Our daughter is serving a mission and she’s loving every minute of it. She loves the bug bites, the blisters, the long hours, the leaking water through the ceiling, ok so not so much any of that, but she does love the work and the service, the rest is just life.

However as our sons and daughters head into the mission field the one thing they really need is news from home. They want to know that all is well, that they are missed, that they have support. They need that connection and well, so do we.

Now to encourage us when she isn’t getting enough mail we receive things like this What is more pathetic than your daughter standing in front of an empty mailbox with a pout? It’s just sad. So we all pledge to do better! Often it’s not our fault, when all the mail has to be forwarded from the mission office or things get lost because of a transfer it’s tough. But we all have to do better. Well except for maybe Kim.

My sister in law Kim never wrote the boys when they were on missions more than once or twice, but she has a special relationship with Alison and has done much better. She tries to write once a week and send a very creative package once a month. I think the favorite letter to Alison so far has been and forever will be referred to as the mother of all letters! This should be said in a loud resounding voice!

This is adding machine tape, you know the kind that comes in a big roll. It took Kim quite a few days to write it all and she encouraged everyone who came to the house to contribute. It took Alison 3 days to read it all and quite a while to roll it back up. She loved that letter!

Other ideas are writing a letter on every other line on one side of the paper and then turning it upside down and writing the rest of the letter on the skipped lines the other direction. How about making a poster of a word or name with huge open letters and then writing the letter inside those words.

I don’t know how many ideas she will come up with but I look forward to finding out. My letters to Alison are full of news and home, but Kim’s letters make her laugh and give her a cheerful outlook. The greatest Aunt in the world strikes again!