New 4x6 Cards

Dearest Readers!

Recently, I've been working on designs for 4x6 advertisements for A Marvelous Work and I wanted to share a few of them with you here. These are my top 3 favorites. If you have a thing for photography, check out how these photographers took advantage of color.

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Greens, blues, browns and oranges abound in this photo. They all stick out in their own way and yet they are harmonious. They're great photos to be sure and they were taken in the photographers' back yard.

There's truth to the song "There is Beauty All Around." On my mission, I would often just take pictures of things that struck me as beautiful. Like this one:

This photo has so much meaning to me. I took it because at that moment, I was thinking that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to live in the Philippines and I needed to treasure it. I remember the day, I remember the people, and I remember the place. Oh, and I remember getting rained on shortly thereafter. Looking at it is nostalgic for me.

Have your missionary look around them and take pictures of the beautiful things they want to remember. They will never have an experience quite like it again. Serving a couples mission later in life is great, but it just won't be the same as this one. Encourage them to take pictures, and then send them on to us and we'll save you the work of printing, formatting, and compiling them yourself. AMarvelousWork.com.

Sincerely,

Chris

p.s. If you are interested in learning more about taking good photos, check out national geographic's site. They have great photographers and offer some tips of their own. http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-tips/

A message in a bottle

This shipping idea comes from a friend of mine who served her mission in New York City a few years back.

She always loved getting mail while on her mission and loved keeping in touch with other sisters from her areas. After a while just sending letters got to be old hat so the girls started coming up with better ways to send mail. This was the birth of the message in a bottle.

The girls found that USPS would send empty and dry water bottles through the postal system.  This works best for domestic mail within the United States. The first step is to find a dry water bottle that can be sealed tight. Fill this water bottle full of anything small enough to fit through the opening, if you want to mail something that can’t fit cut a hole in the bottle but be sure to tap it back up. Fun things that might fit are letters, candy, small toys, and socks.  Once the bottle is full place a new label over the bottle’s original label and take to the nearest post office.   

The shipping cost will be more than a paper envelope but your missionary is sure to love this creative idea!

Why We Do What We Do!

Among book lovers, there is a fairly common sentiment, and it goes something like this: "No one is ever going to say, 'Look! There's the kindle Grandpa used during the war!'"

Ebooks are great and convenient; when it comes to preservation, nothing beats digital. Now, more than ever before, our communication is recorded and stored. Many people communicate digitally far more than in any other medium, especially when you have a missionary in the field. All of this correspondence is saved, and to make things better, our communication is often enhanced by photos, attachments, etc.

The problem is, all of this preserved correspondence is inaccessible to anyone other than the person with the login name and password. Inboxes are messy and even the most organized among us forgets.

A Marvelous Work was started to help you take the step from preservation to heirloom. We help you compile correspondence, photos, announcements, letters from the mission home, and all of the other moments into a priceless volume for the coming generations. We believe that your experience is a blessing not only to the missionary, but also to the family. These faith promoting stories and experiences need to be shared to strengthen in the years to come.

We started A Marvelous Work because we believe that these 2 years are among the most important for now and forever. Thank you for your decision to serve, we are excited to be a part of it.

Kelcie Beck

Co-founder and Owner

A Marvelous Work

Cast not away therefore your confidence

Several years ago, a friend sent me this quote and it has stuck with me ever since:

"Beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now."

The quote comes from a devotional address by Elder Holland entitled "Cast Now Away Therefore Your Confidence". For some reason, it never occurred to me to read the full address until recently. I highly recommend it for anyone, especially those preparing to take a leap of faith.

Elder Holland discusses the opposition faced after revelation is received and specifically addresses the teaching process that missionaries go through with their new contacts. He likens it to the experience of Paul pleading with the new members of the church in his letter to the Hebrews.:

"Paul says to those who thought a new testimony, a personal conversion, a spiritual baptismal experience would put them beyond trouble—to these he says, 'Call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions.' Then this tremendous counsel, which is at the heart of my counsel to you: 'Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.'

I suppose every returned missionary and probably every convert reading these words knows exactly what I am talking about. Appointments for discussions canceled, the Book of Mormon in a plastic bag hanging from a front doorknob, baptismal dates not met. And so it goes through the teaching period, through the commitments and the baptism, through the first weeks and months in the Church, and more or less forever—at least, the adversary would pursue it forever if he thought he could see any weakening of your resolve, any chink in your armor."

For those of you supporting missionaries, I commend you. What a sacrifice for a family to make. In our culture it seems to be assumed that families will do this without a second thought, but it seems that the Lord is aware of our individual sacrifices and the struggle that this can be for families. Elder Holland offers these words that can bring comfort in any stage of life:

"With any major decision there are cautions and considerations to make, but once there has been illumination, beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now. Don’t give up when the pressure mounts. Certainly don’t give in to that being who is bent on the destruction of your happiness. Face your doubts. Master your fears. 'Cast not away therefore your confidence.' Stay the course and see the beauty of life unfold for you."

~Kelcie

Steal the Hearts of the Children Package.

Here is a fun package idea from one of our return missionary friends!

Consider sending your missionary a bunch of little trinkets to give to kids. In 3rd world countries, kids can be the best way to get to the hearts of their parents. Some people soften their hearts when they see missionaries being kind to their children, especially when missionaries give their kids things that are either 1) not available for purchase, or 2) out of reach financially for their family.

These trinkets include: those cheap green ctr rings, scripture marking crayons, pocket sized children hymn books, etc. They can be handmade crafts: like scripture markers or a collection of small pictures of favorite Book of Mormon characters. If you’re looking for more inspiration, think about what you bought for your kids to uplift and inspire them when they were young.

Once you’ve decided what to buy or make, consider buying or making ten to fifteen of them. Trust me, your son or daughter will find a good home for them. You’ll be indirectly improving the lives of children around the world, and helping your missionary in his or her all important work of changing lives.

Send these packages with your missionary’s favorite candy every 3-6 months and you’ll make a difference in the lives of your missionary and those he or she serves.

Our Friend Chris

I asked our friend Chris if he could tell us all a little more about how he got into the business side of A Marvelous Work. Here it is in his own words!

"For me, the idea behind A Marvelous Work comes from a desire to remember my stories. I was an inexperienced, 6' white male from Vegas assigned to serve in the tropical Philippines Bacolod Mission riddled with rumors of eating dog and hacking through forests to get to appointments. I figured there was a good chance I'd get a few exciting tales to tell my grandchildren. Upon completing my mission, I found that I not only had a few crazy tales to tell, but also countless testimony building experiences that strengthened my spiritual foundation and set me on the path of lifetime discipleship.

"I'd like to say that I wrote faithfully in my journal throughout my mission. I can't though. After about a year, entries diminished to about once a month. I want my children and grandchildren to experience my experiences through my eyes, and now the only continuous record I have is recorded in the emails I sent to my family. This spurred me on to create a mini-version of A Marvelous Work for an assignment and later, talk to Kelcie about making it a product that people could use to preserve their own memories for future generations."

Our Marvelous Workers

An amazing service that A Marvelous Work is starting to offer is the creation of handmade mission books. These books are made up of letters, photos and emails sent home by missionaries. This effort came from the passion of two hard working friends of mine. Here is a little more about what motivates them,

Kelcie and Chris believe the family to be the most important social unit of our time. We encourage the strengthening of families and strive to provide resources that will help individuals pass on their memories and examples to their posterity. A Marvelous Work was inspired by a responsibility and a fear.

A Responsibility

We believe that we have a responsibility to teach our children to serve the Lord. Elder Holland said in a talk entitled We Are All Enlisted, "What greater gift could grandparents give their posterity than to say by deed as well as word, 'In this family we serve missions!'" This same same counsel can and does apply to parents. Parents have a greater responsibility to teach their children b y example what to do. Children that grow up hearing their parents' mission stories tend to want to serve missions themselves.

A Fear

We fear losing the precious memories of our loved ones. Memories are preserved in the things we write to each other.

On pdays, missionaries are careful to write as much in an email as they can. They yearn to report a week’s worth of time in about half an hour. Consequently, they often misspell or skip over some important details in their haste. They get their point across in the end and record three important things.

1) Personality. A missionary’s personality bleeds through their letters. The way in which they word their experiences gives them away.

2) Personal Growth. Even though grammar skills may begin to falter, there is no mistaking the spiritual and mature growth that shines through their experiences. You can see a missionary change by comparing their first month’s letters to their last.

3) Memories. These are precious. Our experiences are pearls to our posterity. They yearn to hear and retell our stories and cherish the family heirlooms, like journals, that we leave them.

Many proclaim that the art of letter writing is dead. We beg to differ. The art of letter writing is more prominent than ever before. It has simply evolved. Not too long ago, we painstaking wrote letters by hand. Now we type them into emails and messages. We write far more words per day and respond faster than ever. We want these memories to be preserved in books, for we fear losing them forever to age and faulty internet sites.