Week 5: Getting in the Door

February 17, 1988

I got in my first door last Friday and placed a Book of Mormon.  It was my door and after giving my approach, he asked how long it would take.  I said 10 minutes and he invited us in.  We told him about the Book of Mormon and asked him if he would read it.  He said yes.  I was so psyched after that.

On Monday we got in my second door.  It was my door again, but nothing I said got us in.  It was a Chinese gentleman in his fifties; he let us in after we identified ourselves.  He is over here from Shanghai, going to Stanford.  He is a doctor and he leaves to return to China in three months.  We are going to take him a Chinese copy of the Book of Mormon on Sunday.  We'll probably take Br. Gong, a ward member from China with us.

We had a zone activity today; we went up into the hills behind Portola Valley to a place called Rolling Hills.  From there we could see the blue of the Pacific Ocean to the west, and much of the Bay Area to the east, from San Jose all the way up to San Francisco.  We had a picnic and then a few of us played some touch football., it was a blast.

This zone is the greatest, not to mention the smallest.  It is really just a super district as there are only 14 of us.

I've had a couple of DAs since I got here, so my diet isn't suffering too badly.  The trouble is, I don't know what kind of food to buy.  Breakfast and lunch are okay, but I am lost when it comes to dinner.

Well, that is about all the exciting stuff happening in Palo Alto.  All the kids in our apartment complex think we are Stanford students.

So, send me some mail and raise my moral.  What's up at home?

Love
Douglas

Figuring out what to eat was a challenge early in my mission.  That was one area in which I was not prepared (see: http://thewholemissionary.blogspot.com/2012/10/temporal-tuesday-what-can-i-eat.html).

My standard door approach during my mission went something like this:

"Hi, my name is Elder Cox, and this is my companion, Elder so-and-so.  We are representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we have a message about Jesus Christ that we would like to share with you."