Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. At no cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Have you been searching for the things people wish they brought on their mission so you don’t make the same mistake?
If so, you’re in the right place. Because we’re commanded to ‘prepare every needful thing’ (D&C 88:119), I applaud you for doing your research.
Here are 6 things that you’ll want to make sure you bring on your mission.
1. Recipes & Basic Cooking Skills
Even though members love to feed the missionaries, you’re bound to have an area where you don’t get fed very often.
Even if you do get fed a lot of dinners, you’ll still be left with cooking your own breakfasts and lunches.
Missionaries are instructed to keep their meal times to under an hour. This means that they won’t really have the time to cook fancy meals that require lots of prep work and cook time.
Recipes
Every missionary should be prepared knowing basic cooking skills and know how to cook 5-10 recipes. Sit down with your mom and grandma and write down all of your favorite family recipes that you can cook quickly.
Some things, like cooking, are best done in person with someone who is experienced.
If you go out on a mission and don’t know basic cooking skills, you’re going to end up calling your mom or grandma and have to learn it over the phone.
Don’t make the mistake of trying to carry it on board the plane.
3. Tide To Go Pens
Because you’re essentially out all day riding bikes and talking to people, you’re going to inevitably get your white shirt or blouse dirty.
These Tide pens are absolute lifesavers! They came in handy on my wedding day.
Our wedding photographer had Adam and I do a pose that rubbed the purple flower from his boutonniere onto my wedding dress.
The pen completely removed the purple stain from my dress and saved us from a complete meltdown.
4. Music
“Listen only to music that is consistent with the sacred spirit of your calling. Music should invite the Spirit, help you focus on the work, and direct your thoughts and feelings to the Savior.
Do not listen to music that pulls your thoughts away from your work, merely entertains, has romantic lyrics or overtones, or dulls your spiritual sensitivity by its tempo, beat, loudness, lyrics, or intensity.
Listening to music must never interfere with your personal preparation or proselyting. If you have any questions about music, discuss them with your mission president.” Missionary Handbook
Every mission will have their own set of rules. Contact your mission office to see what’s approved before you go crazy buying lots of music. Use this tool to get their address and phone number.
What Music Is Usually Approved?
Hymns. The church has 341 hymns available for free download here. Download them and put them on an iPod.
People learn information in one of three different ways. Auditory learners learn by hearing. Visual learners learn by seeing pictures and graphs.
“Approximately 65 percent of the population are visual learners.” (source) Kinesthetic learners learn by engaging physically.
Teaching with this in mind will make you a powerful and effective teacher.
You’re going to teach about the Apostasy & Restoration, Godhead, Plan of Salvation, and prayer a lot. So, these are good places to start for getting teaching tools.
Apostasy & Restoration
“The most precious thing lost in the Apostasy was the authority held by the Twelve—the priesthood keys.
For the Church to be His Church, there must be a Quorum of the Twelve who hold the keys and confer them on others.” Boyd K. Packer
These two lessons are taught hand in hand. There’s no need for a Restoration if things weren’t lost in an Apostasy.
Camille from CknScratch.com has a great object lesson that you can print and use to teach this. Find it here.
Godhead
“We believe these three Devine persons constituting a single Godhead are united in purpose, in manner, in testimony, and in mission.” Jeffrey R. Holland
Other religions believe that God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are one being. It can be a difficult concept to teach that we believe that they are three separate beings.
Debra from LatterDayVillage has put together a lovely set of visuals for teaching about the Godhead. See it here.
Plan of Salvation
“The Plan of Salvation gives mortal life meaning, purpose, and direction.” M. Russell Ballard
The 2nd lesson is the Plan of Salvation and missionaries are going to be teaching this A LOT! The church has made a very simple chart that you can print out, cut, and laminate. Access it here.
This will come in handy while teaching this lesson. Because some people learn by seeing, rather than by hearing, this will make your teaching much more effective!
Prayer
“Therefore ye must always pray unto the Father in my name” 3 Nephi 18:19
As a missionary, you’ll hear how people pray and it won’t be what you’re used to. We pray differently than other Christians and so you’ll have to teach people how we do it.
Emilie from AYearOfFHE.net has a free printable, which you can grab here, that shows our prayer format. What I would do is print one out for yourself and laminate it.
Use the laminated one as your master copy to use and make more for you to handout to your investigators.
If you don’t have a laminator, you can either snag this one off Amazon, which has great reviews, or head down to your local copy shop.
6. Backup Study & Personal Journals
If you serve an English speaking mission, you’re going to study, and by study, I mean a lot!
Foreign language speaking missions have less study time as part of their morning routine because they have to practice learning the language.
You’re going to fill study and personal journals up with lesson plans, personal revelation, and thoughts.
Study Journals
“Preach My Gospel frequently asks that you use a study journal to help you understand, clarify, and remember what you are learning.” Preach My Gospel
You’re going to do personal study for an hour every single day. You’ll use Preach My Gospel as part of that and it often recommends that you record your thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a study journal.
Deseret Book has some great study journals, like this one.
Because you only get one full-time proselyting mission, you’ll want to write down everything that you experience.
You most likely won’t remember everything that happened to you in the future. Later on, you’ll appreciate that you kept a record and enjoy seeing the progress that you made spiritually.
Again, Deseret Book has some nice personal journals, like this one.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. At no cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Halloween is coming soon, so it’s time to start thinking about costume ideas. Halloween seems to be an excuse for women to show a lot of skin.
For women who dress modestly, it can be a challenge to find or make a modest Halloween costume. We’ve searched everywhere to find these super cute and modest Halloween costumes for women!
Stranger Things was easily one of the most talked about tv shows last fall, and for a good reason.
It was intriguing! Dressing up as Eleven, the girl, has become a popular costume for girls and women of all ages.
To do this costume, you need a light pink dress with short sleeves, a white collared shirt, striped high top socks, a black bomber jacket, and white tennis shoes.
This strawberry outfit is so cute and classy. It’s made with a red dress, that has white “seeds” added to it, a green stem for your hair, and black flats.
The white seeds are cutout from white felt and are glued or sewn onto the dress.
She made the green stem by hot gluing green foam sheets to a headband. This is a great DIY costume!
The Alice in Wonderland costume consists of a light blue short sleeve dress, a white apron, white tights, black shoes, and a bow for your hair. Keiko Lynn even dressed up her little dog as the rabbit!
Dressing up as a beanie baby isn’t as easy as a lot of the other costumes on this list. You have to find a store that has an elephant onesie, then make the TY tag yourself.
Print it out as big as you can, then use a ribbon to attach it to the onesie. You could also do this with other TY beanie babies!
Abby from The Classy Giraffe dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood for her costume. She is wearing a navy and white gingham dress and a red, hooded cape.
She also has black tights, black flats, and a cute little basket.
We love how this costume is pretty simple, but it looks like you put a lot into it.
Kate from Love Simple Kate dressed up as a deer and she looks darling! She is wearing a long sleeve brown dress, a fur vest, black tights, and brown booties.
She did her makeup to look like a deer and we can’t get enough of how cute it is.
She is wearing a black and white striped long sleeve shirt, a white neck scarf, black pants, black suspenders, red flats, white gloves, and a black French hat.
Marin is wearing a burnt orange turtle neck sweater, a brown pleated skirt, black glasses, red heels, and red socks. She is also carrying a book around.
Allison from Dream A Little Bigger is adorable dressed up as Minnie Mouse.
To be Minnie Mouse, she wore a red dress with white polka dots, Minnie Mouse ears that have a big red bow on them, a black long sleeve shirt, white gloves, black tights, and yellow flats.
If you’re like me, then you love eating tacos! So why not dress up as one? Pretty In The Pines dressed up as a taco in a DIY costume that she made.
She’s wearing a brown dress with different pieces of felt to look like cheese, lettuce, sour cream, and tomatoes, a taco shell vest made from tan felt, and brown ankle boots.
To complete the look, her and her friend are also holding a lime balloon and an avocado balloon. This is a really fun idea for modest food costumes!
I think this sushi costume is one of the best modest food costumes! It’s so fun and trendy.
Simply Teee is wearing a white dress for the rice, an orange pillow with white felt that’s attached to her back using thick black satin ribbon, and a headband.
To complete the look, she’s carrying some chopsticks.
If you love to get a fun drink at Starbucks, then this is the costume for you!
Sparkle Shiny Love made this costume herself. She’s wearing a white long sleeve shirt, black leggings, tan boots, and a DIY Starbucks Frappuccino cup with whipped cream and a headband with a green straw on top.
The Frappuccino is made from stiff white material, burlap, felt, and green paint.
Frosted animal cookies are such a nostalgic treat from my childhood, so this is one of my favorite modest food costumes!
Studio DIY made this handmade costume. She’s wearing a pink short sleeve dress with rainbow pom poms glued to it, a pink animal ears headband with pom poms on it, and pink heels.
She’s also holding a cardboard cutout of an animal with pom poms on it.
Pretty In The Pines dressed up as this fun Chipotle costume.
She has on a headband with green tissue paper for the lettuce. She also is wearing a grey long sleeve shirt and black pants.
She created a Chipotle burrito that has cardboard on the outside with a Chipotle logo on it. It has tissue paper to look like lettuce and tomatoes, and crinkle cut paper shred filler to look like cheese.
She’s wearing a tan dress for the hamburger bun and tan shoes. She used a hot glue gun to put different colors of felt on the dress to look like sesame seeds, tomato, lettuce, cheese, and the patty.
This modest deer costume from The Sugared Lemon is just so cute!
She’s wearing deer ears and antlers, a tan cable-knit turtleneck sweater, a cream tulle skirt, and tan heels. She also did really cute deer makeup. This is my favorite of these modest animal costumes.
Rach Martino dressed up as a fox. This is a really fun modest animal costume!
She’s wearing a fox ears headband, a rust orange cable knit sweater, and an orange skirt. She also did fox makeup on her face. I love the little nose she put on with the makeup!
Unicorns are so fun and trendy. This unicorn costume is made up of a unicorn horn, purple hair, a mint v-neck shirt, a blush pink tulle skirt, and purple flat shoes.
This modest cat costume is fun for women of all ages and even teens.
This costume is a black cat ears headband, a black long sleeve shirt, a black tulle skirt, black leggings, and black cat makeup. You could also add a tail and a collar to the costume.
Elastigirl aka Mrs. Incredible is from the Disney movie The Incredibles.
She’s wearing a black and red outfit with The Incredibles logo on it, a black eye mask, and black boots. Viva Veltoro made this DIY Incredibles costume.
Skeletons with a little baby skeleton in the belly are the best! I have always wanted to do this, but I’ve never been pregnant in October.
This costume is a shirt and pants that are black with skeleton bones printed on them. It’s my favorite of the maternity Halloween costumes!
The top has a baby skeleton in the belly. She also has on white sandals and a red flower crown. Also, her little dog in the background is wearing a matching skeleton costume.
This is cute no matter what stage of pregnancy you’re in.
She is wearing a white fur coat with a black dress, and red gloves. You definitely need your hair to be half black and half white if you’re going to be Cruella.
This modest Ariel costume is really chic and so fun. It’s perfect for teachers or wearing to the office.
She has on a purple sweater, a green pleated midi skirt, a red headband, a shell necklace, and red heels. She’s also holding a red crab plush to represent Sebastian.
If you like to have a little fun with some wordplay and you’re in the fashion industry, then you’re going to love this list of my favorite fashion puns.
1. Never tell a woman she can’t purse-shoe her dreams!
2. A Scottish cat, aka a plaid o’puss.
3. Which popstar makes rapid onstage wardrobe changes? Tailor Swift.
4. My first job was peddling designer clothing. I was a Dior to Dior salesman.
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. At no cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Don’t know what to wear on Valentine’s Day this year? Here are the best modest Valentine’s Day outfits.
You can replicate these outfits for date night with your Valentine, for work, for school, or to celebrate Galentine’s day with your friends.
These Valentine’s outfits are chic, classy, cute, casual, dressy, trendy, and stylish. You’ll find lots of red and pink and hearts since those are quintessential to this holiday.
There are modest Valentine’s Day outfits with sweaters, skirts, jeans, midi dresses, and more.
Modest Valentine’s Day Outfit #1 – Cold Weather Valentine’s Outfit
This is a fun, casual outfit with a red sweatshirt that has a white heart on it with loose, distressed jeans that are rolled up, and taupe colored pointy heels.
Outfit ideas like this one are so festive! I love tops with hearts on them.
Kendall Kremer from Styled Snapshots has on a cute Valentine’s outfit with a red sweater that has ruffles on the sleeves, black jeans, and leopard print flats.
This is a great outfit if you have a cold winter where you live. This is a great outfit if you aren’t sure what to wear for Valentine’s Day dinner.
Sophie Seddon has fun street style with her Valentine’s Day outfit. She is wearing a red turtleneck sweater, red plaid pants, a black belt, and black boots.
Merrick White is wearing a more dressy outfit that is super feminine. She has on a red skirt, a blush button-down shirt, tan heels, and a chunky necklace.
If you’re wondering what color to wear on Valentine’s Day, then why not wear red and blush!
