In its latest Health and Retirement Study, the National Institute on Aging says that 2011 is a banner year in American demographics: it’s when the first Baby Boomers turn 65.
Our population is getting older and retirements are set to soar as more Americans than ever before are on the cusp of leaving the workforce. In 2010 the two magazines with the largest circulation across the U.S. were the Bulletin and Magazine of the AARP.
For many older Mormons, though, “retirement” means something else altogether.
While most people think of Mormon missionaries as young men in iconic white shirts and ties or conservatively dressed young women, few realize the scale of service at the other end of life. Yet an increasing number of older couples from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are serving in a multitude of ways around the world. At last count, that number stood at just over four thousand retirees. Their “missionary” service, lasting from six months to three years, is as varied as relief work in Africa or Central America or staffing the church’s temples, employment centers and welfare facilities. Some help in the church’s global effort to preserve and identify family histories; some serve at one of many visitor centers at church historical sites. They’re doing it all, and some are returning for two, three or even more missions, filling their final years with additional purpose and meaning.
Take Tom and Connie Bohman. “Elder” and “Sister” Bohman (as they’re called by their missionary titles) served a stint in Fiji. Connie, then 62, was a retired intensive-care nurse who was asked to put her medical skills back into action. Tom had had a career in vocational rehabilitation, and was newly retired at 66. Along with other senior missionaries, the Bohmans met the needs of people in Fiji, members of the church and others alike. When senior missionaries there found that a local woman was continually having her house washed out by floods, they helped arrange to put it on stilts. When they learned that schoolchildren had to swim across a river to reach school, they scrounged up a boat and rigged a pulley system so the children could ferry back and forth. Tom worked with leadership of one Fijian village, Bua, to put in a line to finally bring fresh, potable water. Everywhere, they shared their convictions about Jesus Christ, though service was their focus. The Bohmans will tell you about their friends who are serving in similar ways in Cape Verde or Germany or someplace else.
Howard and Glenice Morgan are California natives who recently returned from their third mission venture; they’ve now served on three continents in Colombia, Cambodia, and Zimbabwe, and been involved in diverse forms of service in each place.
These are selfless individuals whose approach to retirement means no small sacrifice. Like their young missionary counterparts, they pay their own way. In most cases they are affectionate parents and grandparents who temporarily part with family to go and help strangers. For a time, they trade grandchildren’s hugs for Skype and the comforts of home for whatever quarters are available. Spry as they are, most concede their energy isn’t as boundless as it once was, or their health as sound.
Still, they do it because they believe in the kind of active faith that the Bible calls “pure religion.”. While nature’s law is survival of the fittest, one former president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pointed out that God’s law is to use our personal power and possessions for the benefit and advancement of others. If we do this, we find our own souls “radiant with the joy and happiness we sought for others.” That just about sums it up. For these thousands of couples in their sixties and seventies, labor for the good of others is what brings luster to their golden years.