Pinterest: A Tool for Missionaries
I wrote this in 2017 on an old blog. I remembered it enough, and refered to it enough that I am updating it and putting it here.
Considering I remember, as a single missionary, dial-up internet on the field, Pinterest was a missionary tool and lifeline for many things in the last ten years (I discovered it around 2012).
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When I was introduced to Pinterest, I thought “What a lovely waste of time!” And it was mostly to dream about my future wedding and home. But pinterest has morphed into a very useful tool for me as a mother, a missionary, a teacher, an artist, an NGO leader, and all the other hats I might wear. I now have over 50 “boards” where I can “pin” interesting pictures of ideas or information that I may use later. Most notably, I have used Pinterest to:
Help me decorate and creatively (aka cheaply) design my apartment into a cozy home that we enjoy and are proud of, in a location that doesn't have Walmart or Target.
Give me fresh ideas on how to celebrate holidays from all three of our cultures- when we can’t just buy it already made.
Get decoration and craft ideas for Living Stones celebrations, and for our church in Cajueiro Claro, where we have to design our Sunday school curriculum from scratch.
Find Teaching ideas for students aged 3-18 (again, no teacher resource store here!)
Plan three weddings, all at minimal cost, and all very successful!
Become better at branding and more creative and professional in my resource development for Living Stones
Be inspired to exercise, even while pregnant.
Store that pancake recipe that for some reason I can never remember on my own and never seem to copy down anywhere else.
Actually cook something for dinner when I don't feel like it because the pictures look so yummy.
Laugh (instead of cry) at my awesome collection of pregnancy memes.
I could go on, as I use Pinterest as a kind of search engine: when my daughter had a fever, I found a helpful chart to remember when to get worried about the fever and when to calm down.
Can Pinterest become an addiction and vice? Certainly! But it can be a valuable tool, especially for the missionary abroad who doesn’t have access or money to buy ready-made almost anything. Pinterest has added a level of creativity and beauty to my life that honestly, I would have just been too tired to do otherwise.
Mostly, Pinterest has freed up my brainstorming time and let me use it for creating time. And while I have had many “Pinterest fails,” I have had many more successes (or at least functionality) in my projects, many of which I wouldn’t have started without the the “Pinterest spark” to get me going.
To any current or future missionary (mom), I would definitely suggest this app. You can find me on Pinterest @rwinzeler, or under Rachel Winzeler Ferguson.
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I can add more things:
I use Pinterest to try to re-figure out my style each season, as I didn’t have to deal with seasons in Brazil, and now that we are back in America, I do.
I use Pinterest for any new activity: now we go camping and stuff, so I made a board to help me to do that.
I made a Pinterest board to store all of my child sponsorship ideas, and share it with children’s ministry leaders
I store ideas for home-made Christmas presents on Pinterest to encourage me to involve the girls as much as possible in making things rather than buying them
I help friends create a Pinterest board when they are stuck in a project and need more ideas—for decorating, holidays, events, birthdays…sharing a whole board is so much easier than sending each thing individually.
Pinterest has helped me, since returning back to America (and not knowing how to adult in America), feel like I can get a basic idea of what I am supposed to do before I jump in. And that is really helpful in transitions.