Sorry this is long but you asked a lot of questions...

It really depends on the area. I served in Guatemala and it was really successful. My brother served in Spain and had very little success. Latin America is really booming right now. Europe not so much.

We would usually try for 2 or 3 baptisms a month per companionship (you are always with at least 1 other person). The entire mission would get over 100 people a month. In Spain they were lucky with a few people a year. The thing is that a lot of those who are baptized go to church for a few weeks or months but then stop going.

The strategies are a lot like being a salesman. They teach you how to use your speech to be convincing. You ask open ended questions. You ask direct questions like "will you" not "would you like to." You mimic people, repeat what they say back to them, etc. Many missionaries actually go on to sales jobs after their mission. There is a security alarm company that basically only hires returned missionaries to do door to door sales because the skills transfer over directly.

We don't give any gifts except for free copies of church books. We do a lot service though. We build houses, paint houses, work fields, whatever people need help with. I was in Guatemala so I did a lot of working on corn fields, hauling water from the well, building little shacks for houses, chopping wood to cook, etc.

Mostly we just talk. There are 6 discussions to teach the basics of the church before you are baptized. We try to get them to set a baptism date and promise to be baptized by the 3rd discussion. These are lessons that we have studied. Before you actually had to memorize word for word these lessons like a script, but now they have changed to a new system and you have to touch certain topics but you can pick any order and use your own words.

Many days I was glad to be done. I would often be so tired I would skip dinner and just go to bed. We had to wakeup at 6:30 everyday and then shower fast and eat. The rest of the morning till around 9:30 was time to study. We left at 9:30 and stayed out until 9:30 at night. We did get a lunch in the afternoon but dinner wasn't until 9:30 when we got home.

I am glad I did it. Even though I don't believe the things I taught now. It was an experience I wouldn't trade for anything. I was able to visit a foreign country, learn a 2nd language, learn skills like chopping wood, planting and harvesting corn, etc., meet amazing people, see how people live in other parts of the world. I was in mountain villages with indigenous people in very 3rd world conditions (no running water, cooking with wood stoves etc). It was an eye opener. I have now gone on to study Latin American Studies, and Linguistics. I learned Portuguese as well and spent awhile living and working in Brazil. The experience has had a big effect on my life.

We would sometimes run into other people who were out also proselytizing. There were no territories staked out. We would actually go through every single house in the town/village and when we finished we would start over again and revisit the same places again.

We did often run into pastors etc. of other religions. We would knock on a door and it turns out to be the pastor. Sometimes they were cool and we had good discussions. Sometimes they just wanted to argue. We would also get people who wanted to argue from other religions. Every time I met a 7th day adventists, they would ask me what the 4th commandment was and then start arguing about which day was the sabbath day. Jehova's Witnesses would also like to pull out their bible and start quoting verses.

The thing is that I know the bible very well. I can bible bash with the best of them and can quote verses till the cows come home. I actually had a list of bible verses to strike down most of the common arguments brought forth by other religions against us.

Usually when someone just wanted to argue we would move on and not waste our time with them. We weren't there to annoy people or fight. We really only wanted people who were actually interested. We would rather have someone tell us they weren't interested than waste our time with people who pretended to be interested just to be nice.

Sometimes though I would sit and argue with people. I love to debate and I would like to think I am pretty good at it. So I would sometimes have fun just ripping their arguments apart using the bible.