara Hovorka, Portland, Ore.