We’re Nate and Julie Taylor and want to thank you for visiting MissionaryCountdown.com. We’ve got six awesome kids that are the love of our life! When our oldest son, Jake, left on his mission in December 2013, the family definitely felt his absence. We looked for a number of ways to keep him close. One idea was the “Serving Like Jake” jar—whenever we get to missing or thinking of him, we go and do something for someone else and put the slip of paper in the jar. Then we’ll periodically send him the service that we’ve done here at home, while he’s been out serving the Lord.
The other idea that Julie had was obvious….to put up a countdown poster. However, we wanted to utilize this with a picture of Jake so we could see and be reminded of him as well as keep track of his time out serving. We knew we would miss days or wouldn’t fill it in everyday if we started at 730 days so we made the countdown using calendar days. That way, if days were missed, we would know exactly where to fill in to catch up. Jake’s poster hung in the kitchen where the family gathers and we could have him part of us.
As time has passed, we’ve had a lot of the other young men and women in the ward or friends leave on their missions. We could relate to the intense feelings felt by families when sending off a missionary. So we made a few more posters for our friends and decided to take it a little more commercial. Now we've got two more, Mattie serving in Cleveland Ohio Visitors Center (aka Kirtland) and Ethan serving in the Dominican Republic. We love keeping them close and hope we can help keep yours close to you too!
Nate & Julie Taylor
(801) 830-9135