With more opportunities to communicate with missionaries serving from our families, what can we do to better support and encourage them?
In an exciting recent announcement, the First Presidency stated, “Effective immediately, missionaries may communicate with their families on their weekly preparation day via text messages, online messaging, phone calls and video chat in addition to letters and emails.” There have been many changes in the Church recently, but this change is especially monumental for missionaries and their families around the world. The First Presidency stated that “regular communication with their families is an important part of a missionary’s service,” and they wanted “to encourage families to be more involved in their missionary’s efforts and experiences.” As family members of missionaries, how can we use this new opportunity to better support them?
Photo by LDS Media Library.
First, we need to understand the guidelines. Missionaries are “encouraged to use judgment in determining the length of phone calls,” and families should “wait for the missionary to contact them.” Acting within these guidelines will help to ensure that family phone calls do not disrupt missionary work, but, instead, encourage missionaries to do their best work.
Second, family members can share their own spiritual and missionary experiences. By bearing testimony in this way, family members can strengthen not only the missionaries but also other family members and encourage the entire family to seek out opportunities to share the gospel.
Thomas S. Monson once said, “Missionary work is a family affair,” and this has never been truer. As we communicate within the guidelines and share our experiences and testimonies with one another, this revelatory change can make our missionaries and families stronger and bring us closer together.
Read more about this change by checking out the First Presidency’s announcement.
Source: Church Newsroom
—Emily Cook, Mormon Insights
FEATURE IMAGE BY LDS MEDIA LIBRARY
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Learn more about how to make missionary work a part of your everyday life by reading “4 Ways to Be an Everyday Missionary.”