Week 80

This last week has been wonderful. When Elder Smith first arrived from Ohio he told me about a Finding technique endemic to missionaries in the eastern United States. It's common practice for missionaries to travel to markets and shopping centers and simply invite everybody that they can to come to church with them. No sales techniques, no effort to build trust, just a simple invitation. It was first pioneered in the New York NYC Mission and is quite successful there.

When I first heard about this method I hated it a lot and felt like it was lazy and ineffective. But I've observed that with simply inviting people to church those we talk to seem less put upon and dismissive. They are more flattered at the invitation and smile at us more.  Simply inviting them rather than sharing a scripture or asking for their time (asking to "teach them") is more natural and normal. Even if they aren't interested, we leave them with a more positive lasting impression. It feels more likely a seed has been genuinely planted.

 

Overall the Flow feels more in-line with my missionary purpose to "INVITE others to come unto Christ," not to teach people or convince people who don't want it. Only to invite all, and then help those who want it. I feel like a bottomless well of energy, inviting people to church is so low-energy, low-pressure. It is actually fun to walk around all day and talk to everyone. And apparently the success rates for the method are pretty consistent, if you do it throughout the week you can reasonably expect 1-2 new people to come to church each Sunday. 

So for the last few days we've been changing up our finding time and simply walking around neighborhoods and inviting everyone we see to come to church. Not only have we been talking to a lot more people and gotten better exercise but we have been happier and seen more evidences of God's tender mercies. 

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Last night we had some free time so we were walking around at 8:40 (just about the least productive part of the day) and a car pulled into a garage right as we were passing. We waited and stood on the sidewalk to see if they would simply close the garage door to avoid talking to us but they didn't. A woman got out and we invited her to church, and it turns out she's actually been to our church before and met with missionaries. We set up a visit for tomorrow so we'll see how that goes. Even if she turns out to not be interested, that's not our fault and no reflection of my worth as a missionary. Others have their agency and I am not responsible for making people listen when they don't want to. 

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We went to the church the night before to use the restroom and we saw a truck idling in the parking lot. We went and knocked on the window and it was a young man who isn't a member of our faith but was visiting the church to play basketball with his member friends. We said hi and asked if we could help him with anything, he said no so we went and used the restroom. As we were leaving my companion felt like we should offer him a Chapel Tour and I thought it was a strange thing to offer but I said ok and we went and knocked on his window again. Turned out he was interested and we showed him around the church building, listening to his questions about life and God. We taught him about the sacrament and about the Book of Mormon a little. Then his friends showed up and they went to play basketball but it was a unique opportunity to share the gospel in a natural way. 

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Interestingly I have found that when we center our planning for lessons around reading a short passage from the Book of Mormon the lesson is generally shorter (at or closer to the guideline for 30 minutes maximum), there is more clarity and power in the lesson, and I feel a lot better afterwards. In the past we would generally plan what we wanted to teach them in order to lead to our invitation and then we would add in scriptures to supplement our own knowledge and teaching. But now we let the scriptures do more of the work and, who knew, it's more effective. 

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We went over to the house of an older ouple who moved into Skyline Ward recently from Alaska. The wife is a member and the husband is not. They've been taught by missionaries on and off for many years and their daughter in law gave us a call when they first moved encouraging us to go talk to them and invite them to church. We went over for a few visits and they were not very effective because the husband would just talk the whole time and not miss a beat even when we tried to interject or say something. We'd just say we had to go after a while and the wife would pat her husband on the arm. We knew he was somewhat deaf but until this last visit we didn't know how severe it was. 

We went in with a more concrete plan and tried to read some scriptures with them but we learned that you need to shout at the husband at the top of your lungs in order for him to hear you (they gave us permission to do so). Apparently when they go to church he can't hear anything the speakers up at the front are saying. I was struck during the visit by the absurdity of what we were doing, it is hard to feel that soft peace and quiet calm when you are screaming out all of your words, and if you get even a little bit quieter he blinks at you in confusion and smiles. 

The irony of the whole thing was that we were teaching about the Holy Ghost. I doubt that anyone has ever belted out an explanation of the feeling of the "still, small voice" at that volume before at any pulpit or in any busy city square. 

At the end of the visit we managed to get across that we were wondering if he would like to properly study more about our beliefs and he shrugged his shoulders and said "not really" (at a perfectly normal volume and in a mild voice, by the way). So we left. I was accidentally shouting at people for the rest of the day because I'd gotten into such a habit of doing so. 

The weirdest part was that he had hearing aids in but apparently they were broken. And then they came to church on Sunday and they plan on being there every week even though they aren't interested in meeting with us. 

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I hope to have much more to report next week. I feel pretty good today and I'm excited to go out and work this evening. I'm hopeful that with these new tools and knowledge I might finally be hitting my stride. Until next time, I am

Faithfully Yours,

Elder C. Calder

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We drove out to the middle of Tonopah (read: nowhere) last monday and went on a short hike

When we got to the top of the hill we painted rocks together as a district. I decided to paint a lovely acrylic dinosaur named Brad. Brad is now on top of a nightstand here in our apartment

We went over to the Sautter's house for dinner. We'd never met them because they have callings in the Cottonwood YSA and don't come to our ward normally, but Brother Sautter showed us his collection of 3-D printed temples which I enjoyed a lot. We also had a fascinating conversation about how the bishopric in that ward, rather than focusing on convert baptism, pairing people up etc instead focuses on helping everyone there to feel loved and to build their personal relationship with Jesus Christ. As they do so marriages, mission calls and more reactivations naturally happen on their own.