It isn’t uncommon for Latter-day Saints to settle down with someone they met while serving their volunteer missions. In 1985, Heidi Hemming and Mark Hollingshead served their mission in Ireland. In 2020, they married.
, instructs the church’s emissaries to “not flirt or associate inappropriately with anyone” and “avoid any thought or action that would separate you from the Spirit of God.”
“I was falling in love so easy,” De La Cruz recalled. They talked online for eight months before Sevy decided to visit in September 2018. He asked for her father’s blessing beforehand and proposed to her on a beach near her home the first day he returned to his former mission. They stopped communicating regularly after a few years, but McCalla messaged him every year on his birthday. In 2018, she sent her usual birthday wish. Meacham carried the conversation further.
Sherefah McCalla and Kurt Meacham met while he served his mission in Jamaica. They stayed pen pals for many years after he returned, which ultimately led to them falling in love and marrying in 2021. With many of those missionaries attending Brigham Young University when they got home, it’s little wonder, the Christensens observed, that six or seven couples from their missions ended up marrying.
They went their separate ways, with Hollingshead working in Utah and Hemming joining the Peace Corps in Mali. They both married and started families. About 20 years ago, Hemming’s husband left her on her own to rear two young children. She shut herself out from the dating world and focused on her kids.