ITUY

Willingham recounts his experiences as a missionary in the Philippines in this religious memoir.

In 2001, the author signed on for two years of missionary work for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints without giving it much thought, as he’d been raised in the faith. But by the time he was on his flight abroad, he’d begun to have doubts. He was assigned to promote the Book of Mormon in the Philippines, specifically in the remote valley of Ituy—home to the Igorots, also known as the Cagayanese, who practiced a traditional, pre-colonial way of life and believed in an ancient animist religion. “I was warned about the spirits, aswangs, and duwendes, taught chants to avoid bad luck, and witnessed loving burial practice,” he writes in his introduction, adding that “those traditions, beliefs, and myths became part of my reality.” The author felt as though he’d been banished to the end of the world, but in the faith and folklore of his conversion targets, the young missionary found the beginnings of his own spiritual journey. Willingham writes in clear and often visceral prose as he recounts his fish-out-of-water experiences in the valley, as in this passage, in which he accepts a duck embryo to eat: “Determined, I tipped back the egg and the embryo slid into my mouth. The feathers rubbed against my tongue, and the embryo caught in the back of my throat. I gagged and tried to both swallow it and spit it out at the same time.” In addition to his experiences among the Igorots and the other missionaries, Willingham offers a detailed history of the region, including the experiences of Catholic missionaries who attempted to convert the population there during Spanish colonization. However, the book would have benefited from a stronger edit, as it’s more than 450 pages long, and some of the detail can be tedious. That said, Willingham’s inner journey as a missionary is often compelling, and it may be of interest to others of all faiths on missions in faraway parts of the world.

A frank, if somewhat overlong, missionary memoir.