Missionary

A Reedsy Discovery must-read book of 2026—"Gray's journey is captivating, heartbreaking, and hopeful at the same time."

After eighteen years of preparing to serve a Mormon mission, Dylan Gray arrives in Provo, Utah, determined to become the person everyone believes he already is.

But he can't shake the feeling that his past, and the desires he has spent years trying to bury, have already doomed his mission from the start.

Inside the Missionary Training Center, where new missionaries spend their first weeks before being sent across the world, Dylan finds himself surrounded by conflicting guidance, daunting expectations, and temptations he hoped he had left behind. As his departure for South Africa draws closer, two new companions force him to confront competing aspects of himself: one who embodies everything he hopes to become, and one who makes him question whether becoming that person is even possible.

Inspired by real journal entries and filled with humor, faith, longing, and self-discovery, Missionary is the first book in a series chronicling one young man's attempt to reconcile his faith with the growing realization that he cannot pray himself into a different person.