Well, we are two weeks into the new transfer and our transfer theme is "Rescue Mission". At zone conference on Monday we were told the true story of Scott O'Gradey. Some of you might recognize the name if you've seen the movie "Behind Enemy Lines." To sum it up, Scott was flying an F-16 Jet over Croatian airspace and was shot out of the sky at 26,000 feet. He managed to eject out of the plane and parachute down to safety, but was trapped in the middle of all the hostile Croatian ground forces. When he landed, he had 3 minutes to ditch the chute, grab the emergency kit, and hide before the troops reached him. They searched for him for hours and came withing 3 feet at one point of finding him, but they never saw him. He hid for 5 days, each day being searched for by the troops. When he ran out of food he survived by eating bugs and catching rain in his socks and squeezing it into his mouth for fluids. Each day he would turn his radio on for a very short time and send his signal to his comrades. Finally, one of them was flying overhead and picked up on his call. At that point the military had thought that Scott was dead, but when they found out that he was still living they launched an enormous rescue mission. We saw pictures and descriptions of all the equipment and aircraft that were used in the operation. There were two of each kind and then two more on backup in case something went wrong. The final cost of the mission was well over 10 billion dollars. They ended up getting him out without losing any soldiers, although the helicopter used in the rescue came home with a lot of bullet holes in it.
The story was then related to the resources that the church puts into missionary work. We figured out that for every investigator that is baptized, the cost is thousands of dollars. Just goes to show that there is no price too high to pay as long as we are saving the souls of the children of God.
Then we were presented with a new plan. It's actually a solution for the problem of tracting and never finding anyone at home because they're all at work. We are now going into businesses to tract. It's a little different, though. We call it "Lobbying" and we go in with little card holders that we can put pass-along cards in. On the front it says "FREE GIFT, please take one". So what we do is we go into businesses and talk to the manager to see if we can leave one there and periodically return to refill the cards. It's very much like a sales pitch. If they let us leave it in their business, we try to set up an appointment to bring whatever it is you get from the card (movie, pamphlet, etc.) and watch the movie or explain the pamphlet so that the manager or business owner knows what they are offering to their customers and employees. Crazy, right? It's actually pretty fun. My companion and I did it in a little hispanic store and then we went into Starbucks:) The hispanic store was happy to put it out. The manager of Starbucks said that she would leave some in the back for her employees, but the corporation policy is that anything they put out in stores has to be approved by the Starbucks franchise. It went pretty well, though. I guess I'm going to need to brush up on my door-to-door sales tactics.
I never ceased to be amazed at all of the new approaches we are taking to missionary work. There are always new challenges, but with those come even greater rewards. I know that the work of the Lord is going forward and as we strive to do new things with faith that He will bless us with success. We are in a rescue mission and we are putting all of our resources into the salvation of even one soul!