For churches

Missionaries and letters

Each missionary family or ministry gets its own kiosk. On the Missionaries page, press Add a missionary. The editor has seven steps. Only the name is required, and you can come back to any step later. Editors, admins and owners can all do this.

The eye next to a field says whether it can appear on the public site. Tap it to switch between Public and Private (staff only). Phone, mailing address, monthly support, dates of support and visits, and staff notes start as Private.

1. Who & where #

• Type: a missionary family, or a ministry (an organization).
• Status: on the field, on furlough, preparing to go, retired, or former (no longer supported).
• Name shown on the kiosk is the only required field. For someone new, it's filled in from the first and last names until you type your own.
• Find the place: type a city and press Search, then pick the right result. This sets the map pin, the local time zone, the place name, the country and a guess at the region.
• Region of the world groups kiosks in the gallery and is always public.
• Sending & how to give, How to reach them and Support & visits (staff only by default).
• Short name for the web address is made from the name: letters, numbers and dashes only.

Press Save and continue. A new missionary is saved as a Draft.

2. Family & dates #

Add each family member with their relation and birthday, and dates such as a wedding anniversary or arrival on the field. The year is optional. Switches decide whether each name, birthday and date shows on the kiosk and whether it's announced in the gallery that week. See birthdays and anniversaries.

3. Photos & videos #

Photos for the slideshow, and YouTube or Vimeo links or MP4 videos. See Photos and video.

4. Newsletters #

Each kiosk shows the family's prayer letters. You upload a letter, the AI reads it and fills in the boxes, and you check them before the letter goes on the kiosk.

1. Open the missionary and go to step 4, Newsletters.
2. Drag in a PDF, or photos of each page. Choose all the pages at once; they're put in order by file name. A PDF can be up to 25 MB.
3. Press Read it with AI. It usually takes under a minute; keep the page open.
4. Read what the AI filled in and fix anything that's off.
5. Make sure Show this newsletter on the kiosk is on, then press Save newsletter.

What the AI reads and writes #

• It reads the PDF, or up to the first eight page photos.
• It fills in the title, the date of the letter, the period it covers, a short summary, highlights, prayer requests, praises, a Bible verse and the full text.
• It's told to use only what is printed in the letter, and to keep phone numbers and home or mailing addresses out of everything it writes.
• If the letter has details that are empty in step 1, such as an email address or a mission board, it offers to add them. Press Add for the ones that look right.

Checking before it appears #

• A new letter isn't on the kiosk until you save it with Show this newsletter on the kiosk turned on. Until then the list shows Not on the kiosk yet.
• If you run Read it with AI again on a letter that is already on the kiosk, the new words replace the old ones straight away. To check them first, turn the switch off and save before you run it.
• The Newsletters (summaries) eye controls whether letters appear at all; Newsletter page scans controls whether visitors can see the pages themselves.
• The spoken Latest letter narration isn't changed by a new letter. Edit that script in step 5, or run Design this kiosk with AI again.

The AI needs an AI service: Missionary Lane credits on a hosted plan, or your own key. Reading a new letter uses about 5 credits.

5. Kiosk design #

This is how the booth looks in the gallery. The preview updates as you work.

• Design this kiosk with AI picks colours and a pattern that fit the country, and writes the welcome words and the three narration scripts from the profile and the latest newsletter. The design is saved straight away; running it again replaces the colours and words.
• Colours & pattern: main colour, second colour, accent, text and background, a background pattern, and the booth's roof shape (flat top, rounded arch, pointed roof or wavy top).
• Decorations: a two-letter country flag code (like br for Brazil) with a Show flag switch, a landscape and sky behind the booth, up to six small props, and two to four bunting colours.
• Welcome words: a greeting in the local language, a headline, a sub-heading and a quote from their letters.

Press Save kiosk design when you're done.

Narration and voices #

• An admin chooses the church voice in Settings → Human voice narration: ElevenLabs (recommended), OpenAI, an OpenAI-compatible service, Google Cloud Text-to-Speech, Azure AI Speech or Amazon Polly. On a hosted plan using credits, no key is needed.
• In step 5, each script has Preview voice and Record human voice. The label under it shows Human voice recorded, Built-in voice (not recorded yet), or Words changed — save, then record again.
• Voice for this kiosk takes a voice ID from your church's voice service, so this family has its own narrator. Leave it empty to use the church voice.
• Recordings are only made again when their words change. Public and Limited kiosks without a recording are recorded automatically, usually within the hour, and Record new kiosks only in Settings does it straight away.
• Until a recording exists, visitors hear their own device's built-in voice.
• Recording a new kiosk's narration uses about 45 credits, once; re-recording the letter narration about 7.

6. News & facts #

The kiosk shows a short briefing about the place: quick facts, the U.S. travel advisory and recent news to pray about. It updates by itself, for under half a credit a day. Press Refresh now to update it straight away. The place must be set in step 1 first.

7. Privacy & publish #

• Position in the gallery: lower numbers appear first. Most kiosks can stay at 100.
• What the public sees lists every eye in one place. Make all private and Reset to defaults change them all at once.
• When you mark someone Former while they're Public, you're asked whether to hide them too.
• Delete, at the bottom, removes the kiosk with all its newsletters, photos, videos, family and dates for good. You type “delete” to confirm. To take a kiosk off the gallery but keep it, choose Hidden.

Restricted missionaries #

Some missionaries serve where being named online could put them or the people they serve at risk. Their kiosk can be Limited: it shows a made-up name and the region only. If even that is too much, choose Hidden.

1. Open the missionary and go to step 7, Privacy & publish.
2. Choose Limited.
3. Type the Name shown to the public, for example “The B Family” or “Friends in Central Asia”. It's required, and it must not be a real name.
4. Press Save.

What a Limited kiosk leaves out #

• Real names, family names, the place name and country, the mission board and sending church.
• Photos, videos and the portrait; newsletter page scans and the full text of letters.
• Contact details, support amounts, and dates of support and visits.
• Family members, birthdays and important dates, and announcements linked to them.
• The news and facts briefing, and any field view.
• Their tagline, ministry focus, About them, status note and where to send support.
• An exact map pin: the pin is only roughly placed (turn off the Map pin eye to remove it), and the World Tour shows the region only.
• Their real web address: the kiosk gets a random one such as /m/r-7f3a2c91de.

How the AI treats a Limited kiosk #

The AI is given only the public name and the region, never their real name, photos, letters or place, and its instructions forbid names, towns, organizations and local-language greetings. When you change a kiosk to Limited, its earlier AI words, recordings and letter summaries are taken down straight away, and the kiosk shows a plain design until it's rewritten, usually within the hour. Letters keep their summaries hidden until you type them again on the letter's page (the AI doesn't read a Limited missionary's letters unless an admin turns on Let the AI read restricted missionaries’ letters in Settings; then you can press Read it with AI).

Changing many at once #

• On the Missionaries page, tick several people, choose Set to … and press Apply. You're told if any of them have no public name yet for Limited.
• Export CSV downloads every record and field. It includes staff-only and financial details, so keep the file private.
• Upload CSV takes a file downloaded here, shows every change before it's applied, and updates existing missionaries only. Family and dates can't be changed by upload.
• Changing names, the place or other profile text by upload queues the kiosk for new narration. The AI rewrites the scripts within the hour, then the voice is recorded again.