I grew up looking forward to the day when I’d become a missionary for my church. I was born in Alberta into a Mormon family that had been in the church since the late 19th century. I was taught it was God’s plan for me to one day serve a two-year mission when I’d preach the gospel and bring souls into the fold. I couldn’t wait.

The missionaries I knew when I was a kid were like superheroes to me. Occasionally, my parents would invite a few of them over to our house for supper, and I really looked up to them. Then, when I was 13, my older brother was sent to France on a mission. I idolized my brother and figured that when I became a missionary, I’d become like him, righteous and seemingly perfect.

Though all this sounds like the set-up to a story about my loss of faith, the kind that starts with big dreams and ends in disillusion­ment, the truth is messier. After two years, I went home broken. My faith was intact, at least at first, but my ego wasn’t. I felt like a failure, a servant who’d disappointed his king.

The missionary efforts of the Mormon church are organized much like a multinational corporation’s marketing campaign. There are about 13.5 million Mormons in the world, and the church has divided the planet into 348 missions, the way companies divide markets—efficiently managed zones of potential converts. Ontario, which is home to 45,540 Mormons, is split into two jurisdictions: the Canada Toronto West Mission, which spans from Leamington to North Bay, skimming Toronto’s western border, and the Canada Toronto East Mission, which includes most of the GTA. After I turned 19, I was called to the Canada Toronto West Mission.

Mormon missionaries are full-time representatives of their church, actively seeking to baptize converts. They leave their families, and to an extent their identities, including their first name. “Elder” becomes your first name, and I became Elder Hudson. The first of my many companions was Elder McMillan, a modest Utahan with a nerdish streak and awkwardly parted hair. Missionaries are never to be alone. We sleep in the same room but not in the same bed. The instructions are worded that way in our missionary handbook.

Missionaries work without compensation, buying groceries on an allowance pro­vided by the church. The church arranges for a car, if necessary, and finds apartments, too. (For a predominantly right-wing church, its operations are surprisingly socialist. Missionaries and their parents contribute roughly $10,000 to the church prior to their mission, and the funds are distributed around the globe as needed.)

To focus exclusively on the work of the Lord, missionaries must reject secular media: no movies, radio, books, magazines, newspapers or television, and only music approved by the church. They’re allowed to talk to their families only twice a year, on Christmas and Mother’s Day, communicating the rest of the year by letters and e-mails.

My first posting was in Sarnia. I was horribly homesick—the only time I had been away from home for longer than two days was the week I spent at summer camp. Already, my mission felt like a prison sentence. I read somewhere that the best cure for homesickness is work, so one morning I wrote down goals: Love everyone. Testify to everyone. Be obedient. Become who you are supposed to become.