Our Story

Southern Salt began with a simple belief: the things that matter are worth holding onto.

For years, I’ve believed there is something powerful about writing things down. Journaling is something I’ve started and stopped many times throughout my life, but one thing has always been true: when I write something down, I’m more likely to remember it.

Part of that is obvious—I can return to the page and read it again. But there’s something about the act of putting a thought into words and writing it down that seems to give it a more permanent place in my memory. Even if I never go back and read it, somehow, a little more of it stays with me.

My grandpa understood the value of writing things down in a way I didn’t fully appreciate until much later. He kept journals throughout his life, recording his experiences, thoughts, and pieces of his story along the way.

Before I was born, my grandpa suffered a stroke that left him unable to live life and communicate the way he once had. So although I was blessed to have him in my life for a short time, I never really had the opportunity to know the person he had been before his stroke. His journals have given me a little bit of that opportunity.

Through his own words, I’ve been able to know parts of my grandpa that I couldn't know while we were both here together, to learn more about the things he experienced, what he thought about, what mattered to him, and who he was. Those pages have also become one of my dad’s greatest treasures, giving him a way to return to his father’s words long after he could no longer hear them from him.

I think that’s part of why writing things down means so much to me now. We rarely know, in the moment, which of our words or experiences someone will someday wish we had saved.

Sometimes we write to remember for ourselves. And sometimes, without even realizing it, we’re leaving something behind for someone else.

A Change of Direction

In 2024, I began feeling a persistent pull to do something different with the business I had spent years building.

I had worked as a graphic designer for more than a decade, creating brands, marketing materials, publications, and countless other things for my clients. I loved what I did—and I still do. Today, that work continues through Southern Salt Studio, where I provide graphic design, print, and marketing services for businesses and organizations.

But I increasingly felt a desire to create something of my own, too, something that brought together my love of thoughtful design with something even more personal to me: My faith.

During that time, a General Conference message given by Elder José A. Teixeira about Christ’s invitation to be the salt of the earth stayed with me. Salt seems like such a small thing, but it has the ability to preserve, strengthen, and add something valuable wherever it is found.

That idea became the inspiration behind a new name: Southern Salt.

At first, I thought I was simply giving my existing business a name that better reflected who I was and what I valued. It turns out God had a little more in mind.

Then Came a Prompting

Not long after, I felt a strong impression to create a journal specifically for missionaries.

I had plenty of reasons to talk myself out of it. Designing a product from scratch was very different from designing for a client, and I had no grand plan to start a product company. I didn’t serve a mission, so I didn’t feel qualified to design a journal specifically for missionaries.

But the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. And this time, it was personal.

My oldest son, Morgan, had been serving as a missionary in the Bolivia Santa Cruz Mission for about four months when he came home for a season of healing. He had already experienced enough of missionary life to know just how much happens in a few short months, and how quickly the little details can begin to fade.

While he was home, we started talking about the journal I felt prompted to create. But instead of designing what I thought a missionary might want, I had someone sitting next to me who could tell me what he actually wished he’d had.

We talked about the things he wanted to remember. The people he had met. The culture he was learning to love. The prayers that had been answered. The lessons he was learning. The funny stories and everyday moments. The things he wished he'd written down but hadn't, and the things he knew he would want to remember years from now. And we started building the journal together.

We also enlisted the help of missionaries serving right here in our own area in the South Carolina Columbia Mission. They shared ideas about what they would want to record and what would make a journal genuinely useful during missionary life. Their perspectives added things Morgan hadn't thought of, including, thanks to the Sister missionaries, a place to save favorite recipes. (Turns out that was not particularly high on Morgan's list.)

Little by little, it became something much more intentional than a traditional blank journal. Every section began to have a reason for being there.

We created spaces for the people missionaries meet and the places they serve. For goals and gratitude. For answered prayers and spiritual impressions. For culture, favorite foods and recipes, meaningful experiences, and ordinary days. We even added a My Friends section after realizing that when missionaries are transferred out of an area, they lose access to the contact information they had for the people they came to know and love there. We wanted them to have a place of their own to record those names, connections, and memories before moving on. And, of course, we left plenty of room for missionaries to simply write their story in their own words.

That became Called and Chosen. And because so much of a mission is shaped by the people who walk beside you, Companions in Christ followed—a place for companions to leave behind their own memories, encouragement, testimonies, and yes, probably a few inside jokes no one else will ever understand.

Then Morgan returned to Bolivia. Today, he has been back serving there for about a year, and the journals we created together went with him. He uses them. He loves them. And there's something incredibly meaningful to me about knowing that an idea we shaped together during an unexpected pause in his mission is now traveling through Bolivia with him as he finishes the story that helped inspire it in the first place.

These journals weren't simply designed for missionaries. They were shaped with missionaries, from real missionary experiences, and created to hold the things they told us they actually want to remember.

Together, Called and Chosen and Companions in Christ became the beginning of the Salt and Light Collection. And they really are just the beginning.

From the start, the vision for Salt and Light has extended beyond missionary journals. Other journals are already taking shape: tools designed for scripture study, recording revelation and spiritual impressions, and helping families preserve their own experiences while a missionary they love is serving away from home.

We made the intentional decision to begin with just two journals rather than trying to launch everything at once. But there is already more waiting in the wings, and I can’t wait to share it.

But the Journals Were Only the Beginning

What began as an idea within my design business eventually grew into something of its own: Southern Salt Print Shop, a place where I could use the same experience I’d spent years bringing to my clients to create meaningful products rooted in faith and purpose.

Somewhere along the way, I realized the idea behind Southern Salt was much bigger than missionary journals. Because missionaries aren’t the only ones who need reminders to notice what God is doing in their lives. We all do.

Faith is built in ordinary places. It happens in scriptures opened at the kitchen table. In prayers offered when we don’t know what else to do. In quiet impressions we almost forget to write down. In people we serve and people who serve us. In gratitude, answered prayers, difficult seasons, small acts of courage, and everyday choices to follow Christ.

We believe faith isn’t meant to be reserved for Sundays. It’s meant to shape the way we live every day. And that became the bigger vision for Southern Salt.

Created with Purpose

Southern Salt creates thoughtfully designed tools and meaningful products that encourage intentional faith, strengthen connection, and help us recognize God’s hand in everyday life.

Everything we create begins with a simple question: Will this help someone live with greater faith, purpose, or intention? If the answer is yes, it belongs here. Because I don't want Southern Salt to simply make beautiful things.

I want to make useful, meaningful things, the kind that become part of someone's real life. Things that are written in, carried around, given to someone we love, tucked onto a bookshelf, returned to years later, and maybe even passed down.

Things that help us remember what matters.

From My Family to Yours

Southern Salt may have begun at my desk, but its story has always been intertwined with the people I love, from my grandpa and the journals he left behind, to my dad who treasures them, to Morgan and the missionary journals we shaped together.

And now, somehow, it gets to become part of your story too. That’s something I don’t take lightly.

Whether you’re sending a missionary into the world, recording the ways God is working in your own life, strengthening your family, studying His word, or simply trying to live a little more intentionally, I hope something you find here helps you do exactly that.

I hope it helps you notice. I hope it helps you remember. And most of all, I hope it helps you build a life centered on what matters most.

May your life be rooted in faith and purpose.

Megan
Founder, Southern Salt Print Shop