George Q. Cannon’s My First Mission recounts his mission to Hawaii. Think “The Other SIde of Heaven” meets the 1850s, back when Hawaii was often known as the Sandwich Islands. It was intended to be a faith-promoting work targeted at future missionaries, and could be used for the same purpose today. It’s short (easily readable in a Sunday afternoon), the style is relatively light, and it’s quirky and fun. It was digitized by MTP a while back, and we recently (finally) got it posted on Project Gutenberg.
Cannon, born in 1827, was a nephew of John Taylor who lived with him as a teenager and helped publish the “Times and Seasons.” He left on his four-year Hawaiian mission in 1849, was involved in hundreds of baptisms, and translated the Book of Mormon in to Hawaiian. After returning home, he became an apostle at age 33 and eventually served in four First Presidencies. (Wikipedia has a good article on him here.)
The book talks about his whole mission experience, from food and culture to miracles to issues regarding Church and mission organization. George Q.’s decision to learn the language and work among the Hawaiian natives rather than the less-receptive white population is a major theme. He was working in places where no missionary had previously gone and doing so all but independently , especially after his Mission President decided to leave for the South Pacific; seeing how he operated cut off from higher authority is rather interesting.
Possibly my personal favorite excerpt from the book illustrates Cannon’s general style of writing and its faith-promoting quirkiness:
Brother Willam Farrer, one of the Elders who had been laboring on Kauai, made up his mind that he would not return home, but stop and devote himself to acquiring the language. His partner, however, would not stop. He was bent upon returning. Being an intimate acquaintance, I talked freely with him upon the subject. He would go home, he said, and gladly take a mission to Europe, if he should be appointed; but to labor there he could not with any pleasure. Besides, he was an old bachelor, he added, and he ought to be married, and so he would return home and take him a wife. He did return home; but, poor fellow, he never obtained a wife. Some time after his return, he, with some other brethren, left the city to go to Parley’s Park for lumber. On their return they were ambushed by Indians, and he was killed.
I often asked myself, after hearing of his death, would it not have been better for him if he had remained? For if he had, I believe he would have still been living.
So, to avoid getting ambushed and murdered by Indians, go on a mission, and stay on it. You heard it here first.