Title: “Supporting Your Missionary Parents”
Exhibitor: Roxanne Thayne
Description: Ideas shared on how to involve your own family with the
experience of having senior missionaries in the field. Acts of kindness will lift the spirits of the missionaries. Ideas include small gifts or remembrances that won’t weigh them down as well as ways to share our own testimonies of the gospel and of missionary work. These monthly projects are good activities for family home evening activities and for use at farewells and homecomings.
How To’s: Monthly Ideas (January-June)
1. January - During a Sunday afternoon or
Family Home Evening, write your testimonies in Books of Mormon and paste in
your family picture. Send those
personalized copies to your favorite senior missionaries. They will take on an added measure of
importance and
personal sentiment
for the missionary, as they offer the books to those they teach.
2. February - Don't forget to put them on your
list of sweethearts. Write letters and
Valentines telling them WHY you love them, not just that you do. Include candy, window clings for their car
or apartment, stickers that they can hand out, etc.
3. March - Put together a green care
package. Make everything green, the
paper you write on, the treats you may send, make up a limerick about them and
their area, find a story about Irish saints in the Ensign and learn more about
this beautiful land and its
people.
4. April - This is
a special month, and you may want to do some of these things late in March so
they can arrive by Easter. Send a
spring bouquet through a florist, egg- decorating kit, stickers, a CD of hymns,
a little table decoration or anything to spruce up
an otherwise drab
missionary "pit". This is the
best part: include an audiotape of your
testimonies of Christ and his gospel.
Include another blank tape, asking them to bear their testimonies and
return it to you. Make sure to pass
this around the extended
families and
friends, possibly transcribing it for posterity. This is a treasure your loved one's will bless you for,
especially capturing it when they are on a spiritual high as missionaries!
5. May - Send them some flower or garden seeds
and encourage them to invite a non-member family or their children to help them
plant these seeds and tend them. It can
be in a pot for their porch, or in an investigator's yard. The children will love this, and
DOING something
together always helps you feel more of a bond with one another.
6. June - Send a dinner in a box package. Include as many non-perishable items as
possible, along with recipes, dinner music, new tablecloth, paper products,
etc. Then challenge them to have
investigators over for dinner. Or they
may want to invite their branch president and his family. Sometimes the local leaders need as much
TLC and
appreciation as
the new converts or investigators.
7. July - Focus on the pioneers this
month. In your letters include stories
of our Mormon pioneers, our nation's founders, but also make certain to refer
to the pioneers in your own family history: those who joined the church, those
who've gained a testimony of
a certain principle,
those who have been blessed for keeping a particular commandment.
Just pointing these things out in your letters, will spark ideas to
help your missionaries use some of their own personal stories while teaching.
Personal experiences carry much weight and feeling, and truly bring
the spirit into discussions.
Monthly
Ideas (August-December):
8. August - Plan a "virtual family
reunion." Get a video camera and
gather the family around for dinner and activities. Have someone lead them into the room or park, have everyone talk
to the camera as if it were the missionaries, asking questions, telling them
jokes, narrating
about other members of the family and games or performances. Send off the video with a reminder that they
can only watch this tape on a P-day!
9. September - With the start of school, have
everyone, along with the missionaries, commit to memorizing a passage of
scripture. Everyone can do the same one
or choose their own favorite. Perhaps tell why you chose this particular verse,
etc.
Record the recitation on audio or video and
send it to Grandma & Grandpa.
10. October - Here
is your chance to use a play-on-words with the Holy Ghost. Make up a batch of sugar cookies cut them
out in ghost shapes. Frost them with
white frosting and put black eyes and scripture references on each of them. Find scriptures that mention the Holy Ghost
in them and put those references on the cookies. Parents may enjoy looking up the scriptures and eating the
cookies.
11. November - Ask
your missionaries to pick out someone who is in need in their area. As a family, show the gratitude you feel for
your own blessings by making, purchasing, or organizing the gathering of
articles for these brothers and sisters.
Send it to your missionaries and have them deliver it anonymously.
12. December - Take pictures from their
farewell, snapshots they have sent home, letters, postcards, their mission
call, and any other bits of information about their area and have their
scrapbook compiled for them when they return.
Leave a few pages for their homecoming and concluding thoughts on this
amazing experience. They will love
coming home to a major project already completed. This way they can sit down immediately with you and share the
details of their great adventure.
P.S. Remember that pictures and letters are what
keep a missionary alive. Keep the
communication going and include even the mundane in's and out's of your day.
Encourage them,
pray for them, tell them you love them, and ask specifics about those they are
serving. "So how is the brother that you tracted out last week?" Also make sure that you save and print out
every e-mail and letter they write home.
These are a
valuable family history
treasure. If you struggle with keeping
your own history, ask them to save the letters that YOU write, and you will
have an instant record of your own past year!