The holiday season is quickly approaching and with it comes the special services, plays, cantatas, parties, and a host of other personal plans. This year, before the calendar gets too overwhelming and you are lost in the details of planning, delegating, and executing events, here are 5 ways to encourage your missionaries as the Holiday seasons arrive.

  1. Add Your Missionaries to your Christmas Card List

Sending a card in the mail is a cost-effective way to bring just a little joy to a missionary on the field. Missionaries love the feeling that comes with knowing they have been thought of, prayed for, and even included in your circle of friends and family at Christmas time

  1. Send a Christmas Package

Nothing says “we are thinking of you” more than a personalized gift box for the whole missionary family during the holiday season. Try including special seasonal treats or thoughtful gifts you know the missionary might like and don’t forget to include things for their kids to open! Go ahead and wrap each item in the box in Christmas paper no matter how small it is to give a stronger dose of Christmas cheer. Many countries don’t have the ingredients to put together a Thanksgiving / Christmas dinner, so adding a few boxes or cans of holiday favorites like mushroom gravy, onion straws, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and peppermint candy could create both a wonderful experience for the family and an outreach opportunity for your missionaries during the Christmas season. Include a personal note and prayer from the Pastor, staff, and selected ministries to brighten the holiday time for your missionary.

  1. Give a Special Financial Gift

Sometimes the most impactful way to be a blessing to your missionaries is to send a one-time offering to help with their cost of holiday travel, gifts for children, and end of the year refreshment. Your church’s individual classes could also get creative by putting together a special fundraiser and adopt a different missionary family as an annual holiday event, then send the selected missionary family the proceeds from it with a personalized message from the class. If the gift is for personal use, be sure to specify the purpose of the financial gift so they can freely use it for their family’s needs and holiday time.

  1. Grant a Christmas Wish

Grant a Christmas Wish for a missionary personally or optionally, for their ministry. Try getting in contact with a missionary family your church has sent out or one your ministry knows very well and see if there is something that would normally not be an option due to a lack of funds for their family or their ministry.

  1. Encourage their Ministry

Most churches are blessed with a surplus of resources. You may know of a few overdue and overflowing closets in your church building filled with the ghosts of Christmas’ past, Church-wide campaigns, Christmas musicals, VBS materials, Sunday School curriculum, and Summer Outreach programs. You could make this a Christmas miracle by both freeing up resource space and blessing your missionaries in offering to help them with cost free ministry resources they can use on the mission field. In many fields, quality and doctrinally sound materials may be extremely hard to come by and providing a missionary with these resources could save them countless hours trying to develop content for the ministries of their church. If your church has put together additional resources such as counseling help, training modules, seminary courses, or even seasonal events, you might consider sharing these resources as well.

Most missionaries long to be home for the holidays and in many countries won’t have the opportunity to celebrate what we often take for granted. Each year your ministry could be a tremendous blessing to your missionaries as the holiday season arrives and your generosity can make an impact in their ministry and mission field for generations to come.