The Missionary: A Memoir of Superheroes, Sin & Saving Souls for the Mormon Church

by Greg Hudson

A hilarious, poignant, and big-hearted memoir about the challenges of coming of age—within the strictures of the Mormon church.

Growing up in 1980s Edmonton, Greg Hudson loved pop music, comic books, and hanging out at the mall. But unlike most of his friends, Greg and his family were devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yes, Greg Hudson was a Mormon.

As a boy, Greg wrestles with life’s big questions and Heavenly Father’s plan for him. As a teenager, he finds himself caught between the purity his church expects and the inner conflicts that puberty brings. On the one hand, Greg wants to be good and live his life pure of thought and deed, while on the other, he is consumed by his love of R-rated action films, Marvel and DC characters, Robbie Williams records, and, most troubling of all, thoughts about girls and sex. How is a young Mormon lad to to stay righteous with so many temptations in his path?

When it’s time for his mission—a two-year rite of passage meant to strengthen faith and spread the gospel—Greg hopes the experience will set him on the right path. Because of his diabetes, instead of being sent abroad, as most young Mormons are, he’s assigned to smaller communities across Ontario—Barrie, Sarnia, and Niagara Falls—where his encounters with the people he hopes to save end up transforming him in unexpected ways.

With sharp wit and unflinching honesty, The Missionary chronicles Hudson’s time in the field and the quirky, searching souls he meets along the way. Ultimately, in trying to lead others to salvation, he finds something even more his true self.

Genres: Religion

400 pages, Paperback

Published August 11, 2026

Reviews

[CatReader]

Greg Hudson is a Canadian journalist and author who grew up in a devout Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints family in Edmonton, Alberta. His 2026 memor The Missionary recounts his religious upbringing, his two-year religious mission in Ontario as a 19-year-old in the early 2000s, and his eventual decision in his early twenties to leave the church. I found the book somewhat overlong, particularly in its early chapters, which spend a great deal of time on ordinary childhood anecdotes that were less interesting to me than the aspects specifically shaped by Mormonism. The mission itself is more compelling: Hudson describes the awkwardness, occasional exhilaration, doubt, guilt, and repetitive work of trying to convert strangers while simultaneously attempting to convince himself that he was becoming the righteous man he was supposed to be.

What I found missing was enough retrospective analysis. Hudson is very good at describing what happened and what he believed at the time, but less interested in examining how he now understands those experiences or how they shaped the more than twenty years of adulthood that followed his departure from the church. That made the final section, particularly his discussion of suicidal ideation and the rapid unraveling of his faith, feel more abrupt than I expected from what preceded it. David Archuleta's Devout covers some strikingly similar territory involving missionary service, religious guilt, and eventually leaving the LDS Church, but Archuleta more clearly connects his earlier beliefs, later crisis, and present-day understanding of himself. The Missionary ends almost as soon as Hudson leaves the church, when I most wanted to hear what he made of everything afterward. An interesting memoir, but ultimately a three-star read for me.

Further reading:
Devout: Losing My Faith to Find Myself by David Archuleta

My statistics:
Book 173 for 2026
Book 2479 cumulatively

[Christina Marta]

Firstly, what a treat to read something set in your home province! I know those places! I feel like if I trawled my memory, I might have run into some of these folks!
I've long been interested in Mormonism and other high-demand religions, mainly because my best friend growing up was LDS, who made a half-hearted attempt to convert me. (I think she figured that someone reading scads of books on evolution wasn't a good prospect.) The process of breaking away is even more interesting.
The acknowledgemts page is hilarious: "I'd like to bear my testimony; I know this book is true... I say these things in the name of Penguin Canada, my publisher, amen."

It's nearly 400 pages long and I raced through it in two days.

[Mike Broderick]

This book was okay. I actually looked forward to learning about the Mormon religion. It was not preachy, but getting stuck in the minutia was too much for me. While this story discussed his departure from the church and his issues in life, it did not do a very good job of describing the effect that his religious upbringing had on his mental health.
I do think that there is an interesting story here, and you will be more knowledgeable for having read it, but, I also think that it left me saying that I would like more.

[Carol Sperling]

What a fascinating book.

[Enid Wray]

Let’s just leave it at that I am most definitely not the reader for this one.

DNF