Missionary Mom Tip #2: Pictures, Pictures, and More Pictures

On March 12, 2025, I posted the following on my social media and shared tips about pictures.

Eliza comes home in a week - just 7 days!! Here is Tip #2: Pictures

For Christmas I got a digital frame and I finally set it up. My thought was to have Eliza's mission pictures loaded and surprise her with it when she comes home, but oh what gladness the digital frame has been for Lance and me already! I only wish I had done it earlier. Literally, it has been so fun to see her silly poses and faces, the food, the beauty of her surroundings, her mission pals, and new friends ready for baptism and dressed in white. 

This is a new joy for me and a happy tip to share - get a digital photo frame to showcase your missionary's pictures.

We've heard it before, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

There are countless stories contained in Eliza’s pictures that I don't even know about. I look forward to knowing the stories, the experiences, and more about the friends, people, and places. I hope she is ready; she has thousands of pictures to tell me about.

While my daughter, Abbey, was on her mission (2017-19) she had a digital camera and a lot of SD cards, which a few times got infected when she would go to an internet cafe to download pictures to send home in her emails. Things changed, so by late 2019, Andrew and now Eliza, have been able to take pictures on their phone and can easily upload them to Google photos to share with others. It is so spectacular for the family back home to easily see the pics.

I'm including a few of my favorite missionary pics of them.

Other picture tips:

* Send pictures from home to your missionary. They enjoy seeing what is going on back home.

* Before memory fades, label the images, digital or printed, with people's names and places. (I still need and want to do this with my husband's mission photos, too.)

* For soon-to-be missionaries, it is my understanding that the picture uploaded at the time of submitting mission papers is the picture that will be used for your entire miss.

* I printed some 4x6 photos of my daughter's companions and some of her mission friends. I had them hanging on her bedroom wall  

If you have a missionary serving right now, do they also use a digital camera or just their phone camera?

What photo tips would you share?

Running out of Google photos storage seems to be an issue for missionaries. My missionary too.

Any tips on organizing digital photos?