Since this specific blog post is not so much about mission-prep (and more about missionaries who are currently serving), we are now also featuring this post on our new companion blog - "Missionary Momming with the Overzealous Missionary Mom" which features tips & advice for relatives and friends of LDS missionaries who are currently serving in the field!
I would have loved to get more mail than I did when I was a missionary and many missionaries feel the same way... Often, the amount of emails/letters coming to a missionary is pretty great in the beginning of their mission but starts to steadily taper off as the months go by. Please write to the missionaries that you know - they love to hear from you and to get that boost of love and support from home.
However, it IS possible to over-do it, so we need to be careful about how often we write (and even what we say). In some cases, mail from home (physical letters or email) can actually be a problem for the missionary.
After reading this blog post, you might reconsider how often you send your missionary letters or emails. You may want to write your missionary more often, or you might even want to write your missionary less often...
Let me start by explaining a little bit about what mission life is like for a faithful and obedient missionary. Even if you know a lot about missionary work (have known many missionaries who have served or even served a mission yourself), please don't skip over this part... it's important!
An obedient missionary sacrifices aspects of his/her personal life to focus on the work. They will wait to see that new comic book movie that they've been really excited about, because going to the movies is against the mission rules. They may totally miss their best friends wedding because they are serving as a missionary. They may put their education or career on hold because they are a missionary. Most missionaries have worked and saved to pay for at least part of their own mission expenses. All of these things represent a personal sacrifice that they are making in order to serve the Lord.
If you know anything much about missionaries, you know that personal sacrifice is part of the deal. A BIG part. This is how a missionary fully consecrates themselves - essentially, when they are set apart as a missionary, they are committing themselves fully to serving the Lord for the entire time they are serving. Naturally, they are still their own person with their own individuality, likes, and dislikes. Different missionaries may have very different approaches or styles. But one thing that obedient missionaries have in common is that they devote all of their time and their efforts to missionary service for 18 months or 2 years. 24/7. This is the only time in their whole life as a single adult that they aren't dating, going to school, working at a job, attending their own family events, competing in organized sports, and/or pursuing hobbies. All of those (perfectly normal) things are simply put aside during your mission so that they can out all of their focus and energy into missionary work.
The Missionary Handbook says, "Strive to fulfill what the President of the Church expects of you, as expressed in your call letter: 'You have been recommended as one worthy to represent the Lord as a minister of the restored gospel. You will be an official representative of the Church. As such, you will be expected to maintain the highest standards of conduct and appearance by keeping the commandments, living mission rules, and following the counsel of your mission president. You will also be expected to devote all your time and attention to serving the Lord, leaving behind all other personal affairs. As you do these things, the Lord will bless you and you will become an effective advocate and messenger of the truth.'
When you accepted your call, you promised to live by these standards. You are accountable to the Lord and to the leaders of the Church for how well you honor this promise. Always keep in mind the importance of your calling. Strive constantly to magnify it.
As you obey with a willing heart (see D&C 64:34), you will show the Lord your love for Him, earn the trust and confidence of members and nonmembers, and qualify for the companionship of the Holy Ghost (see John 14:15–17, 21; 1 Nephi 10:17; D&C 121:45–46)"
Obedience and sacrifice brings blessings.
As I talk about in my blog post, "Why isn't my missionary writing me longer letters? The AWFUL TRUTH about P-DAY - A guide for relatives, friends, and girlfriends/boyfriends of LDS missionaries,", there are rules that missionaries are asked to follow about corresponding with loved ones and friends back home. Just as the completion of other temporal things (like getting haircuts or cleaning the apartment) are reserved for "p-day" so that the missionaries can fully focus on missionary work the rest of the week, letter writing and emails are done on p-day. Missionaries can check their email and send emails (and/or write and send home letters) once a week during their p-day.
However, unless they are in a very remote area, missionaries do usually get some sort of regular physical mail delivery every day (if anyone has sent them a physical letter in an envelope through the postal service) and they are able to open any physical mail that they receive throughout the week.
So that means that a missionary who receives only emails from friends/family will only get "mail" once a week, but a missionary who is also receiving physical letters in the regular mail could get (and open) mail several times during the week in addition to reading emails on p-day. This is why many missionaries request to get physical letters in the mail, even though it is much easier and cheaper for family/friends back home to just send an email. Plus, another benefit of getting a physical letter is that you can re-read it later, which you can't do with an email (unless you are able to print it out).
The potential problem with being able to get physical letters in the mail every day, is that the missionary could be distracted by too-frequent letters. Here are the rules that accompany a missionary's correspondence (which is mostly emailing/letter writing, except for the 2x a year phone call home):
THE RULES: According to the Missionary Handbook of Instructions ("Communicating with Family" section), this is what is appropriate for missionaries when it comes to emails/letters (I have added bold lettering to emphasize some phrases):
"Write to your family each week on preparation day. Limit correspondence with others..."
"Use e-mail only on preparation day. You may use computers in public places, such as libraries or appropriate businesses that offer Internet access. While using computers, always stay next to your companion so that you can see each other’s monitors. Do not use members’ computers. If you misuse e-mail or computers, you may lose the privilege of using e-mail"
"As your call letter states, you are 'expected to devote all your time and attention to serving the Lord, leaving behind all other personal affairs'."
"Do not become preoccupied with communicating with family and friends"
"Notice that the Missionary Handbook says, "limit correspondence with others." There is a specific instruction that a missionary should write to their family weekly, but there is no specific instruction re: how often emails/letters should be written to friends/girlfriends/boyfriends. That's probably because #1- not everyone has the same situation, and #2- a missionary needs to use their brains and good judgement, and #3- again, they just don't have a lot of time to write. So if they only have time to send 1-2 short emails this week, friends (or even a girlfriend/boyfriend) might not make the cut. That won't be meant as an insult. They will sometimes need to make that tough choices like that.
Then how often should missionaries write (individual emails/letters) to friends or girlfriends/boyfriends? Once a week? Maybe, but thats how often they are instructed to write their family, and they are instructed to limit correspondence with others (non-family), so that implies that they would write to non-family less often than once a week. Maybe 2x a month? Once a month? Thats up to the individual missionary to decide. Just be aware that just because they CAN potentially send emails/letters on p-day, does not mean that they will/can write to friends/girlfriends/boyfriends every week, or even every month"
In our family we have a Primary-age child with some separation anxiety issues and in my blog post "Tips for Making Having a Missionary in the Field Easier for the Family Back Home", I talk about how we are helping all of the siblings prepare emotionally for their oldest sister's mission by discussing ahead of time what it will be like and how we can appropriately communicate with her during her mission. My daughter with the separation anxiety said, "I'm going to email Kendall 20 times a day and send her 10 letters in the mail every day." Her love and care for her sister and her desire to keep in touch with her is admirable, but I explained to her that (though her plans were innocent and well-intentioned) that we will need to come up with a modified plan that is more appropriate (perhaps in her situation, one weekly email, a physical letter every other week, and sending her occasional care packages).
I doubt that my future-missionary daughter would be distracted by colored pictures and stickers from her sister, even if she did get 10 envelopes a day (except that her companion might be jealous of the excessive amounts of mail!). But if she was experiencing problems with homesickness, a constant barrage of copious amounts of mail from home every day (plus the 140 weekly emails her sister was planning) could potentially hurt more than it helps. :)
There are many situations in which too much correspondence (or the wrong type of correspondence) could definately be problematic, no matter how well-intentioned...
If a missionary is getting a lot of emails, but only reads them once a week on their p-day, the main problem there is going to be that they might not have enough time to read them all. Here is a math problem for you - If a hypothetical missionary gets 40 emails a week and only has 30 minutes of computer time to both read all of those emails and write emails back, how much time would they have to read each email? Well, to read that many emails, they could only spend 45 seconds reading each email, but thats still not taking into account the time needed to respond to the emails and write their main email to their family (which is the most important thing in most cases). If I were that missionary who got 40 emails and didn't have enough time to read them, I would likely just quickly skim them (or even skip some of them if they are all from the same person) because of lack of time.
So it's a good idea to keep even emails to a reasonable minimum if you want your missionary to have the time to actually read them. And quality is better than quantity, meaning that a good well-thought short email is better than a rambling long email without substance. Parents are encouraged to write weekly (once a week), so it would make sense to me that friends and other relatives should write somewhat less often, or at least no more than the parents are asked to.
But like I mentioned before, a missionary can get/open/read physical mail (letters/packages) that they receive any day of the week, which can be a positive thing or a negative thing.
Here are some specific areas where too many physical (in the postal mail) letters from friends/family at home might be a problem:
HOMESICK
Imagine that your doctor has put you on a special strict diet for the next 6 days, but you can go back to eating whatever you want to on the 7th day. Every day you check the mail and every single day the whole mailbox is filled with colorful, delicious-looking coupon ads from fast-food places like Burger King and Pizza Hut. Would that make it harder for you to keep to your diet? How much easier would it be to only get an occasional ad, or even all of the ads at once on the 7th day? Of course, that's a silly analogy. Letters from home are good. Just don't over-do. You can use the guidelines discussed above as a guide, but also use the Spirit. We don't want to be make things more difficult, we want to help...the Spirit can help us understand when we are over-doing it (or under-doing it).
DISTRACTED BY ROMANCE BACK HOME
I know of a couple of situations where missionaries have had serious problems because a girlfriend back home was writing excessively (1 or more extremely long hand-written letters arriving in the mail every single day) or a friend or acquaintance from back home was hinting at romantic interest in their letters. I'm sure that these letters were meant well and were sent out of genuine desire to stay close to the missionary. But they were also sent (whether they realized it or not) out of...well...selfishness - without regard to how these letters (which were romantic in nature) were affecting the missionary. If you have a missionary that you love (romantically) and you want them to faithfully serve, you can help that happen OR you can make it more difficult for them.
If I were a single person who had a boyfriend on a mission, I would not want him to look back on his mission as being difficult because he missed me so much. I would want him to look back on his mission as a faithful and obedient missionary who put aside his personal life for a time to put his whole energy into serving the people and serving the Lord. If you are writing more than is recommended or if your letters are romantic in nature, you may want to reconsider...Who are you helping? Who are you hurting?
Is it ok for girlfriends/boyfriends to write to their missionary? Of course! Keep it missionary appropriate, supportive, and spiritual (if possible).
Here are some tips for what to write (and things to avoid) that anyone can use if they are writing to missionary (from my Jolly Rogers Young Women Blog here)
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| See the whole blog post here |
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| I created this free printable guide for my YW blog, you can read the whole post here |
Best of luck to you!
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