Abstract: We are called to take the Gospel to the entire world, but our numbers are few and our time and resources are limited. This is where cold calculation can help. A field-surgical technique pioneered during the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century and refined in the butchery of World War I a century later offers a useful model for making our missionary efforts more efficient and more effective.

Many years ago in Switzerland, I learned a very valuable lesson from my first missionary companion. I say that I “learned” it, but in this case, I’m afraid that my subsequent behavior has, all too often, been a textbook example of “faith without works.” I’ve put it into practice far too inconsistently.

When I arrived in Switzerland, it evidently wasn’t yet time for missionary transfers. I would eventually be assigned to Burgdorf, the largest town in the Emmental region of the canton of Bern. For about two weeks, though, I remained in the mission home at Pilatusstrasse 11, on a hill overlooking Zürich, and I went tracting every day with a member of the mission home staff, Elder David J. Cannon, who was assigned to be my temporary senior companion.

I very soon saw for myself what I had already been told before arriving in Switzerland, that tracting was hard and frustrating work, that very few of the very few people who were home during the daytime were interested in talking with us. Time after time after time, doors were closed in our faces. Usually politely, but not always.

On a few occasions, though, we were able to speak at least briefly with those we met, and one of those occasions has remained etched rather clearly in my memory.

[Page viii]A man invited us into his apartment and sat us down, obviously quite willing to speak with us. This was exciting. It was such a refreshing change of pace from rejection after rejection after rejection. We began to lay out the story of the Restoration. Soon, though, he interjected his opinion that churches such as ours were all about financial gain — an assertion that he repeated multiple times, quite calmly and in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, while rubbing his thumb and his index and middle fingers together as if he were manipulating cash. He continued to do so even after we indicated that we were serving at our own expense. (He didn’t believe us.). All religion was a scam. Our religion was a scam. We were just in it for the money. (Why didn’t we just come clean and admit it?)

After ten minutes or so of this sort of exchange, my missionary companion, Elder Cannon, politely thanked him for his time, indicated that we had other obligations, and stood up to go.

Once we were outside, I asked him why we had left. At least this fellow was willing to talk to us! We had managed to get through a door!

I’ve never forgotten what this more experienced missionary told me: Zürich, he said, was a fairly large city, and there were far more people in it than we would ever be able to contact. We had no time to waste on folks who weren’t interested, even if they enjoyed arguing with us. We weren’t there to argue. We were there to find those who could be benefited by the message that we had been divinely called to bring to them. Maybe that fellow’s time would come someday, but it plainly wasn’t his time then.

I’ve thought about that simple but important point quite a bit since that day in Zürich. In October 2007, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, delivered a conference talk under the title of “Good, Better, Best” that is closely related to what I want to say here. The opening words of that talk convey an important principle:

Most of us have more things expected of us than we can possibly do. As breadwinners, as parents, as Church workers and members, we face many choices on what we will do with our time and other resources.