The two most enjoyable and memorable events were attending the 1976 conference at the Auditorium and going to the 1975 reunioon at Cedar Valley Grove. Besides all the activities during the week, it gave me a great opportunity to really get to know people who’d I met on previous occasions visiting the local branch.

I got to know the branch president and his wife quite well. They had a lot of questions about how things were down in the LDS Church and I had a number for them. We all found it interesting to compare the similarities and differences on doctrine, procedures and attitudes all in a non-combative style.

As word got around there was a Mormon in the camp, I had some more positive interactions, including the traveling Herald House book steward who had set up a great book store that I browsed heavily. I was even given a couple of thoughtful gifts by other campers.
This experience was so enjoyable that I ended going to the following April conference in Independence.

Our local ward did have a camp out once a couple of years before that to celebrate Pioneer Day (July 24th) that was well attended. The wife of the elder’s quorum president caused quite a stir by lounging around in her 2 piece bathing suit. She got plenty of googles from a number of the brothers. That was the first and last time for that camping.

When I lived in San Jose, California in the 1980′s, the 7 or 8 area stakes owned a large campground complete with a big lodge built on the mountainside in the Sierra foothills. Although they didn’t have reunions per say, they had camps with similar programs that were well attended.

Thanks for reading and posting, Christopher! I did have your arguments in mind when I posted about reunions as the continuation of camp meetings. I have nothing too profound to share in these regards beyond what we have shared in person already, but I would love to see your work on KT dedication as a camp meeting in print sometime! I’ll do my follow-up post in a few days.

One thing I can say about Australian Reunions is that it has always closely followed Christmas (that being our summer vacation season). Reunion starts on 26 December and goes through to New Years day.

Camps here are also quite different depending on the campground. For example Kallara Reunion (our campgrounds in Victoria) is in the country, has very simple dorm rooms and a large hall used for meals and group activities/worship. Kallara Reunion tends to be one of forming a very tight-knit community. People attend most everything on the schedule. As it is in the middle of nowhere, there are not a lot of distractions and we can focus on each other.
I have not been to reunions at Tiona, but I am told they are quite different. Tiona is the campgrounds used by the church in New South Wales. It is located on a thin strip of land between a lake and the pacific ocean. As a result, it being summer, I am told the beach can be quite a distraction. As a result it can be more difficult to get all of the people to all of the activities.
From what I’ve been told Tiona reunion also has a lot of people who attend who grew up in the church, but no longer attend. Often its their family Christmas holiday where they all gather at Tiona to relax for a week and go to the beach (a popular activity here over Christmas holidays). As a result most of those people don’t attend much church stuff.
From all the testimonies though, people have told me they have had many sacred experiences at Tiona Reunion. Having been to the campgrounds as a leader at a youth camp, the Green Cathedral is perhaps the star attraction of the Tiona reunion, with the worship space being in the open air facing the west, over the lake (particularly pretty at sunset).
We also have a reunion in Queensland. Queensland being far away, I’ve never been.

The second one, in July is longer by a day or two and is designed more for adults.

Margie and TH–Very interesting reflections on reunion experiences and their variations in the U.S. alone! I have heard of weekend reunion experiences and “in-town” reunions among Restorationists (with whom I once worshiped as a teenager and college student). I’m curious as to how widespread the weekend or “in-town” reunion experience is an how people may feel that it approximates the same experience as being at separate campgrounds “in nature.” (I’m not trying to provoke a discussion about what we mean by “nature”–just observing that people use this in everyday discourse to mean not in a city.)

I am curious about how reunion experiences in the U.S. are different from reunion experiences in Tahiti or the U.K. Any ideas?