Missionary needs & practical ideas

You are right, that sometimes it is just not cost-effective to send "things"....esp. if the missionaries have to pay duty etc. As far as the school supplies are concerned, inexpensive tote bags can be purchased at the dollar store. My daughter just got a cute one that looks like pink satin, but is lined with a waterproof material. One of our lady missionaries is in Africa, and, interestingly she makes good use of travel toiletries (and the little ones you get at motels). In the past, I've just written and said, "What do you need?"

I was a member of a church in Greenville that was big on sending a box to each missionary for Christmas, in which were various craft projects the ladies had made all during the year. I remember receiving some very nice stenciled and embossed note cards that were useful. Also some little inexpensive things for Christmas stockings. They made blank books (journals) and note pads, even some Christmas decorations. Once, a cookbook was compiled by all the church ladies (inexpensively bound) so the missionaries had a little "taste of home" (and they had asked for the missionaries to send their favorite "native" recipe to add as well). On a larger scale, one year they cut out an entire set of Betty Luken's flannel figures for a particular missionary who had that need.

As far as informing members, I made a notebook once, in which the letters could be stored...but no one really looked at it. Our current church has a bulletin board for the express purpose of posting letters and pictures. Of course, the letters are read at church too...usually on Wednesday nights.

To answer the last question first, our church has a display board with pictures of each missionary family and copies of their latest prayer letter, plus excerpts are read at Wed. night prayer meetings. Current prayer requests are listed on the Wed. night prayer request sheets and in the monthly ladies' ministry newsletter. So many send prayer requests and prayer letters via e-mail now, and our pastor will forward those to church members who want to be on his list for such things.

I've seen some churches post a little summary of their missionaries, taking one at a time, in church bulletins, newsletters, or even online (but you would have to be especially careful about online mentions, especially for those in countries where their is persecution. Most missionaries request that churches not put prayer letters up on web sites -- it's awkward when their contacts find themselves mentioned as prayer requests on a newsletter online. I wouldn't put addresses online unless you can password-protect the site so only members could see it).

We used to send Christmas packages, but the Post Office discontinued the old "surface rate," and everything goes by various levels of air mail now, and, as was said, sometimes it costs way more to send the package than what the items are worth. Small packages aren't terribly expensive, though. It's best to contact the missionary to see whether they have to pay duty and whether they can gets the items there: It might be more cost-effective to send them money, but if there are things they need that they can't get there or are exorbitantly expensive there, the cost of shipping would be worth it.

Some projects our ladies' group has worked on for our missionaries are note cards (years ago at one church, the note cards the ladies made out of recycled cards looked like recycled cards, and I was embarrassed to send them, But with the advent of scrapbooking and the beautiful papers and card stock for that, hand-made cards can be really nice now), various items with wordless book colors (booklets made out of felt so as to last longer than construction paper ones, bookmarks with hearts in the the wordless book colors, etc.), and bookmarks with a verse in the language of the country the missionary is in (best to ask the missionary for the verse so you have the right spelling and dialect). The bookmarks and wordless book things can be used in classes, VBS, etc.

20-some years ago we had ladies who could trace and color flannel graph backgrounds, but those can't compare with the Betty Lukens flannel graphs. I agree that cutting out the pieces of a flannelgraph set can be a great blessing to a missionary -- it will arrive ready-to-use.

I hope that some of the missionaries here will chime in with things they've received that were useful.

Hello,

We not only seek prayers from our supporters, but we also try to pray for all of our supporters too. So we LOVE to receive personal letters from our supporters along with family pictures...these letters become like a revere missionary prayer card for us to pray for our supporters.

We also love our parents and relatives and friends to take pictures of themselves and also of local well-known landmarks, stores, cafe'$, establishments, etc, especially showing the change in weather.

Old magazine subscriptions are also cool. World, Christianity Today, homeschooling mags...doesn't matter if they are old.