The weekly call
The weekly call, kept in their own voice.
A recorder joins your family call, keeps the audio, writes it down with names, and finds the stories. Keep one and it prints with a code that plays their voice.
Calls
The weekly call is where they say the things a letter never gets to. Today it ends when the screen goes dark, and nothing keeps it — not the story, not the laugh, not the way they said it.
- Family calls keep the audio, never the video.
- Our recorder is sent into the room within about a minute of someone joining, and leaves on its own when the family hangs up.
- On a recorder-captured call, voices are separated by sound and a name goes on one only with a quote from the call as evidence; anyone unproven is marked Home until you name them. A speakerphone recording is a single microphone, so its speakers are attributed from context against the same roster and left unlabeled where that isn't clear.
- The transcript is visible only to archive managers — never the wider family, never the people following along, never the book. No moment reaches the story until someone presses Keep; the call's privacy-screened summary is the one thing that prints by default, and one tap keeps a call off paper.
- A printed code opens only a kept moment, and never anything sealed. Where the words could be placed in the recording, it cues to the second the story starts and stops where it ends; where they could not, it opens the call from the beginning rather than guess.
How it works
Call on the family room
Your archive gets one permanent call room. Everyone joins from one link, no knocking. Tap who is joining as you open it; those are the names the transcript draws from. Our recorder joins about a minute later.
The call writes itself down
The recorder keeps the audio, not the video. The words are transcribed, voices matched to your family's names, and the biographer proposes a summary and moments, each carrying the exact words behind it, flagged when something sounds private.
You keep what belongs
The transcript stays private to you, and no moment moves until you say so. Keep one and it joins the story and the book. Set one aside and it stays private. Each kept moment prints with a code that plays that story, in their voice. The call's summary rides into the book unless you switch that call to site-only.
On the printed page
What ends up in the book
- A section in each area's chapter headed 'The calls from' that area, each call dated and followed by a short summary of what was said.
- Beside each summary, a small square code for every kept moment, captioned with the moment's title and an invitation to hear them tell it — written in your missionary's own pronoun — plus the minute it begins wherever we could place it in the recording.
- Scan the code and the recording opens where the story starts, plays it, and stops where it ends, with one tap to keep listening into the rest of the call. A story we cannot place in the recording confidently opens the call from the beginning instead of guessing.
- Your edits, not the biographer's draft. The summary and any moment can be rewritten before it prints, and re-runs never overwrite your words unless you ask.
- A call you would rather keep off paper stays site-only with one tap. The archive keeps it either way.
Questions
- Does our missionary have to do anything differently?
- No. They join the same room from the same link, as they always would, and see 'Missionary Legacy' in the participant list. They never log in. Capture starts when the recorder arrives, about a minute after the room opens, so open it a minute early if you want the very first hello kept.
- What if we call on WhatsApp, Messenger, or an ordinary phone?
- Put the call on speakerphone and press Record on the Calls page. The audio uploads as you talk and is kept. It is transcribed, speakers attributed from context against your family's names, and moments proposed the same way. If you talked somewhere we could not hear, you can paste a transcript by hand.
- Who can read the transcript?
- Only the archive managers you name. The full transcript is never shown to the wider family, to followers, or in the book. The biographer flags anything that sounds like someone else's private business before you decide, and leaves it out of the summary it writes. Past that summary — which one tap keeps off paper — only the moments you keep go anywhere.
- Will the printed codes still work years from now?
- The link is a signed key, independent of login or plan, and the archive refuses to delete a call whose moments are printed. Words and the book stay readable free forever. Photos, audio and video stay live through the mission and six months after; the rest may then move to restorable sealed storage, but whatever a printed code points at never seals.
The weekly call, kept in their own voice.
Begin their archiveEverything else it keeps
