I have previously posted a plaque that I made for my in-laws showing the locations where my wife's family members had served as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I had mentioned that it was the second such plaque. This is the first one I created back in 2003.
This project started when I went to a Vietnamese restaurant with my dad after I received my mission call to Bangkok, Thailand. They had a large wooden cut out of Vietnam on the wall that intrigued me. I decided to go home and make a smaller cut out of Thailand. When my mom saw it, she asked me to make her one and also one for my dad and brother's missions. That gave me the idea to make a single wall hanging to highlight the family's service.
When I originally made the plaque, my younger brother still had another 4 years before he'd receive a mission call at age 19. I made a wooden cut out of a question mark to signify that we were still awaiting another mission call in the family (I'll have to post the picture later). When he received his call 4 years later to Chicago, Illinois I was relieved to see that it fit PERFECTLY in the gap I left. I did not adjust the placement of any of the other shapes (crazy huh?) I was terrified he'd get called somewhere with a long, horizontal shape like Montana or Russia. It worked out great.
On this original plaque, I wood burned a miniature map of the world on the top. I woodburned the names of the missions on the actual mission shapes on this version as well rather than under the flag. On the two later versions, I had at least one shape which was a group of islands (Hawaii & Philippines) so I wrote the names on the side rather than on the actual shape.
