One of my earliest recollections of going out in field service. North Hollywood, CA, 1965. I was 11 years old and I was tagging along with my mom who was tagging along with Sister Alice, the woman who brought my mother into the "Truth".
It had been a morning of the typical knocking on doors, people either being not-at-home or just plain not-interested. We were about to call it a day when we knocked on the door of a man who was very eager to talk religion! But he was the victor in this conversation, and he was very keen on sharing with us his "proof" of what he had to say.
He told us that Jesus had given up on the planet Earth and was now concentrating his efforts on the planet Mars. After talking on the porch for a few minutes, he invited us in his house to listen to a tape recording of the ruler of Mars giving a speech to Earthlings. (As others on this site have previously stated, you just can't make this kind of shit up!!!)
To the best of my memory, his house just looked like a typical old man's house, complete with the typical old man smell. But he had this huge reel-to-reel tape recorder, and he put the tape into place and began to play it to us. It had weird background music on it while somebody gave a speech about life on Mars.
This was a long time ago. I can't remember exactly what was said on the tape recorder except that people on Mars could live forever, but typically they would get bored with living after a few hundred years and would willingly go into chambers and kill themselves. (Kinda the same feeling I have now thinking about living forever in a world with Jehovahs Witnesses, except my boredom would set in long before a few hundred years!)
Well, we left after listening to this old man's tape, and I remember Sister Alice saying to my mom, "You don't think any of that is true do you???"
"Oh, c'mon now Alice! You know it's not true! He probably worked for one of the movie studios and got that tape from the set of Star Trek or Twilight Zone!"
Of course, now that I am grown and know The Truth About The Truth, I lie awake at night wondering if I hadn't passed up my only opportunity at eternal life on the Planet Mars????