After 79 Years of Friendship, 2 Women Will Serve as Companions in Guam

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By Makeilah Law, Church News

In 1946, 2-year-old Virginia Hawkins Bryant and her family moved to Tooele, Utah. There, in a neighborhood where only one house stood between them, she met Kathleen Moessing, also 2 years old, and they began a friendship that would last a lifetime. 

Seventy-nine years later, the childhood friends, now 81, will be serving as companions in the Micronesia Guam Mission. 

Both women hope to use their individual backgrounds to serve. Hawkins Bryant of the North Salt Lake Utah Legacy Stake intends to use her homemaking skills, such as cooking and sewing, and Moessing of the Oakland California Stake plans to contribute her experience from a seasoned nursing career. 

Their decision to serve started when Moessing received a message from her daughter, a mission leader with her husband in the Micronesia Guam Mission. Her daughter, who is also a nurse, explained that her responsibilities left little time to perform nursing duties. 

That’s when Moessing offered her help, but she needed someone to be her companion. 

“On a fluke, I just called Ginny, and I said, ‘Will you be my companion?’” Moessing recalled. 

Both women experienced the recent deaths of their husbands at roughly the same time, and when Moessing called, Hawkins Bryant felt she had “a little more to give.” 

With no health issues, the friends committed to serve a six-month mission as companions and started their missionary training on January 5 at the Provo Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. 

Hawkins Bryant noted her desire to serve in whatever way she is needed. 

“Our lives have been preserved for something,” she said. 

Decades of Friendship, ‘Parallel’ Lives 

Hawkins Bryant said Tooele has grown immensely since she was a child, but in the 1950s it was a small town. 

They grew up on a long street lined with houses — and the neighborhood kids, who all knew each other, spent ample time playing outside together. 

The two friends acknowledge their distinct personalities as children. Moessing, with her copper red curls, said she was a shy child, and as Hawkins Bryant fondly described, spunky. However, Hawkins Bryant, with her straight dark hair, said she was more outspoken. 

Still, the two were inseparable. 

As the youngest of her siblings, Moessing had no playmates close to her age. That changed when the Hawkins Bryant family moved in. 

“I was so excited because there was somebody my age in the neighborhood,” Moessing said, sharing her initial memories of Hawkins Bryant. 

After Moessing’s father died from a bad heart shortly after the Hawkins Bryant family arrived, their family, in many ways, became hers. 

“We took her in our family a lot. She did lots of things with us — had dinner with us, we had many sleepovers,” said Hawkins Bryant. 

Whether it was putting on plays together for the neighborhood kids on her front porch or building floats for holiday parades, Hawkins Bryant said they were always together. 

“We had a perfect childhood, we have both recognized that,” Hawkins Bryant said. 

But when she was 14, Hawkins Bryant’s father came down with debilitating arthritis, forcing her mother to find work, and her family moved to Salt Lake City. 

The two friends never lived by each other again and went to different schools, but that didn’t keep them from remaining close. 

They would make the 30-mile commute to visit each other whenever possible — Moessing would meet new friends in Salt Lake City, and Hawkins Bryant caught up with childhood friends in Tooele. 

The summer after their high school graduations, Hawkins Bryant planned on attending college with Moessing, but when a car accident killed her father and left her mother with extensive injuries, she decided to stay home and take care of her. 

Moessing went on to graduate from Brigham Young University in nursing and moved to San Francisco, California, with her husband, and Hawkins Bryant stayed in Salt Lake City, got married and cultivated life experience while raising her family. Both women have continued to live in these cities since then. 

Christmas and birthday cards kept them tethered over the years, and they have prioritized being present for each other’s major milestones — attending each other’s weddings and making blankets and gifts for each other’s new babies. 

“She was my bridesmaid, I was hers,” said Hawkins Bryant. 

With the deaths of their fathers and husband, the two have endured similar family trials, and both describe their lives as parallel. 

But through it all, they, as well as their families, have continued to show up for one another. 

“We just interlocked our families,” Moessing said, adding that the support of Hawkins Bryant’s family since her childhood “means everything to me.” 

A Shared Purpose 

Hawkins Bryant said a friendship as lasting as theirs is never one-sided. 

“It takes effort to keep this long friendship going,” she said, “but it’s so rewarding and so important.” 

As they write a new chapter together in their friendship, this time as missionary companions, they both look forward to making a difference together. 

“I think it will be easy to live with her because I know everything about her. She’s like a sister to me,” Hawkins Brayant said. 

“I’m really excited because I just feel like I need to have a purpose, I need to serve,” said Moessing. 

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