A sequel to Diary of a Young Jesuit, this book tells of a Jesuit missionary’s adventures during the first seven years of his assignment in Taiwan from 1969 to 1976.

What is unique about Diary of a Young Missionary are the joyful, humorous, and inspiring memories of Jesuit training and the personal adventures that accompanied it, especially the section detailing the one-of-a-kind year spent with the poor of Orchid Island. This memoir is written as a diary that gives it a sense of “immediacy” that makes it stand out from the more conventional memoir genre.

As a gateway for those considering life as a missionary, for men and women already serving God in distant lands, and for everyone seeking inspiration rooted in reality—or even for the armchair adventurer, this Diary reveals the daunting challenge of working in the fields of the Lord, where the harvest, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, is ripe with “freshness fuming.”

“Fr. Martinson’s autobiography is not just a window into a distant time and a different world. It is much more. It is an account of a life so charged with the gift of knowledge and love of Christ that the first, only, and constant choice is to spend that life helping Christ to be known and loved by others.”
—Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J., Author, Christendom Lost and Found and Real Philosophy for Real People

“Fr. Martinson’s diary is really an adventure story. It is the adventure of an ordinary young man who, inspired by the goodness and holiness he sees in others, desires to be a missionary. In telling his story with candor and humor, he shows us that holiness is an adventure for everyone.”
—Fr. James Kubicki, S.J., Author, A Year of Daily Offerings; Spiritual Director, St. Francis de Sales Seminary, Milwaukee