What to Write Your Missionary Each Week: Ideas That Actually Help
Here's what missionaries actually want to hear, a full calendar of weekly email themes, what to avoid, and ready-to-use writing prompts.
Missionaries most want to hear about spiritual experiences from your own life, small ordinary details of daily life at home, genuine follow-up questions about their investigators and companions by name, and encouragement that validates hard weeks without minimizing them. Using a rotating 12-week email theme calendar eliminates the blank-screen problem and ensures your weekly emails are consistently meaningful.
The Blank Email Screen Problem
You've been looking forward to P-day all week. Your missionary is online, time is limited, and you open a new email, and your mind goes completely blank. What do you even say? You can't report every detail of home life without risking distraction. You don't want to send something shallow. You want your words to actually help.
This is one of the most common struggles for missionary families. The weekly email becomes a source of low-grade stress rather than joy. And when that happens, emails get shorter, more perfunctory, and less meaningful for both of you.
The good news: missionaries are specific about what they want to hear. It's not hard to deliver once you know what you're aiming for.
What Missionaries Actually Want to Hear
Based on the consistent reports of returned missionaries, a few themes come up again and again when they're asked about the letters and emails that meant the most to them:
1. Spiritual Experiences from Home
Your missionary is living in total gospel immersion. What they want from home is evidence that the gospel is alive in your life, too. Share a moment from church that moved you. Describe a scripture you've been pondering. Tell them about a prayer that was answered. These messages reinforce that the work matters — that the people they're sharing the gospel with can become what their own family is.
2. Normal Life Details (the small ones)
There is enormous comfort for a missionary in knowing that ordinary life continues. What did you have for dinner? What's the dog doing? What bloomed in the yard? Did your youngest lose a tooth? The small, mundane details of daily life are surprisingly sustaining; they keep missionaries connected to a world they'll return to, and they carry love in a way grand declarations can't.
3. Genuine Questions About Their Work
Ask about their investigators by name. Reference a person they mentioned two weeks ago and ask for an update. Inquire about their companion. Show them you actually read and remembered what they wrote. Nothing communicates love like evidence of attention.
4. Encouragement That Doesn't Minimize Hard Weeks
When your missionary reports a difficult week, don't rush to fix it with toxic positivity ("It'll get better!") or pivot to something cheerful. Acknowledge it first. Then offer genuine encouragement rooted in your faith and knowledge of them: "That sounds genuinely hard. I've watched you tackle hard things your whole life. You have what this requires."
5. Testimonies and Conversion Stories from Home
If someone in your ward was baptized, if a friend returned to activity, if your neighbor asked a question about the Church, tell them. These stories are rocket fuel for missionaries. They're working toward outcomes that are difficult to witness firsthand, and knowing those outcomes happen makes the work feel worthwhile.
Weekly Email Theme Calendar
One of the most practical tools for consistent, meaningful emails is a rotating theme calendar. Instead of staring at a blank screen, you write from a prompt. Here's a 12-week rotation you can cycle through the entire mission:
Week | Theme | Example Angle |
|---|---|---|
1 | Spiritual highlight of the week | One scripture, talk, or moment that stood out |
2 | Family update with the ordinary stuff | Meals, routines, pets, weather, small events |
3 | A memory of them before the mission | A story that shows who they are and always were |
4 | Questions about their mission | Follow up on investigators, companions, area highlights |
5 | A letter from a sibling or other family member | Include inside jokes, references to shared experiences |
6 | Something you learned this week | From a book, podcast, Sunday lesson, or life experience |
7 | Gospel-centered encouragement | A talk or verse tailored to what they're going through |
8 | Local and seasonal updates | Weather, holidays, neighborhood happenings |
9 | A letter from a friend or extended family member | Coordinate with someone they'd love to hear from |
10 | Their future (without pressure) | Describe something you're excited to do together when they're home |
11 | Gratitude and acknowledgment | Tell them specifically what you admire about who they're becoming |
12 | Photos from home | Attach 5–10 photos of normal life with captions |
Ready-to-Use Email Opening Prompts
Sometimes the first sentence is the hardest. These opening lines are designed to bypass the blank-screen problem and get you writing:
"The funniest thing happened at church this week, and you would have loved it…"
"I was reading in [scripture reference] this morning and thought of you because…"
"I've been thinking about the time you [specific memory]. Here's why it's been on my mind…"
"I ran into [name they know] and asked me to tell you…"
"Last week's Sunday lesson hit differently. The teacher said something I haven't been able to stop thinking about…"
"It's [season/weather description] here. The yard looks like [description]. The dog has been…"
"We had [specific meal] for dinner last night, and everyone agreed it didn't taste the same without you here to [specific thing they always did]."
"I read your last email three times. When you wrote about [specific thing from their email], I felt…"
What NOT to Write
Being intentional about what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to include. Mission presidents and experienced missionary parents consistently identify several categories of content that burden missionaries more than they help:
Heavy Family Drama
If there's a major conflict, illness, financial stress, or family crisis that your missionary can do nothing about from the field, consider carefully whether to share it at all and if so, how briefly and matter-of-factly. "Grandma had a minor health scare this week, but is doing much better now. The doctors say she's on track." Not: a multi-paragraph account of the hospital visit and everyone's emotional responses.
Reports on Social Life and Relationships
Who is dating whom, what happened at the school dance, who broke up, who got a new job — these updates pull a missionary's attention toward a world they've committed to stepping away from. It's not cruel to leave them out; it's kind.
Guilt About Missing Them
The difference between "We miss you so much" (fine, brief, loving) and "The house is so empty without you, I've been crying all week, it just feels like nothing is right" (burdensome, guilt-inducing) is significant. Express love and longing in ways that don't generate obligation or distress.
Questions That Require Hard Decisions
Asking your missionary to weigh in on major family decisions, such as where to move, whether to sell the house, and how to handle a sibling's situation, puts them in an impossible position. They're not there. They can't fully engage. Don't make them carry what they can't carry.
Pressure About Post-Mission Plans
"Have you thought about which school you're going back to?" or "Your friends are all getting engaged" are innocent-sounding but distracting. Post-mission planning conversations can wait until they're home.
Email Templates for Common Situations
Template: Responding to a Difficult Week
"I read what you wrote about [situation], and I want you to know I heard it. That sounds genuinely hard. I also know you — I've watched you [specific example of their resilience]. You don't need me to fix this, and I know you know that. I just want you to know I'm on your side, I'm praying specifically for [specific aspect of what they're going through], and I am so proud of who you're choosing to be even in weeks like this one."
Template: When You're Running Out of Things to Say
"I'll be honest — it's been a quiet week here, and I wasn't sure what to write. So I'm going to do something I've been meaning to do for a while: tell you about the week [specific memory]. Here's the full story, the way I remember it…"
Template: Sharing a Spiritual Highlight
"I've been reading [scripture/talk] this week, and something in it felt like it was meant for you. Here's the part I keep coming back to: [quote]. I've been thinking about it in the context of what you're doing, and here's what it means to me…"
The Cumulative Value of Weekly Emails
There's one more reason to invest in the quality of your weekly emails: they're being saved. Your missionary reads them, often more than once, sometimes sharing them with companions. They reference them in hard moments. They carry them as evidence that someone is watching and cheering.
And the emails your missionary sends back to you, the weekly accounts of their mission life, are equally worth keeping. Many families set up a simple system to archive those emails from day one. Services like My Missionary Book capture each weekly email automatically as it arrives, building a chronological record that ultimately becomes a printed, hardbound keepsake book. Families who started from the MTC have a complete mission memoir when their missionary walks off the plane. It's one of the most meaningful things you can do with 30 seconds of setup time.
Write your missionary every week. Save what they write back. The correspondence between you is its own kind of sacred record.