Missionary-designed mission essentials

A "Mission Ready" water bottle might have quenched former Elder Jake Parkinson's thirst for clean, drinkable water. While serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Taiwan from 1999 to 2001, he often hesitated to take a drink from a public fountain because he didn't trust the water supply. He also spent a lot of his money replacing cartridges on the filtration system in the apartments where he lived.

"Every apartment had a pretty elaborate filtration system that required changing out the filters on a regular rotation schedule. You never knew if they'd been changed or how recently so I was always replacing them," said Parkinson. "It got pretty expensive."
A personal use "Mission Ready" water bottle with relatively inexpensive filters would have been welcome, he said, "Especially when you're out riding a bicycle."

A couple of "Mission Ready" micro-fiber quick-dry towels would also have made life much easier.

"Taiwan is on the same latitude as Hawaii. You would hang out laundry and three days later, it was still wet," said Parkinson. "It would have been really nice to have a dry towel to count on. Even when you were just coming in all wet and just need to towel off."

Former Elder Matt Hash just returned from Guatemala where he and his companions "dripped all day long" in the areas near the beach.

"Oh, wow. I would for sure invest in one of those (quick-dry towels)," Hash said.
He also believes he would have tucked a Mission Ready water bottle into his luggage.
"We couldn't drink the water in Guatemala at all. We bought these little bags of purified water from people on the street," Hash said. "They were kind of strange. It takes some getting used to. If the water bottle thing really works, that would be really cool."

Those are two of the reasons the owner of Aquamira Technologies, Dennis Brown, and his staff of returned missionaries decided to design and dedicate a line of products specifically for missionaries. Those products include the personal water bottle and filters, the quick-dry towels, a micro-fiber full-size blanket and a crank-up "no-need-for-batteries" flashlight that can clip onto a bike as a headlight or serve as a signal light in a stressful circumstance.

The water bottle is a 28 oz. hard plastic bottle that will fit into a backpack like a sports bottle. It comes with a replaceable filter that filters up to 50 gallons of water. Roughly three filters will get a missionary through his or her mission with clean, good-tasting water.

"Obviously, if a missionary is drinking mud, it will wear out faster," said John Gustave, the sales and marketing manager for the Logan, Utah-based company. "But generally, you fill it up with water from the tap and you're good to go. You can even scoop water out of a pond if necessary. It's really surprising that something like this hasn't been developed before."

The filter screens out bacteria but not viruses. For viruses, Aquamira sells water drops that take care of the common viruses and make the water taste better.

"The real key thing is that every production lot we make is tested," said Gustave, "and the water from our bottles is 99.9 percent pure."

The "Mission Ready" bottle has been on the market for seven years and is a popular item at the Missionary Mall, said manager Tyler Hansen.

"They have sold really well. We haven't had any come back," said Hansen. "All of us who work here have served missions so we know how badly something like this is needed."

The small towels eliminate having to wait in humid climates for towels to dry — only to find mold growing on them because they are still damp.

The micro-fiber blanket is warm, light and folds into a compact size that travels easily.
"These are unique because there really aren't any other products like these," said Gustave.

Gustave said his company welcomes input and ideas from missionaries for additional products. Mission Ready products are available through Deseret Book, at the Missionary Malls in Layton, Utah, and Orem, Utah, or through the Aquamira Technologies Web site: www.aquamira.com.

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E-mail: haddoc@desnews.com