request for suggestions re missionary finding

[askandanswer]

My missionary son is currently assigned in a rural town of about 23,000 people, approximately 5 hours drive from the mission home. The church has had a presence there for more than half a century but its still only a one ward town with less than 100 members attending. The town is an agricultural hub for a number of smaller towns in the region. There are currently two sets of elders, one set of sisters and a couple missionary assigned to the town. Most of the white Australians are very set in their ways and those who are religiously inclined have been attending the same church for generations. A lot of the rest of the population are transient tourist fruit pickers who stay a while, pick some fruit, earn some money, and then continue with their holiday.

My son told me in his Christmas day phone call yesterday that the whole town gets tracted out several times a year and he is trying to think of more innovative approaches to finding people to teach. At the moment they do tracting, street contacting in the local shopping mall, and try to strike up conversations with people at a nearby park when they go jogging. The other set of elders seem to have reserved for themselves the part member and less active families.

If you’ve tried some innovative and successful approaches to finding people to share the gospel with, whether or not youv’e served a mission, could you please describe them here and I’ll gather them up and forward them to my son next week.

Thanks for your suggestions

[mrmarklin]

Tracking is generally a waste of time. 

Your son should contact local administrators or charities and get involved in service projects. Just wearing the name tag is high visibility and they’re doing the right thing too.

Remember that people who are involved in helping others are more likely to be receptive to the Church’s message. 

[zil]

Yes, perform service - for charities (including other churches), for individuals, for anything at all.  It may take several sets of missionaries before the good will and reputation build to a point where people are moved to action, but that seems like the way to go.

[Fether]

Service is always good. We did service at a soup kitchen ran by a Pentecostal preacher. We mentioned briefly that part of the word of wisdom was not drinking coffee. 3 weeks later he told us he quit coffee x) In every single one of his pre-meal sermons he talked about and testified of the truth that us missionaries spoke. 

[bytebear]

Community activities too.  Just be a presence in the town.  We did various church activities and invited the community.  "Meet the Mormons" kind of thing.  We also did a lot of street contacts.  We'd just say, "Can we ask you a couple questions?" and ask a series of questions leading to a doctrinal truth like eternal families.  Really, the best thing is to put yourself out there. In a small town, everyone knows the missionaries.  You stand out, and so use that to your advantage.  Wave.  Be overly helpful.  Chat. Get to know people's names who you run into regularly.  We used to ride the bus every day, and chat with the bus drivers and passengers.  Captive audience. 

[Grunt]

Involvement in the community is what brought me to the missionaries.

[Sunday21]

I have lived in a similar town in Canada.. What we did: There is often a lack of family activities so we organized activities to get people into the church building. Now you are going to look at these activities, groan and say, ‘So cheesy! This will never work’ But..

1) They DID work. We were the number 1 baptizing spot in the district and we did these things with a handful of adults. I saw the mission president’s wife’s look of disbelief when she came to look us over. We were a bunch of broken toys but we brought a lot of people into the church.

2) If you bring a child into your church, you also bring at least one adult because they need to drive the child so prepare for both the child (easy!) and the adult (food of some type even muffins will do and a table with Books of Mormon and the missionaries).

What we did: everything we could think of!

1) Games nights. Silly dress up in costumes and do family feud.

2) Family History nights. Each room in the church decorated for a different ethnic group.

3) musical evenings & skits. Have as many kids involved in skits as possible. More kids, more parents. Have members invite people to ‘help’. This how my Lds friends got me back to church. They asked me to help kids with their costumes and makeup. Get neighborhood kids to perform. 

4) 3 Nephi when Christ speaks in the Darkness. Dudes!!!! This is our secret weapon! So easy to stage this and brings tears to the eyes of everyone! Needs a narrator for Jesus. Turn out the lights. Sound effects for thunder. Advertise on posters and radio, Christ Visits America.

So if you are a missionary, how do you get this to happen? Sit down next to a single woman in church, ask her to propose this to the bishop. Tell her, you will do all the work. (I was the woman in this scenario).

Good Luck! We did these things! They worked!

[anatess2]

Weekly Basketball scrimmage.

I tell ya, it's popular everywhere - from the Philippines to Florida.  Just a place to hang out with Mormons without any proselyting.  Then it's up to them and their curiosity if they would like to investigate the Church.

[bytebear]

It seems we did a lot more in my home ward than when I was on my mission in regards to regular basketball, "road shows".  Our building was older and had a full stage, with curtains and lights. They don't make them like that any more. 

One other big pet peeve of mine. The church sign.  It says "Visitor's Welcome" but it doesn't give the hours of service.  I think the church would have a lot more visitors if they posted the time for Sacrament meetings.  Can someone look into making that happen?

[Iggy]

1 hour ago, bytebear said:

One other big pet peeve of mine. The church sign.  It says "Visitor's Welcome" but it doesn't give the hours of service.  I think the church would have a lot more visitors if they posted the time for Sacrament meetings.  Can someone look into making that happen?

We have a sign on every exterior door with the Branch Presidencies, Auxiliary Presidencies, Primary Presidencies Names plus the hours of service for everything. There is also phone numbers for the building, the Branch President, the Missionaries and for emergency. Our building number goes straight to an answering machine, and it says so on the door sign.

Askandanswer, have they involved the members in bringing in investigators and in assigning members as Branch Missionaries and having them reach out to the less active members? That is what has boosted our Active Members list.

We are also having the Temple & Family History Consultants contact the less actives regarding doing their family history. Our Sister Missionaries have brought several investigators to our T&FH Consultant Lead to find out the truth about temple proxy work. That led into getting them started on their own genealogy, which led to them following through with the missionaries which led to at least one family, Dad, Mom, and when daughter turns 8 next June, getting baptized. The other two families have either a Dad or Mom who are members but have been inactive for decades, the kids are the ones who are interested in the gospel, the parents in family history. 

"Every member a missionary. . ." David O. McKay

[Sunday21]

One thing they do here which the active sisters hate but which does work is to assign inactive sisters as a companion for visiting teaching. This allows the inactive sister to attend lessons and teach if they like. Interestingly inactive sisters often like to be invited as part of a team. I think inactive sisters like to come along and even teach. 

[Guest]

You're lucky your missionaries can at least tract.  It is illegal in most subdivisions around here.

[seashmore]

I never served a typical mission, but live in the exact type of city your son is serving in. (We're only two hours from the mission home, though.) Our branch covers ground in at least four counties, and many of the surrounding towns wouldn't have a ward even if every citizen was an active Mormon.

Anyway, I'd encourage him to focus on asking questions and listening to hear the answers when they talk to people, rather than listening to respond or lead the discussion. In my own personal missionary work, I set a goal to bring everyone I can one step closer to Christ. Elder Bednar gave a great talk a few years ago addressed to nonmembers. In there, (I'm paraphrasing) he invited them to bring with them whatever truth they already had to see if we couldn't add to it. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/10/come-and-see?lang=eng

 

Edited December 27, 2017 by seashmore
To add link

[askandanswer]

Thank you everybody for your contributions. Tomorrow is letter writing day so I'll be sending him what's been posted here. Its interesting to note how many people commented about community service, I'll make sure to emphasise that in my letter. 

@Iggy two weeks ago, when my son was the companion of the Zone Leader in the same town, they did most of their work with members. Now that my son has been transferred to the other side of town, but still in the same ward, the Zone Leader has continued to work with the members, leaving my son and his new companion to find and work with non-members. I'm not sure how many ward missionaries they have but when I asked him if they are getting much help from the ward mission leader he responded that he is rarely around. 

[Iggy]

7 hours ago, askandanswer said:

@IggyI'm not sure how many ward missionaries they have but when I asked him if they are getting much help from the ward mission leader he responded that he is rarely around. 

That is how it was in my Branch for the last 7 years -with three different Branch Mission Leaders, and the last one you couldn't even reach him on his cell! The BML we have now is a real go-getter. I think having server 3 proselyting missions overseas with his wife makes the difference.

What I think is great is he and the members who have been called as Branch Missionaries, come to the various classes every other month and in 10 minutes  give us a Pep Talk. No challenges though because we just don't respond well to that. But it is more like You All Did GREAT - Keep up the GOOD work. Call on us ANYTIME to go with you -  to help you - etc. etc. Basically it is a pat on the back, Atta Boy/Girl, Keep it up,  and not a single but, you need to do better.

[Sunday21]

On 2017-12-26 at 3:11 AM, Grunt said:

Involvement in the community is what brought me to the missionaries.

@GruntCan I ask where you met the missionaries? Don’t respond if too personal! Chocoholics Anonymous. Brony Brotherhood, @MormonGator‘s house, @zil Fountainpen Fanmania , @Carborendum ‘s parole officer’s Support Party,, intervention for @NeuroTypical (Neuro if you put alll of those toys in your bed, how will you get to sleep? Let’s move sooome of the toys to this nice shiny new basket.)

Edited January 11, 2018 by Sunday21

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Sunday21 said:

@Carborendum ‘s parole officer’s Support Party,

How did you know I was on parole?  Oh, wait...

[Grunt]

3 minutes ago, Sunday21 said:

@GruntCan I ask where you met the missionaries? Don’t respond if too personal! Chocoholics Anonymous. Brony Brotherhood, @MormonGator‘s house, @zil Fountainpen Fanmania , @Carborendum ‘s parole officer’s Support Party,, intervention for @NeuroTypical (Neuro if you put alll of those toys in your bed, how will you get to sleep? Let’s move sooome of the toys to this nice shiny new basket.)

I went to a local 4th of July parade.  The mission entered a float in the parade that allowed them to dress as missionaries to meet the theme.  At the fair immediately after the parade, they had bouncy houses and other children's games and had the missionaries collecting the money for them.  While your children were in the bouncy house, you had no option but to stand there with missionaries.  We spoke briefly, unknowingly answering their questions.  Because we were friendly, they immediately called our ward missionaries and described us to them.  We were eating lunch and they walked by.  My wife made eye contact, which opened the door to conversation.  The rest is history.  

Interestingly, the current missionaries are obviously not the same missionaries from that day as many have passed through since then.  However, they showed me the notes the missionaries pass on to their replacements.  Big and bold at the top of the notes about me is "DO NOT EVER BE LATE TO A MEETING WITH HIM, HE WILL TELL YOU TO LEAVE". 

I'll bet you guys are regretting that now.

[Sunday21]

50 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

How did you know I was on parole?  Oh, wait...

I knew it! 

[seashmore]

On January 11, 2018 at 7:14 AM, Grunt said:

 While your children were in the bouncy house, you had no option but to stand there with missionaries.

I'm rofl'ing at this!

[Grunt]

9 hours ago, seashmore said:

I'm rofl'ing at this!

It was genius in its simplicity.