Letter from Elder Daniel Ross, serving in Chile, July 2, 2019
When I was younger I was a pretty picky eater. Broccoli soup was the wrong color, texture, flavor, and I just couldn’t do it. My mom tried serving it with crackers, goldfish, I took small bites with big drinks, hot or cold, it didn’t matter. I was quite sure I wanted nothing to do with it and was firmly set in my ways. Patiently my parents explained that it can take as many as 12 tries to learn to eat a food and that I had to keep trying it. Over the course of several years I did, though I didn’t notice a change for a long time.
Another statistic (I heard this a few years ago, I don’t know how accurate it is now) is that the average person who joins the Church of Jesus Christ through full-time or member missionary efforts has had at least 7 distinct/separate experiences with missionaries. In the winters here in Chile (And everywhere else in the world, I imagine) the work slows down a lot. Very few people answer the door, and rejection is much more common. We’ve been working hard as a companionship to find ways to finish every contact well so that no matter how the person acts, we can walk away at the end and they will remember us as friendly and professional. Sometimes we harvest here, but a lot of the time we’re just planting seeds. We’re continuing in faith, hoping that some of the results come during our time here.
Does it work?
(A huge thanks to a nice sister in the ward that learned in a past lunch that I have fond memories of my mom’s soups and had her husband deliver some broccoli soup to us at 10:00 one night. My favorite meal this week.) -Elder Ross