Book Review: Elders

          The book “Elders”, written by Ryan McIlvain, features two LDS (Mormon) missionaries as they go about proseletyzing in the town of Carinha, Brazil. Elder McLeod is an American who is burnt out after eighteen months of proselytizing; he refuses to cater to the politics within the mission field and as a result, is characterized as difficult and unruly. Elder Passos, a Brazilian who joined the LDS church after the death of his mother, struggles to balance his faith with his identity. This story takes place against the backdrop of the 9/11 attacks and the American invasion of Iraq, a tension that is reflected in the hostiles attitudes towards Elder McLeod. Elder McLeod and Elder Passos are companions; the strict missionary rules require them to spend every moment together, a fact that results in a tenuous friendship between two unlikely people. These characters are boys that are turning into men, with all of the uncertainty that marks such a transition.
          Elder Passos is devout, overly-serious, ambitious about the future, and uncertain about his place in the world. He studies English in his spare time, hoping to attend BYU. Perhaps the most poignant moment came at a time when the entire country is watching Brazil play in the final match of the Latin American Football Championships on a Sunday, at the same time as church. The mission president, an American, has insisted that church cannot be canceled, rescheduled, or skipped. Looking at the mission president, Elder Passos sees “a man who could look at an entire culture and see a game, merely, who could look at a country-wide communion and see a crowd.” As a Mormon, Passos possesses a simple, sincere faith: he believes, with all his heart, that the teachings of the LDS Church are true.
          The conflict in this story centers on an investigator Josefina and her husband Leandro. For Passos and McLeod, the stakes are high regarding these potential converts: in them, the two missionaries see the chance to resolve their internal conflicts. McLeod seeks ‘faith as a principle in action’: to learn faith through the action of teaching others. Passos is seeks the potential convert, the ‘one star in a million, a golden elect’, as a way of changing lives, just as his own life was changed after the death of his mother.
          Most stories written about Mormons tend to go for the dramatic: all in or all out. Good versus bad. This is not one of those stories. Rather, this is a book that focuses on the small: the little gestures of friendship that are often misinterpreted or over-looked, the simmering doubts that never come to a full boil, the nagging worries and insecurities that accompany faith. The result was something quite beautiful, a story that lingered in the mind long after reading.

Hill Cumorah Pageant

          As a child, my family and I used to attend the Hill Cumorah pageant every year, which is a large theatrical production put on every year in the birthplace of the Mormon religion, Palmyra, New York.  The pageant is a dramatic re-enactment of the Book of Mormon.  The pageant was a festive affair -- my family and I packed snacks and piled into our rickety blue station wagon for the two-hour trip to Palmyra.  We sat on the hill, waiting for the show to start.  When darkness fell and the hill lit up, I sat in wonder at the story that un-folded before my eyes.  All of the Book of Mormon stories I learned about in Sunday School were appearing right before my eyes, larger than life.  Lehi, being ordered to leave Jerusalem.  The rift between Nephi and his brothers Laman and Lemuel.  Jesus, coming to the Americas after his resurrection to preach the Gospel.  A dying Moroni, burying the gold plates in the very spot that we were sitting in, which was later found and translated by the prophet Joseph Smith.  I was enthralled by the re-enactment of the stories my family held so dear.  

          One year, when I was five or six, I noticed some people standing at the periphery of the show, holding up sheets of paper.  The pageant had just ended and we were heading back to the car.  I was sleepy -- the time was hours past my normal bed-time.  My family looked at these people askance, while my father warned us in the strongest of terms not to accept anything from them or to engage them in conversation.  These people seemed so out-of-place, standing mute with their sheets of printed paper while pageant-goers streamed past them.  I had been warned that Satan was trying his hardest to tear the Church apart with lies and deceptions.  These people seemed to be proof of what the leaders had been saying.  My little-girl mind just knew that whatever was printed on those sheets of papers would be vile untruths.  And maybe they were untruths.  Or perhaps they weren’t.  Either way, my family and I refused to find out.  And perhaps that was for the best -- any attempts to engage the protesters would have lead to anger and turmoil during a peaceful family outing.  

          That night, as my father drove us home, I fell asleep in the backseat snuggled up against my siblings.  The unsettling hum of the speeding car combined with the eerie muteness of the protesters to give me uneasy dreams about a world stacked against my family.