Another conference participant, Mark Toti of Carson, said that when he preaches, he likes to use relevant Bible passages that reflect what's on people's minds.
Lately, he said, given the state of the economy, he often quotes from the Book of Timothy: "There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy . . . treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."
But the majority of people they approach are not interested in being preached to, those interviewed said. Thompson couldn't put a statistic on it but said that if a dozen Witnesses spent a day knocking on doors, they might have one positive story among them at day's end.
Thompson and others described situations in which residents politely -- or not so politely -- declined to speak. Once, in Burbank, Thompson said, he was confronted by a man who answered the door holding a handgun and telling him to leave.
Henderson, who lives in Hollywood and is an administrator at St. Vincent's Medical Center, said he was recently preaching door-to-door near his home and inviting people to the conference.
"Hello, how are you this morning?" he recalled greeting one woman as she opened the door.
"Get lost," he said she replied. "And I said, 'OK, have a good day.' "
"It was a good day until you came," she said as he walked away.
The woman's neighbor was already on the congregation's do-not-call list, and that day Henderson added her as well. Those who ask not to be approached and those who are hostile to Witnesses are put on the list, he said.
In Henderson's Hollywood district, about 25 people are on it, he said.
Henderson and the others said they sometimes feel a bit down after such a response but believe the message is too important to give up.
"It's not discouraging because I guess I have to go back to the analogy of what rescue workers do," Thompson said. "If we talk to 10 people who say they don't need to be assisted, we walk away feeling good that we tried to assist people."
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raja.abdulrahim@latimes.com
