Creative ways to encourage
a missionary
besides finances, prayer and written communication:
Talk with them directly by phone or by Skype.
Donate frequent flyer points to them, if this is appropriate
for their situation. This might be
something you can do for them while they are on home assignment or help them to
get away to somewhere other than their place of work on some annual leave while they are on location.
Purchase an iTunes gift card for them. You can either mail it to them or just email
the activation code to them. Make sure
this will actually be of use before you do it.
Make a movie of friends, family, their church family,
familiar locations and so on for them and send it or put it on Vimeo or
Youtube. There are secure ways of
uploading movies onto the Internet but be very careful if you have a missionary
in a secure location.
If your missionary isn’t serving in the middle of the
jungle, use the Internet to find a local florist or food outlet and get them
something fantastic delivered to the door...goodies from a bakery, pizza delivered to the door, a box of groceries...
Find out what they are really missing or what items are
really hard to find in their new country and send something to them. Be prepared for a big bill at the post office
so go ready to be sacrificial at that point.
(Just think of their faces when they open their gift. That will help with the post office
pain.) That said, you don’t need to send
an abundance of something...even just a small offering of some favourite thing
will be appreciated. (No used tea
bags! Did somebody really do that??)
Before sending
anything, check with your missionary. Sometimes there are restrictions on sizes
of parcels that can be received and it can be an expensive exercise for the
missionary to retrieve it from the local authorities if they can retrieve it at
all, which rather takes the edge off a gift.
Communicate and work with your missionary on the best way to get things
through to them. In some situations it
may be better to send nothing. Clear
communication and clear guidelines make for a better experience all round.
Organise them an Amazon gift voucher. All electronic and it gives them the joy of
choosing. Check first to see if that is
going to be useful and accessible.
Organise a magazine or journal subscription for them. Again, check with your missionary before you
do this for security, content, postal and/or email/Internet access issues. (Some missionaries are only able to receive
very short emails without attachments so check, check, check.) But if it will work, go for it.
Get in touch with their family back at home and find out how
they are doing. If they are Christians
pray with them and if not, pray for them.
And then report back encouraging news.
If there is something you can do to help a missionary’s family members
back at home – mow the lawn for their elderly parents for example – do
this. What a gift to a missionary.
If there are children, remember them. Stickers, colouring pages, coloured craft
paper...these sorts of things are easily popped into letters. If their location and your budget will allow
you to send more, do so. Send a care
package especially for the children.
