Guides
For families keeping the letters
Practical answers, written for people in the middle of a mission or just after one. Nothing here is a sales pitch with the answer held back — if a guide does not tell you the thing you came for, it has failed.
How a missionary book gets made
What actually happens between a folder of weekly emails and a hardcover: how the chapters are worked out, what is chosen rather than written, and what turns up at the door.
6 min read
How long is a mission?
Twenty-four months for elders, eighteen for sisters, and what that is in weekly letters — plus why the usual shorthand is wrong twice over.
6 min read
Calling and video chatting your missionary
Weekly contact, on their preparation day, and why they call you rather than the other way round — plus the thing a weekly call quietly costs the letters.
6 min read
What to say to a homesick missionary
Three things that make it worse, what to write instead, and how to tell an ordinary hard couple of weeks from something that needs the mission office.
6 min read
The first month after they leave
The quiet house, the first letter taking longer than expected, the comparison trap — and the five minutes in month one that saves a weekend in month twenty-two.
6 min read
mail.missionary.org login: who can sign in, and where the letters are
The sign-in page is mail.missionary.org, and it only opens the account of whoever signs in. What a parent can and can't open, where the weekly letters already are, and how to export a Church account before it closes.
6 min read
How to download every email from your missionary
Which inbox to export, the eight steps through Google's own free tool, and what to do with the file afterwards — whether the mission is still going or ended years ago.
8 min read
What happens to missionary emails after the mission ends
Mission accounts get closed, inboxes get full, and the weekly letters quietly become unreachable. What actually happens to them, and what to do before it does.
7 min read
Homecoming gifts for a returning missionary
Most homecoming gifts are about the day. The ones that last are about the eighteen months or two years before it. Ideas that hold up, including the ones that cost nothing.
8 min read
What to write to a missionary
What missionaries say they actually want to read from home, what makes a letter hard to answer, and why the ordinary week is usually the better letter.
7 min read
Keeping the letters safe while they're still out
You don't have to wait until they're home. What to do at month three that makes month twenty-four easy, and the three ways families usually lose a year of letters.
6 min read
Missionary email book or scrapbook? Four ways compared
Four ways to turn missionary emails into a book — a scrapbook you design yourself, a photo-book service, a print shop, or us — and an honest account of what each costs you.
5 min read
What to expect when your missionary comes home
The exhaustion of the first days, the quiet at about week three, and the questions that get a real answer instead of “it was great”. What families say they wish they had known.
8 min read
What to send a missionary in a care package
What survives customs, heat and a transfer, what gets confiscated or ruined, and the part of the package they actually keep for the rest of the mission.
7 min read
How to organize a mission's worth of photographs
Why pulling every picture into one folder is the thing that makes them unsortable, where the ordering information really lives, and how to get them into a missionary photo book without redoing the work.
7 min read
Missionary book and scrapbook services, compared
Six real services that turn missionary emails into a book — the size and page count each one actually prints at, not just the headline price, whether you lay the pages out yourself, and where MissionMems differs.
7 min read
When a missionary comes home early
For the family. The welcome to give, the words that help, how to handle everyone else's questions, and why the months that happened are still a complete record.
7 min read
When you’re ready