I Missed the Deadline and My Missionary's Email Is Gone. Can I Still Make a Book?

If you have already lost access to your missionary's Church email account, you can still build a meaningful keepsake book. It may not include every single email, and that is okay. Most families in this situation end up with more material than they expect once they start looking in other places.

Most likely cause

The account was purged after the standard access window closed, commonly around 60 days after your missionary's release date. Once that happens, the emails and photos cannot be recovered, not by you, not by the Church, and not by us.

The fix: stop trying to log back into the original account and start gathering copies from everywhere else your missionary's words and photos may still exist. Most families have more scattered around than they realize.

• Ask parents, grandparents, and siblings who were on the weekly email list. Many people save every message without meaning to build an archive; they just never delete their inbox.

• Ask companions your missionary served with, especially any who are still serving or who kept in touch after their own mission ended.

• Ask ward members, mission leaders, or families your missionary taught, since baptism photos and thank-you messages often get saved on their end too.

Other things to check

• Check messaging apps and social media. Photos and updates often traveled outside of email too. Look through WhatsApp, iMessage, or group chats for anything your missionary shared, and use the "download your information" tools on Instagram and Facebook to pull saved posts, captions, and photos.

• Add new material to fill the gaps. Your missionary remembers more about their mission right now than they ever will again. A few written reflections, favorite stories, or a testimony written today can round out a book built from partial material and make it feel complete rather than incomplete.

Still stuck?

If you have gathered what you can and you are not sure how to bring it all together into a book, reach out to us. Include your missionary's name, roughly when they returned home, and a short note on what you do and do not already have (for example, "we have about a year of emails saved but nothing from the last six months"). That lets us tell you exactly how to add what you have and where the gaps will be, rather than guessing.

Questions?

Contact us at customerservice@mymissionarybook.com or through our contact form.