I served a mission for the Mormon church in Russia. One of my companions (the other teenager who is assigned to you as a stranger and must stay within earshot of you at all times for the next few weeks or months) was really enamored with the idea of tracting, or going door to door asking people if they want to talk about Joesph Smith. He had watched too many Mormon missionary movies and was very disappointed to discover the Russian Federation has made tracting illegal. But he really wanted to do it, so we rang a random apartment and claimed to be a postman and snuck into an apartment building to knock doors.
Things started off okay. Russians generally have two doors, a normal wooden door on the inside, and a thick, metal fire door with five deadbolts (three in the wall, and one in the door and ceiling). Mostly, folks would open the inner door, ask what we wanted and then tell us to go away (fair, considering what we were doing was as rude as it was illegal).
But then we got a nibble! A single man invited into his home. The first thing that seemed kinda strange was that he locked and bolted the fire door. This was a little strange — usually people would leave the fire door ajar when they had guests and only lock the inner door — but not enough to really spook me. He led us into the kitchen and made a quick pot of tea and we launched into the first discussion.
The discussions are pretty well rehearsed. The first one, if I recall, has eight parts, and we would give them in sequence — I would do the first part, then say the handover phrase and look significantly at my companion, and he would do the second, then hand it back until either the investigator got bored or we got to the call to action, where we issued some thing we wanted them to do — come to church, pray, read the Book of Mormon, what have you. My companion was starting this round, and was pretty invested in preaching so I don’t think he really noticed as our investigator lit a cigarette, put out the match in a tumbler, filled the tumbler with vodka, and shot the vodka and match together. He made the handoff, though, so at least I could start to figure out a way out of the situation.
Pretty quickly into my segment, the investigator derailed the conversation. Turns out his wife had just given birth to twins, and the prognosis was poor — he was worried they wouldn’t make it. He grasped a kitchen knife and he told me that if god was going to take his newborns from him, he intended to take us from god. I don’t think I ever in my life spoken better Russian, beautiful, flowing, eloquent, explaining it wouldn’t help his suffering and offering prayers and blessings on his children’s behalf. He had this gleam in his eye that really unnerved me, and I really felt I was pleading for my life.
Until my companion finished his tea, and the investigator seemed to forget the whole line of questioning in his haste to be a good host. I quickly made some excuse, but apparently my companion had completely tuned out because he launched into the next part of the discussion as if nothing had happened! I cut him off pretty quick and told him we needed to go, now. When we finally got out of the apartment, I sat down on the top step and began to sob, and my companion looked down at me, amazed, and asked what happened — apparently he had no idea we were ever in any danger.
In any event, I’ve never gone door-to-door soliciting ever again.
