Sending a child on a mission is a glorious time. A time of excitement, new experiences, and dedication to God and your fellow man. But during such a wonderful time, why can parents, and especially moms, feel so bad?

Sacrifice. Your son or daughter will be sacrificing their time, talents, and money to serve a mission, and you will be sacrificing your little boy or little girl. That letting go is hard for most missionary moms. Mommy Chic wanted to help bring out the best in missionary moms and did some research on how to help cope.

By Lori Garcia, editor in chief

Ways to Cope

Join a Support Group
“Every Missionary Mom worries about the welfare of her missionary. Let's join together for support and sharing,” says Betty Pearson of LDS Missionary Mothers.

• Get together with other Missionary moms in your ward or stake for lunch every month and discuss your feelings.

• Find a buddy who is also a missionary mom who you can hang out with and share sorrow and success.

• Join a missionary mom email list where you can chat with other moms in your position all across the world.

You be the Missionary
Use this experience to be a missionary. Tell your friends, coworkers, family, etc., about your missionary and in turn, you’ll serve as a missionary to them. By doing this, you’ll develop confidence and pride in your missionary and in your own abilities to share the gospel.

Find Ways to Support Your Missionary
There are tons of fun things you can do for your missionary. (Crafty Chic will give you some fun ideas next week that you can send to your missionary.) Here are a few suggestions from the Larson Family that you can do that will make the mission fly by:

• TIME BOX: Twenty four months can seem long or short depending on what is happening in your life. As something for our family to look forward to, we decided to bury a time box. For our time box, each member of our family wrote their predictions on where they and other members of the family would be in two years. Some included goals they would like to achieve in the next 24 months, pictures of family members, charts with height and weight, favorite foods, favorite things to do, etc. We included in the box favorite things of our missionary, like Basketball cards, books, etc. We also included a newspaper of the day he entered the MTC. Our plan was to have a big family gathering and all of us bury this box. Our family being large it took us longer than we expected to gather information, so our Missionary dug the hole, (which we have pictures of) and we celebrated a family gathering by burying it. In Twenty Four months we will see what has remained the same and what changes have taken place.

• TWENTY FOUR MONTHS: Similar to the Twelve Days of Christmas. Trying to be creative. We chose to send a package a month to our missionary. It doesn't have to be big.
The message goes: On the First Month of my Mission my family sent to me, a package of candy SPREE.

 

Search the Scriptures
Your missionary will become more and more of a scriptorian on his/her mission. Want to keep up? Try packing in more time to study scriptures into your week. This way, as your missionary increases in spirituality, you will increase in yours.

Create a Mission Shrine
Well, not quite. Find a place in your home to put up pictures, a map of your missionary's country or state, a "countdown" till your missionary comes home, letters, etc. This way you will have a designated place in your house that will showcase your missionary's accomplishments.

Remember your Missionary in Your Prayers
Missionaries can never use enough prayers, and the same goes for missionary moms. On missionary mom shared that she would pray for her missionary during the sacrament each week. She would remember their last trip to the temple together and remember the feelings she had seeing her son in the Celestial room. She said this always made her feel better about missing him while he was gone.