How to Make a PDF Prayer Letter

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Long gone are the days of printing, folding, and mailing prayer letters to every person and church interested in your ministry. Thanks to the age of technology, prayer letters can now be sent electronically through email. At the onset of this new option in sending prayer letters, missionaries were limited to text only letters with an attached picture or two. Things have since changed with the use of PDF (Portable Document Format) files. You can attach your prayer letter as a PDF in an email to a church, they get it almost instantly, and when they print it, it will look just like the one you would send in the mail. You may have received a PDF prayer letter from another missionary and wondered, “how do they do that?” After reading this article, you will be able to, too.

Before moving on, I want to give a small disclaimer. Technology is great, but it does have its limits. For supporting churches and individuals, you may want to consider still sending a hard copy of your prayer letter to them through the postal system. Some emails never make it to the recipient due to spam filters, accidental deletion of emails, or they simply get lost in cyberspace. Just be aware that “free” does have its downfalls.

If you are like most missionaries, you probably type up your prayer letter in Microsoft Word or some other desktop publishing program. Check first to see if the program you are using has the option to export your prayer letter as a PDF. Instead of the filename ending in “.doc” or some other ending, the file will have a “.pdf” ending to the filename. If your program does not have the option to save or export the file as a PDF, follow the steps below.

1.	Go to www.cutepdf.com and click on “CutePDF Writer (Freeware)” under the “PDF Creation” heading in the middle of the screen.

On the next screen you will see off to the left a link titled “Free Converter.” You first need to click on this link to download the free GPL Ghostscript file that is required for CutePDF to work. Installing the Ghostscript enables the Word document or whatever file you want to be converted into the PDF format.

3.	After you install the Ghostscript, click on the link right above the previous one, “Free Download,” and install the CutePDF Writer. NOTE: no actual program will seem to be installed on your computer. The CutePDF Writer is not found under “Programs” but under “Printers.” You’ll see why in a moment.

4.	From within the program you write your prayer letters, click on the “File” menu at the top and click on “Print.” (see figure –> )

You should then have a window popup in which you can select which printer to which you would like to print the document. Select the one titled “CutePDF Writer.” Clicking on the “Properties” button will bring up a new window. Click on the “Paper/Quality” tab at the top. On this window you have the option of having your PDF be in color or black & white. At the bottom of the same window, you should see a button called “Advanced.” In the new window, you can change the “Print Quality” under the “Graphic” heading to meet your needs. If you have pictures in your prayer letter, the file size may be too large for attaching in an email. The lower the “dpi,” the smaller the file size will be (and the quality of the photos will be less, too).

If you are emailing the letter to someone to print off copies for mailing, you will want to have the 600 dpi setting. (see figure –> )

6.	Once you select “OK” and get back to the window that gives the options for which printer you want, select “OK.” Another window will pop up asking you where you want to save the PDF file and what filename you want to give it.

7.	Once you select OK, you will have your very own PDF prayer letter. Now you can attach this file to emails.

On a side note, when you send out mass emails, be sure that the email addresses are BCC: (Blind Carbon Copy) instead of simply TO: or CC: If you don’t BCC, you will be giving personal email addresses to other people. When you BCC, the recipients will not see the list of email addresses to which you sent it.

Hope this helps. If you have any further questions, feel free to contact us. Any suggestions are also welcome.