Perhaps it started with the Raymond Parade. I recognized one of my companions (the only other Canadian in the whole mission) sitting in one of the vehicles, throwing candy out the window. I shouted his name (Bikman!) and he found me in the crowd and shouted back. Our conversation was short, but it was enough to figure out that he was now a professor at BYU and I could look him up. We exchanged a few emails and arranged to drop by and see him during our visit to Utah. It has been 15 years since we served together, but it seemed like hardly any time had passed at all.
I had exchanged a few emails with another companion (Davis!) who I thought lived way off in Missouri or something. Apparently, he has finished his residency out there and now works as an ER doctor in Orem, Utah, and lives just a mile or so from my brother's house. In fact, I ran very close to his place during my marathon. We arranged to go visit him as well.
There was a mission reunion being planned for the same day as my marathon, and it was far enough away that I couldn't be there. However, the Facebook chatter generated by the reunion planning helped me figure out that another companion (COOOOOP!), who also was my business partner and workout buddy at BYU, was going to be in town visiting from his place in Dallas. We set up a time to drop by and see them. Here's a quote from when we pulled up outside the house they were staying at--
Visiting the Cooper family in South Jordan
D: We're here!
S: Do they have dogs here?
D: I don't know. But if they do they could just put it in another room.
S: Or in a bucket.
Our poor kids were dragged around to all these different houses to instantly make friends and start to play with all these kids they'd never met before. In most cases they did quite well. I was proud of them. In one instance, we needed Netflix to come to the rescue.
1 comment:
Great to see some familiar names and faces. It's always interesting to see where people end up.
Post a Comment