Harvest: Memoir of a Mormon Missionary [Paperback]

Here are some initial impressions after reading Harvest: Memoir of a Mormon Missionary:

1. Author "Jacob Young" is very candid in writing about his thoughts, feelings, and actions during his two year LDS mission to Russia. His training at the MTC and his study of the "White Bible" (the Missionary Handbook) did not prepare him for his experiences. His question to the reader is, how many other missionaries go through similar angst? Ten percent? Eighty percent? Zero? He doesn't know. What he went through is really not discussed prior to leaving. Thus, as he wrote in a dedication on my copy of the book, "I tried to write honestly about what a mission was like in the hope that it would resonate with those who've served, and illuminate for those who haven't."

2. Young (the author's name, as well as names in the text, have been changed in an effort to preserve privacy), writes very well. His descriptions of places and people, the recreated conversations in this memoir, and the organization of his tale all lead me to wonder whether he finished his degree in non-fiction writing. Agree with his experiences or not, Young has the talent for making his position, and memories, clear and readable. According to dates in his book (unless these have been changed as well), Young probably left for his mission in 1999. Given that this memoir was published in 2010, I'm just going to let my imagination run and assume he has a MFA in creative writing. If not, he should get one.

3. I have many LDS friends, and I recognize the uniqueness of the RM. Sometimes I hear the comments about the hardest 18 months, or the most satisfying 24 months, or the self-discovery of oneself. Since I'm not LDS, there's much I haven't been privy to. In this book, I appreciate that Young does not reveal spiritual and procedural secrets (as in Secret Ceremonies), nor does he trash his faith. What he does is question, experiment, languish, pray, explain, confess, weep, and walk, and knock, and talk. I think it would be useful for all missionaries to wear a pedometer! I now have a better sense of why the pest control and home security companies recruit RM to sell their wares. These men and women are used to cold-contacts and rejection. Do they all return home with worn soles and calluses on their knuckles?

4. Young freely admits his doubts, failures, and imperfections. He prays for change. But the bar is set high. Is it impossibly high? Does failure mean a failure in faith? A failure of dedication? Or does failure to be perfect simply mean that one is human? If so, I shudder to think that being human is a failure. The letter to his parents (p. 221-223)... will it be read by future missionaries at the MTC?

5. I recognize that all missions, and Mission Presidents, are different. I confess my uneasiness with the power of 50,000 missionaries going into the world and doing "good works" being squandered in order to "...convince people that they should, nay, MUST at their eternal peril, join my religion and abandon their own" (p. 187). If that energy and commitment were put into education for girls, or providing clean drinking water, or providing for the homeless... Young details this commitment to change people's beliefs over washing the feet of the poor. WWJD?

Highlights and illuminations:

"I was Elder Young of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I was about to fly out of the country and into Russia, a foreign land, the lair of communists and bears, the great unknown, and I was flying into this great unknown to offer to the people who used these strange letters what might be their only chance at eternal life with God, their only chance at eternal happiness. It was hard to comprehend that I was a part of something so important, so grand, but I was. I knew it. The nametag proved it" (p. 12).

"I had been taught to testify with confidence that: 'I KNOW that this Church is the only true and living church on the face of the earth today and that only by being baptized in it and living according to its teachings can we return to our Heavenly Father'" (p. 29).

[from "My Missionary Commission," by Elder Bruce R. McConkie] "I am called of God. My authority is above that of kings of the earth. By revelation I have been selected as a personal representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is my master and He has chosen me to represent Him - to stand in His place, to say and do what He Himself would say and do if He personally were ministering to the very people to whom He has sent me. ... How great is my calling!" (p. 98).

[from President Kimball's "Lock Your Heart" speech to male missionaries in interacting with women] ""Just keep your hearts locked. Your whole thought should be missionary work. How can I make it more plain and more important than that?" (p. 164).

"I often met Jehovah's Witnesses on the street, my brothers and sisters in proselytizing. They were polite, neatly groomed, and cleanly dressed, but I disliked discussing religion with them. Earlier in my mission, I had avoided them because of how futile it was to talk to them: they were just too cocksure that their religion was right, too narrow-minded, too focused on their own dogma to really open their ears and hearts and listen to our message. Now I tried to avoid them for a different reason: it was like looking in a mirror and being reminded of how I appeared to others" (p. 229).

"There were other things besides my distaste for the soul-sucking day-to-day core of proselytizing that I never really could get over, like the feeling of guilt that came from living so relatively affluently in the midst of such extreme poverty" (p. 275).

"As soon as I admitted that I didn't understand everything, and that I didn't NEED to understand everything, and that I was willing to accept it all in faith, something, everything, broke inside me, barriers, dams, resistance, restraints, pride, principles, and in flooded hot joy. I was in ecstasy" (p. 270).

And finally, there is the haunting phrase he wanted to tell his family, but didn't: "...[W]hen confronted with that implicit question in the eyes of my family at the airport, 'Was it the best two years of your life?' the best that I could answer was 'Wouldn't it be pretty to think so'" (p. 278).

What I am curious about now, ten years later, is what Young thinks, what he really believes, and what he does for his family, his community, and the world.

I think I'd like to have him for a next-door neighbor.

This is an amazing memoir, the most realistic, true-to-life account of a modern-day Mormon mission I've ever read. It feels extremely honest and authentic, with a non-manipulative agenda to depict how it really was for this particular missionary. I didn't have the same extremes of highs and lows on my own mission (Melbourne, Australia, 1986-1988), but my overall experience was very similar to this account, although quite different in some ways too.

This evidently self-published book needed a round of expert editing that could have fixed many small-to-medium problems. Much of the writing is very high quality, but occasionally the author overreaches. I wonder if the author tried to sell this manuscript to a national publisher before self-publishing. I think it would have needed a fair few tweaks to be accessible to non-Mormon readers, so I assume his main intended audience is Mormons. Unfortunately, a book this frank will be essentially ignored in the boneheadedly positive, sanitized Mormon culture, except for perhaps a few dozen readers who seek Mormon realism. I would be quite surprised if this book sold more than 100 copies in print, although it might sell a few hundred in Kindle.

[SPOILER ALERT: The remainder of this review mentions key plot points.] I wonder what I would have thought if I had read this account before my own mission. Would I have been better prepared to understand how difficult a mission is? I didn't lose faith in the church and gospel on my mission or cross the line into masturbation, pornography, and making out with a girl like this missionary did (my worst sins were seeing movies and reading novels), but I did lose faith in the missionary program itself, experience much depression, and waste a TON of time, and my mission was practically ruined by my unflagging obsession and worries about my girlfriend back home, who was not at all a strong Mormon. Compared with my experience, one thing I really admire about this missionary is that he managed to keep working steadily even through his darkest times; during my mission, I had periods of weeks or even months when not only did I drop out of missionary work, but I didn't even attend church regularly. I didn't do much gospel or scripture study on my mission, although I think I managed to pray every day. So the author's sins of commission were much worse than mine, but my sins of omission were much worse.

This memoir really makes you reevaluate your own mission experience; overall I have to say that I really disliked 80% or more of my missionary experience, even though I played a key role in a handful of successful, lasting conversions. It was definitely the hardest thing I've gone through, probably overall emotionally harder than my subsequent cancer, divorce, and bankruptcy combined. I'm a little jealous that the last half of this author's mission was so successful, with numerous baptisms and leadership positions; I was a de-facto district leader a couple of times, but I never made it to senior companion, and finally my mission president took pity on me and let me finish my mission as part of the office staff, doing wimpy clerical work that was usually handled by retirement-aged couple missionaries. I tried my best for my first year of my mission, but then I pretty much gave up, and I'm surprised I lasted the whole two years without ever seriously considering going home, like this elder did.

Overall, this memoir is a compelling reading experience. I was very engaged and concerned about the protagonist, and I even teared up in a couple of parts. I'm sure this vivid, honest book will stay in my imagination always.

How desperate do you have to be to eat a chunk of raw pork you placed behind a couch to rot for several days hoping to contract trichinosis or some other non-fatal but serious disease? Pretty darn desperate, I'd say. And what kind of predicament could induce so much desperation in a healthy, intelligent and strong 19 year-old with a full life ahead of him?

Try taking him away from his quaint but free Idaho lifestyle and placing him in a land as foreign as post-Soviet Russia next to another 19 year-old he'd never before met but was now required to spend every waking second with, and entrust him with a single task for the next two years: to bring the gospel of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to as many lost souls as possible--a task which can be accomplished only if the message-bearer is worthy of it, which is to say, if his mind and body are utterly pure and his intentions true. Now, expose this young man to a more or less constant daily rejection (and not just your tame, apologetic Anglo-Saxon rejection, but the very particular hard-headed, sharp-tongued Slavic variety), take away his contact with everything familiar (family, books, music, language, sport), and push him onto a crowded bus where long, nyloned legs and exposed cleavages press against him while he recites his proselytizing verses in his head (his only line of defense in keeping his mind pure), and see what happens.

What happened to Elder Young, the author's younger self, are confusion, doubt, guilt, and an occasional moment of desperation. All of these excruciating emotions, however, ultimately led to something rather positive--growing up. The Mormon mission experience, as painful, challenging, and controversial as it might be, is one of the few true rites of passage left in our society, and as such it is utterly fascinating.

Harvest: Memoir of a Mormon Missionary is unusual in one respect. It neither vilifies the Mormon Church nor does it really applaud it. What it does instead is to show us with heart-wrenching honesty what it is like to serve a Mormon mission. To see someone so wholesome and intent on doing the right thing try so hard, and yet always fall short of feeling "worthy," is at times viscerally painful. But we keep reading because we want to see this young man find peace, because we know he deserves it. In not taking "sides," Harvest runs the risk of upsetting everybody and pleasing nobody, but this fact is more a reflection of our society's ingrained need for a simplified, black-and-white representation of complex problems than a flaw of this book.

In the words of one of Young's Russian "investigators," Mormonism is a uniquely American religion. There is more to Elder Young's journey than a coming-of-age of an American teenager. Doesn't our entire country put on a neat uniform and travel abroad to convince those less enlightened than ourselves to take up our worldview? Our intentions are at once noble and flawed. We might truly trust that our way of life is superior and that those less fortunate could benefit from accepting it, and because we are Americans and determined to do good, we get off our couch and go on converting. What we fail to take into account in our youthful earnestness, however, are the complex history of the world outside our shores and a universal human aversion to being subjugated and told you got it wrong. Our go-getter attitude and "If it's broke fix it" approach often get lost in translation, and we are perceived as cultural and political imperialists. But all is not lost. By wrestling with our conscience, the way we see young Elder Young do in this book, we can grow and change and come to understand both the world and ourselves more fully.

Harvest: Memoir of a Mormon Missionary is an engaging, fascinating read. It deals with theology, sexuality, duty, obedience, and all the other building blocks of identity. The growing pains of change can be felt on each page, yet there is something redemptive to the experience--the sense that the world and self are not stagnant, and that as humans we are here to learn before we can teach.