A Strip That Simply Doesn't Work

Maybe there was a time when I first drew today's strip where a 20-year-old missionary might not understand the internet slang his 14-year-old sister was typing, but that is certainly not the case today. All today's strip does is make poor Elder Van Dyke appear to be a 40-year-old in a young person's body.

Letter Home

Is it possible for a truck to "Dear John" a missionary? I'm asking because poor Elder Austin is companions with the "mission curse."

Mail Drought

Today's strip marks the beginning of a multi-week storyline about missionary post. Something today's missionaries don't deal with. These strips are incredibly dated.

Granted, I never experienced the thrill of turning on my smart phone and finding a bunch of unread emails from home, but I doubt the experience compares to the thrill of opening the mailbox at the end of a long day tracting. There was something magical about the infinite possibilities contained inside an envelope.

Mission Language

Look how quaint: the family is reading a letter from their missionary. Either that or they printed out his email. No matter how you look at it, it is kind of embarrassing.

Emails Home

What a good idea!

Letters Home

Look it's an antiquated comic of the ancient missionary practice of writing letters home.

Email Home

I can see how this might be a problem for the folks back home.

Email from a Return Missionary

From time to time, I'd receive a letter from a previous mission companion who had since returned home. Inevitably the letter would include all the fun stuff that the onetime missionary was now doing with his newfound freedom. But deep down, I knew that if their post-mission life as great as they claimed then they wouldn't be writing me. As a missionary, I knew that they were secretly wishing they were in my shoes. Of course, I could have just been delusional.

Your April 2018 General Conference Activity Packet

As a missionary, I wrote one or two of those perfect letters home.

It's time to start planning for General Conference. To assist you, I prepared a supersized General Conference Packet. In the past, every packet I've ever put together has included 12 pages, this one has 16! Click here to download it. And, with the help of Gaby Herrera (Spanish), Sara Mayer (French), and Dani Queiroz de Souza (Portuguese); it is also available for non-English speakers as well.

But don't stop there. I've got lots of other aids to help entertain your little ones during the up to ten hours of General Conference weekend.

First up, consider subscribing to the Mormon Cartoonist Activity Page Newsletter.  The Mormon Cartoonist Newsletter provides subscribers with a free activity page every Friday morning delivered to your inbox to download for sacrament meetings, Family Home Evenings, primary lessons, or General Conference. Did I mention that it's free? Sign up for it here.

Next, you might want to download my collection of iOS apps. If you own an Apple product, your family will love the LDS Coloring Book, LDS Laughs, LDS Scripture Heroes, and the Book of Mormon Adventure App.

Additionally, you'll love my activity books the Puzzle Book for LDS Kids and Now That I am Baptized available to purchase online or at most LDS bookstores.

Finally, I want to brag about Mission Daze, my latest book published late last year. Subscribers of the Deseret News will recognize many of the strips featured in the book that chronicles the mission of Alex Van Dyke from his mission call to his homecoming. But Mission Daze is more than just a collection of the 100 plus strips featured in the Deseret News, instead the book collects nearly 500 strips that tell more of Van Dyke's story. If you have served a mission, have a missionary within your family, know a missionary, or have heard of a missionary; this book is for you! Trust me, you'll love it.

More Antiquated Practices of 20th Century Missionary

Yep, I'm so old that we used to pull this trick when I was a missionary.

I justify putting strips like this in my missionary strip compilation Mission Daze by imagining that the made up country of Laputania--despite every appearance of a successfully westernized Eastern European nation--has very spotty internet necessitating written letters to home from time to time.

P-Day Letter Home

For many missionaries, P-Day is entirely too short to write a letter home. This often results in messages like this one.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

Some missionaries are always looking for a new way to get out of writing home.

Napkin Letter

I knew a number of missionaries who employed this trick on my mission. It was certainly a clever way of getting out of a good, lengthy letter.

Your April 2016 General Conference Activity Packet

Would you look at that, it's a missionary strip that isn't twenty years behind in technology! (Although, those Elders would probably be emailing off their iPads and not desktops--dang!)

Conference is now less than two weeks away which means it is probably time to roll out my General Conference activity packet. (Download your printable packet here. Or download the packet in Spanish, translated by the talented Gaby Herrera, here.)

In addition to the packet, let me also encourage you to take advantage of the Mormon Cartoonist Activity Page Newsletter. The newsletter is delivered to your inbox every Friday and includes a printable activity page for use during sacrament meeting, Family Home Evening, primary, or General Conference. It's completely free!

There are also a number of iOS apps to assist parents of youngsters to make conference more bearable. Please consider downloading LDS Coloring Book, LDS Laughs, LDS Scripture Heroes, and the Book of Mormon Adventure App on your iProducts.

Or if apps aren't your thing, you can always buy the Puzzle Book for LDS Kids or Now That I am Baptized at most LDS bookstores.

The Perfect Letter Home

Just replace any reference to letter with email and this one still works.

Missionary Request

I keep unearthing strips that are completely out of date. What kind of missionary writes letters home these days? Let's all pretend, then, that Elder Van Dyke's mission is a magical place where internet is spotty enough that it becomes necessary to write home most weeks.

Letters Home

It's surprising to me the number of missionary strips I have laying around that no longer work for today's missionaries. Take today's strip which deals with some missionaries' aversion to writing home. Now days, a missionary like this would have to find a way to avoid long emails not decent letters.

Writing Home

From time to time, I receive emails from family of missionaries asking me if they can include my missionary strips in the emails they send to their sons or daughters engaged in the work. I'm happy to oblige since I can't think of a better use of the strips.

That being said, I doubt anyone is going to want to send today's strip to their missionary--you wouldn't want to give them any ideas.

(This week's strip featured at deseretnews.com is the very last. Elder Van Dyke presents his homecoming talk.)

Missionaries Dirty Little Secret

Here's something missionaries probably don't want you to know. You know when your missionary is so busy that he just doesn't have any time to write you a letter of any substance, when she is so engaged in the work that her correspondence with you suffers?

This is, most likely, what's really going on...