Since 2019, missionaries have been able to contact their families every week— by phone call, video call, text or message, as well as the weekly letter. Before that it was twice a year, at Christmas and on Mother’s Day, which is why a lot of families are still working from what they remember of somebody else’s mission.
There is one rule that catches almost everybody, and it is the first thing worth knowing.
They call you, not the other way round
Families are asked not to initiate the call. The missionary contacts home on their preparation day, at a time that works around the rest of the day and around their companion, and the family waits for it.
This is not a formality and it is not about keeping families at arm’s length. A missionary’s week is scheduled around other people, and an unexpected call lands in the middle of somebody else’s appointment. The weekly contact works because it has a slot.
Preparation day, and why it moves
Preparation day is the one day a week set aside for laundry, shopping, letters home and some rest. It is set by the mission rather than chosen by the missionary, and it is not the same day everywhere — so do not assume it is Monday, and do not assume it will never change. A transfer to a new area can move it, and a holiday or a zone conference can shunt it to a different day that week without much warning.
Two practical things follow from that. Ask them, early, which day it is and roughly what time they expect to be free. And work out the time difference once, write it down, and put it where the family can see it, because the arithmetic gets done wrong in both directions by everyone.
What a call is good for, and what it is not
A weekly call does something no letter can: it lets you hear how they actually sound. Tone carries things that writing does not, and a parent who has been worried for two weeks usually knows inside thirty seconds whether they still need to be.
What a call is not good for is detail. Nobody recounts a week in order out loud, the connection drops, the companion is waiting, and whatever was said is gone the moment it ends. Which brings us to the thing most families only notice afterwards.
The call does not replace the letter — and it quietly can
This is the honest warning in this guide, and it is worth more than any tip about time zones.
When a family talks every week, the written letter tends to get shorter. There is no decision behind it. Everything has already been said out loud on the call, so the letter becomes a summary of a conversation the writer assumes everybody remembers — and three lines go where three paragraphs used to.
The trouble is what survives. The call is gone the moment it ends. In two years’ time, the letters are the entire record of what happened, and a family who talked every Monday can reach the end of a mission with a complete set of letters that say very little.
What to do about it
- Say so, out loud, early.Most missionaries have never thought about it, and a sentence in month two — keep writing the long one, we will still talk — is all it takes.
- Ask for the things a call skips. Names, places, what the apartment is like, what somebody said. On a call you ask how they are; in a letter they can tell you what happened.
- Write down what the call contained. Not a transcript. Three lines in a note on your phone, the same day, while you remember it. In the end this is often the only record of half the mission.
- Reply in writing. A letter back gives them something to answer, and the answers are what make the next letter long. There is more on that in what to write to a missionary.
The first call, and why it is the odd one
During training, contact is more limited and more scheduled. The first proper call once they are assigned is usually the one families remember, and it is frequently a strange conversation: everybody has saved up a month of things to say and nobody can find any of them.
Do not read anything into it. A stilted first call is a feature of first calls, not a signal about the mission. It settles within two or three weeks, once it stops being an event and becomes a Monday.
Who is on the call, and the crowded-screen problem
Nine people around one laptop is a worse conversation than two, and the people who lose out are always the same: the quiet sibling, and the missionary, who spends the slot being passed around rather than talking.
- Rotate on purpose. Some families run a core two with others joining for part of it, rather than leaving it to whoever happens to be in the room.
- Give siblings a few minutes alone. It changes what gets said, in both directions.
- Grandparents are often better on a separate call, or on a letter, than as one more face in a grid.
When the connection is bad
In plenty of places it will be, routinely, for the whole mission. It is worth deciding in advance what happens rather than spending the slot troubleshooting.
- Agree a fallback— drop to voice, then to messages. A clear audio call beats a frozen video one, and everybody resists the downgrade for about ten minutes every single time.
- Have the important thing first. If there is something that must be said this week, say it in the first two minutes, not after the small talk.
- If it drops entirely, write. A cut-off call leaves everybody unsettled, and a message the same hour fixes most of it.
When the call is hard
Some weeks they are flat, or homesick, or something has gone wrong, and the call ends with everybody at home more worried than before it started. That is normal and it is not a sign the mission is failing.
Two things help. Do not spend the whole slot solving it — a missionary with thirty minutes a week does not want all thirty spent being managed. And follow it up in writing the same day, because a letter can be read again on a bad Thursday and a call cannot. There is more in what to say to a homesick missionary.
A few practical things
- Decide who is on the call. A screen with nine people shouting on it is a worse conversation than a screen with two. Some families rotate.
- Be somewhere with a decent connection, and be ready at the start of the window rather than the middle of it.
- Take a screenshot of the video call occasionally. It is often the only picture of them anybody gets for months at a stretch.
- Do not make them manage your feelings about the call ending. Ending it is already the hardest thirty seconds of their week.