Turning their emails into a book: the ways to do it.

If your missionary wrote each week, an 18- or 24-month mission comes to about 80 to 100 emails, many with photos.

Keep them in one place first: the emails in your inbox, and the copies in their @missionary.org account, which closes about 60 days after they're released. Read gathering it all: letters, photos and posts.

Open each email, oldest first, and print it, or save it as a PDF to print later. Photos that came as attachments may need to be printed on their own and set beside their letter.

Put the pages in a binder with sheet protectors, or take them to a copy shop to be bound.

What it takes: time, paper and ink, and a binding. You can start today, and you decide every page.

Print the emails, trim them, and lay them out with photos and the paper keepsakes: the call letter, letters on paper, a map of their mission.

What it takes: the most time of the three ways, and supplies. It holds the things a printer can't, and it's one of a kind, so there is one copy.

A service lays out the emails and photos for you and prints a bound book. Before you choose one, ask:

• Can the emails you already have come in all at once, or only one at a time?
• Do the photos print with the email they came in?
• Do emojis and other languages print as they were written?
• Can you see every page before you order?
• What happens if the mission is longer than one book holds?
• What does each extra copy cost?

Ours is the Hardcover Memory Book. It prints your missionary's weekly emails and photos in the order they happened, and the emails, photos and posts can come in all at once (how the imports work). Their emojis print in color and their languages in their own script. You can see a sample of your book anytime and preview every page before you order, and a mission longer than about 700 pages prints in more than one volume. You can start after the mission ends, too. The sizes, finishes and prices are on our printed books page.

To start today and spend little, print them yourself.

To keep the paper things with the letters, make a scrapbook, or add a few pages of them to a binder.

To have a bound book, or copies for the family, without laying out a hundred letters yourself, use a service.

The ways mix, too: a printed book for the shelf, and a scrapbook of the paper keepsakes beside it.

The ways in this guide and the questions to ask are ours. The mission's length comes from the Church's page below, and the email account's closing date from save your missionary's email account, both checked in November 2026.

• Planning When to Serve a Mission  (opens the Church's page in a new tab)