One of the challenges of growing older is that you don’t get to see your best friends once you get married, settle down, and start your own careers. You are all together in High School, and in this case, room together during college, but then life changes. I remember as a young man, before my mission, thinking that all of my friends would be close to me and live by me forever. However, that is not the case.

Serving a mission was also a place to meet and make an army of new friends. They have become old friends too, seperated by the gulf of years since I have returned home from my mission to Taiwan.

The joy is great when you get to see your dear friends again. Recently while vacationing in Washington we met and were runited with Scott and Verna Rhine again, after years of not seeing them. What a joyous reunion. We loved the opportunity to get together, talk about old times, and catch up on families.

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Scott and Verna Rhine at their home in Oak Harbor, Washington.

That is one of the blessings of all the years that pass by. Life becomes rich with wonderful memories and experiences. That makes up for the aches and pains, the failing memory, and the bodies that now have diseases that they didn’t have before. I thank my God for old and true friends.


A reunion of Taiwan Missionaries at the April 2005 Jackson Group Missionary reunion. Left to Right:
Gary Silvers, Steve Markham, Mike Hardy, and Elder Allen Andersen, currently an Area Authority Seventy and Cousenlor in the Asia Area Presidency.