How Missionary Legacy works

• •Collects every weekly letter automatically, in order, for the whole mission.
• •Reads each letter and tracks the threads — the people they meet, the places they serve, the miracles, the growth.
• •Composes it into a real biography (not a folder of emails) — the kind of book you'd find on a shelf.
• •Keeps the people, a map of every area, a journey timeline, and all the photos organized alongside it.
• •Lets the whole family read along and contribute, then hands you a finished, printable book at the end.

Every word in the book is your missionary's own, composed from their actual letters and checked line by line against them. We never invent events, feelings, names, or quotes. Place and culture facts are drawn from public sources and clearly labeled as background — never put in their mouth.

Sign up and create an archive — this is your family's private space. One account can hold several archives if you have more than one missionary out (now or later).

Add their name, the mission, and the start/return dates, and upload a photo for the first page of the book. The dates matter: they're how photos and letters get filed into the right time and place automatically. You can edit any of this later.

Invite parents, siblings, and grandparents. Each person gets their own login and a role (see "Family roles" below). Everyone can read along; you choose who can manage settings.

This is the one step that makes everything else automatic — it has its own section next.

Every archive has its own private email address (you'll find it in the app). Anything sent there is read, dated, and filed into the correct mission week. It's unique to your archive and safe to keep private.

Create a one-time rule in your email so every weekly letter is forwarded to your capture address automatically:

1. 1In Gmail: Settings → "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" → "Add a forwarding address" → paste your capture address.
2. 2Confirm it (we'll auto-capture the confirmation, or you can approve it).
3. 3Settings → "Filters" → "Create a new filter" → in "From," put your missionary's email → "Forward it to" your capture address.

From then on, every letter arrives on its own. (Outlook and Apple Mail have the same kind of rule under their settings.)

Prefer to do it by hand? Just forward each weekly email to the capture address when it arrives. We'll nudge you with an opt-in reminder so a week never slips by.

Any photos attached to those emails are pulled out and cataloged automatically, dated, and filed into the right area. (You can also bulk-import a whole album — see Photos.)

Each week, after the new letter comes in, the biographer may surface a gentle follow-up — "Who was Brother Tony?" or "What was that baptism day like?" — to fill in the parts a quick letter skips.

Those questions never send on their own. They wait on the Prompts page for you to approve, edit, or skip. Nothing reaches your missionary without your say-so — you're always in control of what's asked and when.

Family members can write their own letters to the missionary right from the app, and those are saved into the story alongside the missionary's letters — so the book holds both sides.

The dashboard and timeline show the mission filling in week by week — letters, photos, milestones, and the themes that keep recurring.

• •An opening with the themes that defined the mission — found across all the letters, not picked from a list.
• •A Part for the country and people, the call, each area served, the people they taught, the tender mercies, and coming home.
• •Each Part opens with a scripture plate and is written from the actual letters of that stretch.
• •Their verbatim letters and the photo galleries follow the narrative as the backup record.

Choose how the book reads (the style and voice). Don't like a chapter? Give it plain feedback — "warmer," "let his words carry more," "you missed Elder Tan" — and it rewrites. Every earlier draft is kept, so you can always go back.

Included photos appear as full-page gallery spreads at the end of each area. The Photo Studio is where you choose which photos make the book, set each area's lead photo, write captions, and reorder.

Before any chapter is kept, it's checked against the source letters to strip anything not actually there, and figurative language (an analogy, a bit of hyperbole) is read as intended, never as literal fact. This is the promise that makes the book trustworthy.

When you're ready, order a bound keepsake — and additional copies for grandparents and siblings. (The book is printed by us to keep the quality and binding consistent.)

A directory of everyone in the mission: companions, the people they taught and baptized, the members and families who fed and sustained them, and local leaders. You can have the biographer gather people straight from the letters, then you confirm who's who and add a photo to each. New people it finds are proposed for your review — never silently added — so the directory stays accurate.

Every area served and every person plotted on a map, so you can see the whole mission's geography at a glance and click straight into any place or person.

A keepsake timeline of the entire mission — the arc from the first area to homecoming, transfer by transfer.

1. 1On the Photos page, drag in as many photos as you like — or drop the .zip you downloaded from a shared Google Photos album.
2. 2To get the zip: open the shared album in Google Photos → the ⋯ menu → "Download all." Google hands you a zip; drop it in — no need to unzip first.
3. 3Hit "Add photos" and watch the counter. Everything uploads in the background; keep the tab open until it's done.

• •Each photo is filed by its date into the area being served then.
• •Duplicates are collapsed — re-importing the same album won't create doubles.
• •Originals are kept at full resolution for the printed book; the app shows lighter versions to stay fast.

This is where you curate for the book: star which photos appear, set each area's header photo, add captions, and drag to reorder. Nothing about the book's photos is all-or-nothing — you choose exactly what's in.

Every missionary has a private, passcode-locked journal — separate from everything the family sees. It's for their most personal entries, and it's where letters to and from their mission president are sealed.

The missionary sets their own passcode. From the journal page, an admin can save the missionary's recovery email and email them a one-time link to set it themselves — so it's truly theirs.

On the lock screen (or at /journal-recovery), "forgot passcode" sends a one-time link to their recovery email to set a new one. For security, the passcode itself is never emailed — only a link to choose a new one, and that link expires after an hour.

• •The account owner and admins manage the archive — settings, billing, the book, and inviting family.
• •Members read along and contribute: letters to the missionary, photos, answers, and journal entries.
• •You decide each person's role, and you can change it anytime.

• •Your archive is completely sealed off from every other family's — no one outside your family can see it.
• •Nothing is ever auto-deleted. If a subscription lapses, the archive goes read-only and is kept safe; it's never destroyed.
• •It's yours to keep for generations — that's the whole point.

If you joined with a founders code, you have full access free — for good — as a thank-you for helping shape the product with your feedback.

Other families use a simple plan that keeps the archive growing through the mission. The printed keepsake book and optional long-term storage are separate items. You're never charged without a clear heads-up first.

No — they keep writing home as usual. The most they'll ever do is reply to a question email, and only if you've approved sending it.

Forward it whenever you can — it files into the right week by its date. The reminders are there so misses are rare.

No. The book is composed from the real letters and checked against them. Background facts about places are sourced and labeled as context.

See the FAQ or contact us — a real person will help.