A missionary from American Fork may have just reached a year’s worth of tracting goals in one day.

James Kimball, 20, who serves a mission in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area, was recently afforded an unusual platform for proselyting.

When a religious satire musical called The Book of Mormon opened to rave reviews in Cincinnati, the city’s largest newspaper wanted to meet with an LDS missionary.

The interview, which led to a 700-word piece about Elder Kimball, was published this morning in the print edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer, a daily newspaper with a circulation of roughly 130,000. Its website, cincinnati.com, which delivers an average of 27.1 million page views a month, included two videos and several photos of Elder Kimball tracting with his companion and explaining how the Book of Mormon changed his life. 

Kimball, who has a year left on his mission, played the mellophone with the American Fork High School marching band before enrolling in Snow College’s nursing program, following in his mom’s footsteps.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reporter who authored the article, Krista Ramsey, is not Mormon but wrote about the LDS faith when Mitt Romney ran for President. Ramsey recently reconnected with members of a local LDS ward ahead of the musical’s debut.

She said she invited four missionaries for interviews, but then decided to just profile Kimball after she was struck by his eloquence. “Originally I thought about writing about all of them,” she said. “But to be honest, Elder Kimball was so articulate, so sincere that I decided to focus on him.”

After she interviewed Kimball from the 19th floor of the Enquirer building, she watched him at work, walking the neighborhood with his companion. While writing less about the LDS faith than the strict regimen of its missionaries, she contrasts the fictional characters of the musical with the real-life Elder. Unlike “the naïve, superficial and self-serving” missionaries of the play, she wrote in her column, Elder Kimball is “thoughtful, articulate and sincere.”

The play, which is not endorsed by the LDS Church, has garnered positive critical response and a number of theatre awards, including nine Tony Awards. It follows two young Mormon missionaries sent to preach the gospel in a dangerous region of Uganda.

“In it, the missionaries end up kind of being the heroes,” said James’ father, Tom Kimball, who saw the play with his wife during a visit to New York. “This is an American coming-of-age story. And my son is doing that.”

But his son’s sudden spotlight in the largest newspaper of Cincinnati, an area mostly Baptist, has also fed him with concerns.

“There was a nasty comment from a reader on the article,” he said. “As a father, you’re sitting here realizing that there are people who hate your son.”

Still, Ramsey said Elder Kimball was incredibly composed during his interaction with strangers, almost made for the role. “He was very kind to people he encountered on the streets, in fast-food restaurants,” she said. “But he was also very good at doing something that is very hard: coming in, being interviewed and having somebody shoot a video.”

Kimball’s parents said it is fun to see the article, pictures and footage of their son on a mission. And while the mother, Page, teared up as she watched her son walk down the street in the video, Tom’s first reaction was about his attire: “Where is that overcoat we bought for him from Mr. Mac?” he said.