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Show 231 hostile contact had flung at them, or write their respective weekly report for the mission president, accounting for one hundred sixty-eight hours since the last report, or simply unwind. Lorin liked days when they had appointments for follow-up visits. There was always trauma in that first meeting-the nightmare walk through somebody's front yard to a strange door, the deep breath before knocking, the silent prayer that no one would answer, the multiple versions of resistance to their opening line when someone did-but a follow-up visit could be almost a pleasure. It meant, for one thing, they had been liked. Nothing quite compared, for Lorin, to knocking on the door of a house where last time they had been liked, and where this time they were expected. The smile of recognition, however guarded, fired his courage, and he could follow his hosts and his companion to the living room or kitchen and sit down charged with the confidence that he had piqued their interest once and could pique it again. For another thing, a return visit meant questions, and questions were someone else's initiative. They revealed the slits in the armor, and Lorin, spared the horror of wondering where to begin, could penetrate those slits and know he was touching a useful nerve. Let someone ask them about, say, miracles, and he could expound for an hour on the constancy of natural law and explain how its apparent violation consisted merely in a visible effect proceeding from an invisible cause no less natural for being invisible, for instance the horse brushing an electric wire and dying without knowing the cause of its death. This provided a way into the discussion of the physical nature of spirits as against the physical nature of angels, an important doctrinal distinction, and it was as though the investigator rather than the proselyters had brought it up. Or let someone ask about original sin, and Lorin, after a |
