Mission Stories - Books

Alongside with the arts and music, books also play an important role on a mission - well, at least to a bibliophile like me.

A missionary is told in the call letter to bring the books known as the missionary library, and it contains the following titles:

-The standard works, aka books that are considered Holy Scripture in the Church. This means the Holy Bible, The Book of Mormon (BOM), the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. The usual format of having these books is Bible in one book and the rest in one (called a triple), or all four in one volume (quad). You can also have the Book of Mormon on its own, which is usually the book missionaries give to people (yes it's free, if you want one in whatever langauge, it can be done!) To my mission I brought my Finnish ones (a Book of Mormon, a small Bible and a really old thin copy of the Doctrine and Covenants), my brand-new Swedish set (a Triple and a hugenormous brick of a Bible - this I eventually traded for a slimline :3) and a tiny English quad, bought the day before I entered the MTC when my English family discovered I was going to go on my mission without a set of English scriptures.
(I came back from my mission with the additions of a French Book of Mormon, an old translation of the Swedish Book of Mormon, a Swedish Bible that is over a hundred years old, and some other random copies of the Book of Mormon)

-Preach My Gospel (PMG), the guide to missionary service. It's a ringbound A4 shape volume of everything a missionary needs: the things you will teach, advice on what to do, how to develop as a person etc... You are supposed to study this thing everyday at least for fifteen minutes. I took to it like duck to water, I love this book. My copy of Preach My Gospel is one of the most special pieces of literature for me (I might scan some parts and show off, I love it so much): it's rife with notes and underlines, I even added my own images in it. I had a copy in both English and Swedish, but I essentially only used the English copy. Before I left I also got one in Finnish.

-Jesus the Christ, by James E. Talmage. This is an epic treatment on the story of Christ. It's basically the story from the New Testament (and other scriptures that shed light on it) put together from the scattered pieces of the four gospels. The book is notoriously amazing - and infamously difficult. He uses big words and complex sentence structures - because he's just that darn clever. :P Why missionaries should read this book is the additional insight into the New Testament and the character of Christ (because, as a missionary (or even a person), the closer you are to the Saviour, the better it'll go). Funnily enough, I never managed to get around reading this book on my mission. I read it after my mission, though :P

-Our Search for Happiness by M. Russell Ballard. The author is a living apostle, and the book is meant as an invitation for non-mormons to learn about the church in a non-preachy, clear way. It really is a very delightful read, and really helps missionaries understand what kind of things might be hard for people to understand about the Church.

-Our Heritage. A short history of the main events of the Church from the 1820s onwards. Is good, short. :P


Then there is the rumoured White Handbook, which is more of a pamphlet than a book. But still, important reading for missionaries (though it seems that sister missionaries are better at actually reading it than elders :P)

We also got permission to read children's books in Swedish for language study. So I read Häxan och Lejonet (aka The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - in Swedish there is no wardrobe :P), Nils Holgerssons Underbara Resa, some Moomins, and then my mum got wise to the act and started sending me Finnish children's books in Swedish (like Mauri Kunnas etc) :D

And then I discovered second-hand bookstores. Books can be incredibly cheap in Sweden. It broke my heart to know that any books that I buy would have to first be packed and unpacked to the rhythm of the transfers, dragged across Sweden, and then eventually got on planes to go home. So this curbed my book-shopping somewhat. Though I did befriend Postens blue box and sent a number of packages to myself in Finland. And then got to go home after my mission and open these wonderful surprise boxes of awesomeness! :D

Another wonderful surprise related story is related to another missionary, elder Barlow. He had written a book before his mission, and overall is a very sophisticated, refined young man (we called him bourgeoise :P) He was in my first district, then got transferred. Eventually I met him again and it was an overjoyed reunion (I hadn't even realised that I liked this kid so much). And he asked me at one point (I think on the phone, the night before Zone Conference) if I like to read, and I admitted that I do. And he said he wanted to give me a copy of his book. <3 This was a high compliment, he hadn't brought that many copies with him. So that copy of Pugachev Kiolnaltski is now among my most prized possessions. :)

And yet another book written by someone I learnt to know in Sweden relates to this lovely woman in my last area. We got along marvellously from get-go, she's not a member but we visited her a lot. And she had had a psykosis some years ago and had written a book about it, and she gave me a copy of it. It is very powerful reading, the expression is simple and strong and it gives a really good picture about her schizophrenia.

The story of the hundred-year-old Bible is worth telling too. It was a Sunday, in Gothenburg. We had our Sunday school class, and after it the teacher Kent (who is my all-time favourite Sunday school teacher in Sweden: I would move to Gbg just to be in his class) says that he found the Bible that morning on top of the dumpster outside his house. Upon opening the book he found that someone had got it as a confirmation present on 1909. Inside were dried flowers and pictures, the text is a beautiful old script with funky old spelling (Swedish equivalent of thees and thous and maketh and doeth). At the end of the story he said "does anyone want it" and no one said anything so I made the noise that indicates "duh-yeah!" And I got it. For a long time I had a problem with it though. I thought to myself that it would be wrong to take it out of Sweden. It's part of Swedish history and it should stay. But I got over it and took it with me :P It's not that old that it would be unique and precious.

Something else that also goes under this category of books are the books that we make on our missions. There are of course the planners (which are dealt separately on a different sub-page), and related to those are Area Books. Each area has a book where you keep track of the work you've done and the progress that is made - there is a lot of paperwork on a mission. A more personal record is made in the form of journals and diaries, I stayed true to my stake president's charge to write in my journal every day, and filled 6 A5 size books. A lot of it is no good to read or share, since I used it to not only write down things that I want to remember but also to vent feelings :P But at least it's honest. I didn't make out that my mission was all sunshine and perfect companionships.

And some missionaries also keep buddy books, which is like your portable guestbook. I didn't ever have one, but I did get some loose pages from really special people. Basically after I realised that I suck at writing in buddy books - the book is thrust in your hand at an inconvenient moment when you'd really just want to socialise, not write, and you just can't muster any kind of emotion or written expression of the tender feelings you really do have towards the owner of the book, and so you end up writing some meaningless drivel... - and started writing loose sheets instead that people could stick in their books. So even though I didn't have a book, some people wrote a sheet back to me, so I have some very touching and lovely pages of buddy books, which are far greater treasure for me than a book with 1/3 of the pages filled with things by people who couldn't think of anything to say.

In many ways my mission is quite well documented, which is quite important. Mormons have a very special relationship with recording personal history, we are encouraged to do it, because of the way it blesses not only the generations to come but also the author at the time of writing. The Book of Mormon is essentially a big multi-centurial edited diary. Also, writing a journal is a great way to reflect upon your life, to make meaning out of it, and to train yourself to understand what is going on. For example, if you take the habit of writing down at the end of the day at least one miracle that happened that day, you begin to see just how much God is involved in your life.