This one is kind of timely. Just yesterday morning we had Jehovah's Witnesses canvassing the neighborhood. We did not let them in, and judging by the short amount of time that the van was parked in front of our house, neither did anyone else. I told my sisters that tracting was the least effective way of finding people.
They were surprised by this. I think the vision that people have of missionaries is of them going door to door. That happens, but most of those people say "no". Often there isn't anyone home anyway, but when there is, they rarely decide to listen.
Most investigators come through having friends or family members in the church, followed by some who see promotional media, and then you get some from looking through people who had investigated and stopped, or working with less active members.
Really, referrals from friends and family is the big one. Not only has their exposure to the members given them some familiarity, where if they are showing additional interest it is with a better understanding of what they are doing, but also, it will help their adjustment a lot. With media, they are telling us they are interested because of something they saw. Stumbling into someone by going door to door is just less likely.
It was a little harder for us because we were specifically looking for Lao people. We would look for shoes outside the door, because they all had that, but they are not the only ones who do that. We found one Vietnamese family and one Anglo family that way. (They were not interested.)
There were a few area where there were more Lao living. Bigby Villa and 6th street were two. We did find someone interested once on 6th Street, but she was English speaking. We had to hand her off the the regular missionaries.
Once we teamed up with the Spanish-speaking sisters to cover an area that had a lot of Asian and Hispanic families. We talked to some people, but did not get any leads that I recall.
Going along with the previous post on using time wisely, you could wonder why tracting is even done at all. It's simple. There are some people that you won't get any other way, and they are just as important as the likely candidates.
Also, most people aren't ready the first time you ask. It takes multiple contacts with the Church to plant that seed. Tracting can do that.
"Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks." Jeremiah 16:16
Sometimes you can draw a big net and get a huge haul, but more often it is patiently hunting and searching, and believing that it has value.
As a full-time missionary, that's all you do. You want to teach and baptize, but you also contact and search and do the things that people with career and family responsibilities can't do. In the end, it should only be a small part of a lifetime of love and service, but it is a special and amazing part while it lasts, and you just need to go for it while you have the chance.
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