Page 6 of His Elder

"Do you?"

Our eyes met. Held.

"We should get ready for tracting," he said, closing his manual. "President Dalton assigned us the buildings on Carrer de Lepant. We'll need to leave by nine to cover the full area before lunch."

Tracting. Door-to-door cold-calling, trying to sell people a religion they didn't want. My absolute favourite missionary activity.

Elder Price had a system, naturally. He'd divided ourassigned buildings into sections, calculated how many doors we could knock per hour, and planned our route to maximize efficiency. He even had a goal: twenty meaningful conversations, five return appointments.

"Ready?" he asked as we stood in front of the first apartment building.

"As I'll ever be."

He pressed the buzzer for apartment 1A.

No answer.

1B. 1C. 1D.

Finally, a crackling voice through the intercom:"¿Sí?"

Elder Price launched into his memorized introduction, voice bright and confident. "Buenos días, señora. Somos misioneros de La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días. We're sharing a message about—"

The intercom went dead.

"That's one," I muttered.

He shot me a look and pressed the next buzzer.

We worked through the entire first building. Forty-three apartments. Two people actually opened their doors—an elderly man who told us he was Catholic and not interested, and a woman who accepted a pamphlet just to make us leave.

"Good contact with the woman in 3C," Elder Price said, marking it in his planner. "She took the material. We should follow up next week."

"She took it so we'd go away."

"You don't know that."

"I absolutely know that."

He clenched his planner. "You know your negativity isn't helping, Elder Vance."

"Neither is your denial."

"I'm not in denial. I'm being optimistic."

"No, you're being delusional."

We stared at each other in the dingy apartment hallway, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.

"Second building," Elder Price said tightly. "Let's go."

The second building went worse. The third building, someone threatened to call the police. By the fourth building, we weren't speaking at all—just buzzing apartments in grim silence, delivering our memorized lines to closed doors and hostile voices.

At one o'clock, Elder Price checked his planner. "We've had six meaningful conversations. No return appointments yet, but—"

"Those weren't meaningful conversations. Those were people being polite while waiting for us to leave."

"Sister Rodríguez in building two was genuinely interested in—"