The sister missionaries and I greet them and offer to take their picture. We’re not refused very often, and if so, it’s usually a language gap (they didn’t understand the question). I ask them where they’re from and about their vacation in Hawaii. Most of the folks from the US respond with their state when I ask them where they’re from. “California”, “New Mexico”, or such. Then I try to guess, usually by repeating the home town of the last folks that came from that state. Every once in a while I’m right, mostly I’m wrong, but it does get the conversation going.
Tonight we had a large tour group of Russian Jews who had their own tour guide and, for the most part, didn’t want anything to do with us. We later had another woman from Russia and we had a nice conversation with her. She was surprised to see that we had information in Russian and took several pamphlets to read later. Sometimes when we ask them what they know about the Mormon Church, we find that they’re interested in knowing more so we give them a referral card to fill out with their name, email address, and phone number. Most will give us their name and email. Two of the sister missionaries are called “online sisters” and they spend most of their time on the computer following up with these contacts.
They also engage in chat sessions initiated from mormon.org. When someone goes to this website they can click on a “chat” button on the upper right. That’ll connect them to one of the visitors’ centers and a set of sister missionaries. The bulk of the chat sessions go to the Salt Lake Temple Square Visitors’ Center. But, since we’re open four hours later in the evening, around 5pm Salt Lake time the chat requests roll over to our Center. The sister missionaries really enjoy working these chat sessions as most of them are from people genuinely interested in learning more about the Church. A few, however, come from trolls who just want to harass the missionaries. Fortunately, they have a button they can click which will kindly end the chat session and block the IP address for a few minutes. Also fortunately, that doesn’t happen very often.
For me, however, the afternoon shift means spending most of the day outside interacting with people and standing on my feet. I’m developing a bit of a tan. I’m also pretty tired by the end of the day! It’s a good kind of tired, though.
Welcome home, Hermana Baker! Our granddaughter Kendra Baker flew home today from her mission. She was assigned to the New York City North Mission, Spanish speaking and completed her eighteen-month mission today. She had a great mission and worked very hard right up to the very last day. Congratulations, Sister Baker on a marvelous mission!
I’m still having great fun!