Homecoming day: the airport, the release and the talk.

Your LDS missionary is still a missionary until they report to your stake president and he releases them. Their homecoming talk comes after, in a regular sacrament meeting the bishopric schedules. Both are in the Church's General Handbook  (opens the Church's page in a new tab).

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Before they fly home.

Young missionaries travel straight home from their mission, and parents aren't expected to come and pick them up.

If you'd like to travel home with your missionary, tell the mission office and Church Travel at least three months before the release date. You make your own travel plans, lodging and meals included, and follow the mission president's guidelines. The release date can't be changed for travel.

Ask your missionary for their flight details when they write home on P-day.

If your missionary is coming home before their release date, read when a missionary comes home early.

Meeting the flight.

The Church's pages this guide follows don't set rules for meeting a returning missionary at your home airport. Follow the airport's own rules for meeting arriving passengers.

If they fly into Salt Lake City, the airport asks people meeting arriving passengers inside to wait in the Senator Jake Garn Greeting Room, on the second level beside baggage claim. Passengers on domestic flights walk past it on their way to baggage claim. Passengers on international flights come out on the ground level, near the bottom of the escalators. That's from the airport's page on pick-up and drop-off  (opens the airport's page in a new tab).

The release.

Until the release, your missionary is still a missionary and keeps the missionary standards.

The Church asks them to arrange the release with your stake president as soon as they can after they get home. Ask your missionary, or your stake president, when it will be, so the day's other plans fit around it.

The handbook suggests that in the release interview, the stake president thanks them for serving, invites them to share mission experiences, and helps them plan for what comes next, such as school and work.

The homecoming talk.

The bishopric schedules a time for your missionary to speak in sacrament meeting. It's a regular sacrament meeting, and its regular time isn't extended.

For this talk, the handbook asks the bishopric to follow the same principles as for the talk before the mission. The focus is on the sacrament and the Savior, and family members and friends aren't normally invited to speak.

Those principles also ask members not to print special programs or form reception lines after the meeting.

Your missionary may also be invited to report on their mission in a high council meeting, or in a ward council.

A family gathering.

The same principles ask members not to hold open houses, except for family gatherings, and recommend that a family gathering not conflict with Sunday meetings.

Before you plan one, ask your missionary what they would like.

After the release.

Their mission email account closes about 60 days after they're released. Save what's in it before then: save your missionary's email account has the steps.

The Church also asks returning missionaries to get screened for tuberculosis as soon as they can after they get home, even if they were tested before their mission and have no symptoms.

The handbook asks leaders to give recently released missionaries ministering assignments and callings promptly.

Once the email account is saved, their weekly letters can become a book whenever you're ready. Ours is the Hardcover Memory Book.

From MyMissionLetters

Their weekly letters, as a book.

The Hardcover Memory Book prints your missionary's weekly emails and photos, in the order they happened. When the mission ends, they can come in all at once, from an export of the mission email.

See the Hardcover Memory Book