Why Every Missionary Family Should Keep a Mission Journal (and How)

The Record That Almost Gets Lost

Every Monday, a missionary sits down and types. The week's experiences — the conversations on doorsteps, the late-night lessons, the moments of doubt and the moments of clarity — pour out in an email sent home to family. Mom reads it twice. Dad saves it. Grandma prints it.

And then, more often than not, it sits in an inbox. Or gets printed and tucked into a folder that lives in a drawer. Or gets forwarded to relatives and then forgotten.

Two years later, when the missionary comes home, the question becomes: where did those letters go? What do we have left of those two years?

The answer, for most families, is scattered. Incomplete. Already starting to fade.

Keeping a mission journal — whether by the missionary, by the family at home, or both — is the single most effective way to ensure that those two years are preserved in a form the missionary and their family can actually use for the rest of their lives.

Why Journaling During the Mission Matters

The case for journaling during a mission is both spiritual and practical. The Church has consistently counseled members to keep journals. President Spencer W. Kimball stated that "those who keep a personal journal are more likely to keep the Lord in remembrance in their daily lives." The act of recording is not just preservation — it is attention.

For missionaries specifically, journaling serves multiple purposes that become clearer in retrospect:

Processing spiritual growth in real time. Missions are dense with spiritual experiences. Journaling slows the missionary down enough to understand what they are learning, not just what they are doing.
Creating a record of specific people. The investigators, the members, the companions — without a record, names and faces blur within months of returning home. A journal with specific names, dates, and stories preserves individual people who meant everything at the time.
Providing future teaching material. Returned missionaries who have children use mission journals as one of the richest sources of testimony-building stories they share with their families. The specific and the personal is always more powerful than the general and abstract.
Supporting mental and emotional health. The Church's own missionary adjustment resources recommend journaling as a tool for managing loneliness, processing hard experiences, and maintaining perspective during difficult stretches. Writing is a proven tool for emotional regulation.
Creating a legacy record. Your missionary's grandchildren will know who Elder or Sister [Name] was in part through what was written during those two years. Without a record, the mission becomes a story told from memory — inevitably shortened and simplified with each retelling.

Methods for Keeping a Mission Record

There is no single right way to preserve a mission. The best method is the one that actually gets used consistently. Here is an honest comparison of the primary approaches families take:

Method	What It Involves	Strengths	Limitations	Best For
Missionary's personal journal (paper)	The missionary writes in a physical journal daily or several times a week	Private, detailed, tangible; no technology required; highly personal	Depends entirely on missionary's consistency; carried through transfers; may not be shared with family	Missionaries who are natural writers and committed to the habit
Weekly email record	Family forwards or saves every weekly email as it arrives	No extra effort for the missionary; captures authentic voice; includes photos	Lives in an inbox; easy to lose; not organized; requires significant effort to compile later	All families — as a minimum baseline
Family response journal	Parent keeps a journal from home — recording their own experience of the mission, responses to emails, family events during the mission	Creates a two-sided record; rich context for the missionary to receive at homecoming; models journaling for younger siblings	Requires consistent effort from the family; rarely organized into a final format	Parents who are writers; families who want a parent-perspective gift for the homecoming
Digital journaling app	Missionary or family uses Day One, Journey, or similar app to record entries	Backed up automatically; searchable; can include multimedia; accessible from any device	Requires phone/tablet access the missionary may not always have; platform longevity uncertain	Tech-comfortable missionaries; families who want searchable records
Automatic email capture and book service	Family sets up a dedicated address that receives the missionary's weekly emails and stores them for a final printed book	Zero additional effort for the missionary; professionally formatted; produces a physical keepsake automatically	Requires forward planning before or early in the mission; small cost for the final book	Families who want a guaranteed keepsake without managing compilation manually

What to Record: A Guide for Missionaries and Families

Whether you're advising your missionary on their personal journal or keeping your own home record, knowing what to capture makes the difference between a journal that feels alive and one that reads as a schedule log.

For missionaries keeping a personal journal:

The specific details of people you meet. Name, where you met, what they said, what you felt. The general "we had a good lesson" fades; "Sister Martinez told us she'd been praying for two years to find something true, and then began crying" does not.
Spiritual impressions, not just activities. The feeling during personal study, the answer to a prayer, the moment a scripture meant something different than it had before.
The hard days. The weeks with no progress, the companion conflicts, the physical exhaustion, the homesickness. These are the most honest and ultimately the most valuable entries.
Language milestones. If serving in a foreign language, record the first full lesson taught in the language, the first dream in the language, the first joke you successfully told.
Description of places. The neighborhood, the apartment, the ward building, the landscape. These details are impossible to reconstruct from memory five years later.

For families keeping a home journal:

Your reaction when you read each weekly email — what moved you, what surprised you, what you wanted to say back
Family events that happened while the missionary was away: birthdays, graduations, moves, illnesses, new jobs
Prayers and impressions you had for your missionary — the specific moments of worry or peace
Quotes from younger siblings about the missionary — these are often the most touching entries
Photos from home events, printed or digital, that tell the parallel story of the family during the mission years

How to Involve the Whole Family

A mission is not just the missionary's experience. Younger siblings, grandparents, and parents are all shaped by the two-year journey. Involving the whole family in the documentation creates a richer record and also gives younger children a meaningful role during what can otherwise feel like a long absence.

Assign a "family recorder." One person — a parent, an older sibling, or a grandparent — takes primary responsibility for saving and organizing emails. Without a designated role, the task falls through the cracks.
Create a shared folder or album. A Google Drive folder, a private family blog, or a shared photo album where all family members can add photos, updates, and notes creates a collective record that feels participatory.
Let younger siblings contribute. Ask younger children to draw pictures for the missionary, write short letters, or contribute one thing to the family journal each month. These contributions become precious over time.
Map the mission together. Print a map of the mission area and mark each area where your missionary serves as transfers happen. This geographic record helps everyone follow the story — and gives the missionary a vivid visual artifact to keep.
Read weekly emails aloud at dinner or family night. Making the email a family event keeps younger siblings engaged in the mission and creates a ritual of connection that bridges the distance.

Turning Journals into Keepsakes

Preserving mission records is only half the goal. The other half is making them accessible — in a format that can be read, shared, gifted, and passed down. A folder of forwarded emails accomplishes the first goal imperfectly. A beautifully formatted keepsake book accomplishes both.

Options for creating a physical keepsake:

Scrapbook (manual): Print emails and photos and arrange them in a traditional scrapbook. Labor-intensive, but deeply personal if that creative process has meaning for the family.
Photo book from a service like Shutterfly or Chatbooks: Upload selected photos and add captions. Does not typically incorporate the full email text, so primarily visual rather than narrative.
Custom book through an email-to-book service: Services like My Missionary Book are built specifically for this: every weekly email is automatically captured and formatted into a hardbound keepsake book. At $149, it includes the email address, processing, storage, and one professionally printed hardbound book. Additional copies for grandparents and extended family are available. The service does all the compilation work — the family receives a finished book without having to manage the process manually.

The advantage of starting a service like My Missionary Book from the beginning of the mission — rather than trying to reconstruct emails after the fact — is that every letter is captured in the moment, with original photos and formatting. Missionaries who know their emails are being preserved often write more thoughtfully and consistently as a result.

The Spiritual Case for Preserving a Mission Record

In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord chastened the early Saints for failing to keep records of spiritual events. Throughout the scriptures, the preservation of records is treated not as an administrative task but as an act of faith — a declaration that what happened mattered enough to save.

Your missionary's two years contain some of the most significant spiritual experiences of their life. The people they served, the testimonies they bore, the prayers they offered in empty apartments at midnight — these are worth keeping with the same care given to the Nephi's brass plates or Joseph Smith's histories. The format is different. The impulse is the same: this is sacred, and it should not be lost.

Frequently Asked Questions

How should a missionary keep a journal while serving?

The most sustainable approach for most missionaries is a brief daily entry in a physical journal — even three to five sentences capturing one specific experience or impression — supplemented by the more detailed weekly email home. Physical journals are private, tangible, and require no technology. The key is brief consistency over irregular, exhaustive entries. Many returned missionaries say they wish they had written more; very few say they wrote too much.

How can a family preserve missionary emails?

The simplest option is to forward every weekly email to a dedicated folder in an email account and never delete it. A more reliable option is to use a service like My Missionary Book, which automatically receives and archives every weekly email as it arrives — no manual forwarding required — and formats the complete collection into a printed book when the mission ends. The key in either approach is starting from the beginning of the mission rather than trying to recover emails retroactively.

What is the best way to involve younger siblings in mission journaling?

Ask younger siblings to contribute one item each month — a drawing, a short letter, a photo, or a written memory of the missionary. Read weekly emails together at dinner and let younger children ask questions. Map the missionary's area on a wall map and update it with each transfer. These small rituals keep younger siblings connected to the mission and create a multi-voiced family record that is richer than any single journal.

Is it worth keeping a journal from the family's perspective, not just the missionary's?

Yes — and many families describe the parent-side journal as an unexpectedly powerful homecoming gift. Recording your own experience of the mission: your prayers, your reactions to each email, family events at home, the prayers you offered for your child — creates a mirror record that shows the missionary what their service looked like from home. Combined with the missionary's own emails, this creates a complete account of two years from two perspectives.

What should I do with mission journals and emails after the missionary comes home?

At minimum, consolidate all emails and journal entries into a single organized archive — a folder, a shared drive, or a physical binder — within the first month after homecoming, while the impulse to preserve is strong. Ideally, use or create a printed keepsake book that can sit on a shelf and be reread. Many families order extra copies for grandparents and the missionary's own home. A mission record that exists only in digital form is at perpetual risk of being lost through email account changes, device failures, or platform shutdowns.