Apparently the first week or so of shotgunning an area is really slow for everybody, so I don't feel so bad about it. It was a lot of biking or walking around knocking on random people's doors and trying to get to know people. It doesn't help that the mother of the one investigator with a baptismal date we have is having heart problems and lives with him so they've been in and out of the hospital. We met him once though, so that was cool.
Oh so cool stories. This ward is awesome about exchanges and our ward missionaries are actually capable of doing their jobs, so that's super awesome. Usually ward missionaries are at least 86, can't drive at night, need at least 3 weeks notice to do anything, and have a crippled dog that they can't leave unattended for more than 5 minutes or something. Or they're 22, not on a mission yet, and like to hang out with the other missionaries because they're cooler.
We have a bunch of able, young people with free time in this ward and so that's awesome. We were out with one of the ward missionaries this Thursday and an appointment fell through. As we drove out of the neighborhood, I saw a '93 RX-7 parked in a driveway and became rather excited. We were on our way to one more house so decided not to stop. When that appointment fell through too, we decided to go back to RX-7 guy and talk to him about his car. When we knocked a few times, nobody answered. Finally, as we were walking back to our car, this young guy, maybe late 20's came out from the back of the house and looking suspicious of us said, "Can I help you guys with something?" So we proceeded to talk to him about his car for a while. Unfortunately he's rebuilding the turbo and waiting on an intercooler to be built so it wasn't running, but it was still neat. Then I made a church plug, and he said we could come back anytime and talk so that was awesome.
On Friday, we were trying to contact some members we didn't know. We knocked on one door and the sister came out. She was very nice, and said we could come back but then her boyfriend came to the door. "Hey guys, I have to go to work and we were enjoying some alone time, so can you leave?" so we said yes, and finished talking to the sister to see when we could come back. Then boyfriend asked us, "Are you guys Mormons?"
"Yes we are!" we piped back,
"BYE" was all he responded, then kept repeating himself. "BYE. BYE. BYE. I'm Christian, I don't believe in something that happened in 1836. BYE. BYE."
It was really awkward. So we just ignored him and kept talking to the less active sister for a minute while he kept saying "BYE" and then we left. People are funny.
Oh that reminds me. While out with a member on another day we knocked on another less active member's door. His wife came to the door. "Hi, we're looking for Brother Wos-his-name, is he here?"
"He's in bed," she replied, and turning her nose up said, "And in fact, we have been trying to get his name taken off your records for a long time now."
"Sure!" We responded, "We're sorry that it hasn't been done already, so the first step is to write a letter to our bishop ---"
"I don't want to write a letter!" she interrupted, "I just want his name off the records! He's not even a member of your church! His ex-wife, and really more her parents, got his name on there and we are tired of this harassment. The last two years when we got the Christmas cards and then a note about cleaning the church, we tried to call your offices and really it's becoming a legal issue now."
Trying to stifle a laugh, we responded as patiently as we could, "That must be very frustrating, I'm sorry that we haven't taken you off the records yet. The only thing we know, is that the first step is to write a letter to our bishop saying you want your name off, and he'll meet with you once more and then it's all done."
"I'm not writing a letter!" (now she was getting a little heated and it was time to leave.) We tried to say a few more things but she just really doesn't want her names off the records I guess. People are strange. We thought about going over with an addressed, stamped, pre-written letter for her husband to sign, but we didn't want to harass her, so we're going to leave that up to the bishop to deal with. We'll see what he says. Good times!
Anyway.
Cars.
After BYE guy, we went over to another less active family's home who had this creepy sticker on their window. It was an eye sitting in the palm of a hand and underneath the picture said, "Security system activated." and it was weird. Sadly, nobody came to the door, so we went and talked to the neighbor who had a '69 Nova in his garage. We talked to him about his car for a while, then he talked to us about religion for a good 30 minutes or so. He also said we could come back. Good deal.
Morale of the story: It turns out that if you talk to someone about something they like, they're probably going to like you more than a typical Mormon missionary.
Love you all! Have a great week.
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