LDS Missionary Packing List

This is a complete packing list for a full-time mission: documents, clothing, shoes, toiletries, exercise gear, electronics and luggage, plus the things that are routinely bought and never used.

Before any of it, one instruction matters more than the rest of this page.

How much to buy, and how good it needs to be

The two mistakes are equal and opposite. Buying cheaply means replacing things in the field, in a currency you do not have and a shop you cannot find. Buying too much means paying to fly clothing across the world so it can sit in a wardrobe for two years.

Some rules of thumb that survive most missions:

• Buy quality where it touches your feet or carries your weight — shoes, and your luggage. Everything else can be mid-range.
• Buy for one week of wear plus a laundry cycle, not for two years. Missionaries do laundry weekly; you are packing a week, repeated.
• Assume things wear out. You will replace shirts and shoes during the mission, and budgeting for that is more realistic than trying to pack ahead of it.
• Leave room. You will accumulate things — books, gifts, a coat you did not expect to need — and you have to fly home with all of it.

Documents

Pack these first and keep them in your carry-on, not in a checked bag. They are the only items on this list that cannot be replaced from a shop.

Clothing for elders

The core of an elder’s wardrobe is white collared button-up shirts, dress slacks, ties and a suit, in conservative colours. Fabric choice matters more than most people expect: shirts that do not need ironing save an hour a week for two years.

Some missions permit alternatives in teaching areas — a blue collared button-up shirt, with or without a tie, or a white shirt without a tie — where the Area Presidency and mission president have approved it. Whether that applies to you is stated in your What to Bring section, so do not buy blue shirts speculatively.

Bags are expected to look professional. The current guidance for elders treats backpacks as luggage rather than day bags, so plan on a shoulder bag or messenger bag for daily use and check your mission’s instructions.

Clothing for sisters

Sisters may wear dress slacks for daily proselyting work, and skirts or dresses are expected for the temple, Sunday worship services, leadership and zone conferences, baptismal services and MTC devotionals. Skirts and dresses fully cover the knee standing and sitting, with slits beginning below the knee.

That combination is the key to packing efficiently: build around a small number of skirts and pairs of slacks in colours that all work with the same tops, so a week of outfits comes from a dozen items rather than thirty.

On jewellery and accessories, the current guidance is simple, professional and conservative, with one pair of earrings. Wide-brimmed hats — a brim of at least three inches — and simple sunglasses are acceptable for sun protection.

Shoes

Shoes are the highest-consequence purchase on this list. Missionaries walk or cycle for hours a day, most days, for the length of the mission, and the failure mode is not discomfort — it is injury that takes weeks out of the work.

• Take two pairs of proselyting shoes. Alternating days lets each pair dry out fully, which roughly doubles how long both last.
• Buy them months early and wear them in properly. Weeks of ordinary use, not a weekend of walking around the house.
• Prioritise resoling over looks. A shoe that can be repaired locally is worth more than one that cannot.
• Pack good insoles and a spare set. They are cheap, they are light, and they extend the life of everything above them.
• Sisters: comfortable flat-soled shoes and boots, or low heels, are what the guidance prefers, and what almost everyone ends up wearing regardless.

Add trainers for exercise and something simple for preparation day. That is usually four pairs in total, which is as many as most bags can justify.

Outerwear and weather

This is the category where reading your What to Bring instructions saves the most money, because the right answer ranges from a heavy winter coat to nothing at all.

A few things hold generally. Coats and cold-weather items are expected to be simple and conservative, without words, pictures or large logos. A compact umbrella earns its space nearly everywhere. And in wet climates, a waterproof outer layer that packs small beats a heavy coat that does not.

If your mission is somewhere genuinely cold or genuinely tropical, buy one good item for the climate and plan to buy the rest locally. Missionaries already serving there know what works, and the shops there sell it.

Toiletries and personal care

Pack enough to get you through the first few weeks, not the first two years. Almost everything here is available wherever you are going, and it is heavy.

Medication and health items

Talk to your doctor before you go about how to maintain any ongoing prescription for the length of your mission — supply rules, availability and equivalent medications all differ by country, and this is worth sorting properly rather than assuming.

• Keep medication in your carry-on, in its original labelled packaging.
• Carry a copy of each prescription, with generic drug names.
• A spare pair of glasses, or a full run of contact lenses and solution, if you wear them. Prescription lenses are slow to replace abroad.
• Anything you rely on for a known condition — an inhaler, an EpiPen — packed in duplicate and mentioned to your mission leaders on arrival.

Exercise clothing

Missionaries exercise daily, so this is not an optional category. Two or three sets is usually right — enough to rotate, not enough to fill a bag.

Choose things that dry quickly, since exercise clothing frequently gets washed by hand and hung up. Keep it modest and unbranded in line with the general guidance on casual clothing, and pack proper trainers rather than treating your preparation-day shoes as double duty.

Electronics

What missionaries are issued and what they may bring differs by mission and changes over time, so this is another category where your own instructions decide. Assume nothing about phones, tablets or laptops without checking.

What is nearly always sensible:

• Plug adapters for your destination, and one spare.
• A small multi-port USB charger, so one socket serves everything.
• Charging cables, and a spare of each — they fail first.
• An alarm clock that is not your phone, if your mission’s rules make phone-as-alarm awkward.
• A cheap watch. Simple, professional, and genuinely used all day.

Check voltage as well as plug shape if you are bringing anything with a motor or a heating element. Hair dryers and shavers are the usual casualties.

Luggage

Your luggage allowance comes from your travel instructions and your airline, and both should be checked directly — allowances differ by route and change without much notice.

What is worth deciding well before travel day:

• Buy good suitcases. They are handled roughly, moved between areas repeatedly, and wheels are the part that fails.
• Weigh everything at home on real scales. Repacking at a check-in desk is a bad start to a mission.
• Label inside and out. Put your name and mission address on a card inside each bag as well as on the tag.
• Split across bags. A few days of clothing in each, so a delayed suitcase is an inconvenience rather than a crisis.
• Use packing cubes. They cost little and they make the eight transfers you will do over the mission considerably faster.

For how this splits between what you take into the MTC and what stays packed, see the MTC packing list.

Extras that earn their space

Small things that repeatedly come up as worth the weight, none of which appear on official lists:

• A sewing kit with a few buttons. Shirt buttons fail constantly.
• A shoe care kit — polish, brush, waterproofing spray. Directly extends the life of the most expensive thing you packed.
• A door-hanging organiser or a few over-the-door hooks. Missionary flats are short on storage.
• A small photo of your family, printed. It survives phone changes, drops, and being lent to someone.
• A notebook you like writing in. You will write more than you expect.
• Earplugs. Companions snore; so do neighbourhoods.
• A refillable water bottle that seals properly in a bag.

What people overpack

Almost every returned missionary names the same items, and almost every new one packs them anyway.

• Two years of toiletries. Heavy, bulky, and available at your destination.
• Too many ties, too many tops. You wear the same favourites and carry the rest home.
• A large library. Study material is provided or available digitally; books are the heaviest thing per unit of use.
• Gifts and souvenirs to hand out. They mostly stay in the suitcase.
• Formal shoes you have not worn. One unworn pair is optimism; two is a problem.
• Temple clothing. Temple clothing is provided to missionaries at the temple at no cost. Do not buy it to pack.

What not to buy until your mission tells you

Hold off on all of this until you have read your What to Bring section, even if it means shopping in a hurry later:

• Coats and anything climate-specific.
• Blue shirts, or any variation on standard proselyting clothing.
• Bikes, helmets and cycling gear.
• Electronics your mission may issue or prohibit.
• Anything sized to a luggage allowance you have not confirmed.

The generic version of this list is useful for planning and budgeting. It is not a shopping list until your mission has narrowed it.

Final luggage check

If you are still working out the sequence of everything else before departure, the mission preparation checklist covers the months around this one, and what to bring to the MTC answers the arrival-day version of the question.