To start your own Missionary blog, you will need to go to a website that helps people create blogs and publish them to the Internet. LDS.org suggests the following websites to start your own blog: blogger.com, wordpress.com, and tumblr.com.

“Now in this day of the Internet, there are new and exciting ways you can do missionary work. You can invite friends and neighbors to visit the new mormon.org Web site. If you have blogs and online social networks, you could link your sites to mormon.org. And there you can create your own personal profile. Each profile includes an expression of belief, an experience, and a testimony. Because this is a new feature, most of these profiles are available in English. Profiles in other languages will follow.”

You might want to have a talk with your Missionary on how he or she feels about having an online Blog. If you choose to have a ‘Public’ blog everyone can see it or you could have a ‘Private’ blog where only those you choose to allow can see it.

This is a totally personal choice and I don’t feel that either way is right or wrong and neither should you. I have seen many Blogs that use the Missionary emails as a tool to do further Missionary work.

Don’t share your missionary’s direct address. While a mission office’s address is publicly known, sharing your missionary’s apartment address publicly may not be a good idea. If people on the internet can’t find your missionary’s apartment address, it may help your missionary be more safe.

When referring to people, abbreviate their name. If your missionary talks about an investigator named Jose Alvarez, it may be a good idea to abbreviate his name to “J”. Abbreviating names can help protect the privacy of investigators and members. If an investigator were to read a missionary’s email that revealed their personal struggles, the investigator could choose to be offended.

Don’t post negative messages from your missionary. Anytime your missionary shares a complaint, you might consider not including the complaint in your weekly post. Generally people don’t mind others posting positive things about them. On the other hand, people might get upset if they find out a missionary was writing negative things about them.

Consider leaving out the first name of your missionary. Since the internet is so open with so many directories, search engines, etc. it’s become relatively easy to find personal information of people. Nonetheless, it may be a good idea to exclude the first name of your missionary on your missionary’s blog. Also, excluding a missionary’s full name in the blog URL could be a good idea. For example “ElderSmith.blogspot.com” is less revealing than “ElderTimSmith.blogspot.com”.

Don’t post offensive photos. I think it’s well known that there have been a couple problems over the years with missionaries who have taken photos that lack respect to other religions, etc. Some photos that could be potentially offensive include: photos at religious places, community places and photos of individual investigators/members (posted without their permission).

Don’t post your missionary’s specific plans. It may be wise to leave out your missionary’s weekly plans on the blog. For example, sharing where your missionary is going to visit and when could jeopardize their personal safety.