NATCHEZ — Beating the pavement in the Mississippi heat — when even in spring temperatures are already in the 80s — might not seem like the kind of every day job many would want.

But for two temporary Miss-Lou residents, it’s a calling.

When The Dart found Elder Cooper Brown and Elder Raymond Lopez on Wood Avenue, they were making door-to-door visits as part of their mission work with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — colloquially known as the Mormon church.

Brown, 21, has been on mission for 21 months, having served in Louisiana and the McComb and Liberty areas. Lopez was ending only his third week of mission work.

“All day, every day, this is pretty much what we do, getting out and talking to people,” Brown said.

Natchez is a long way from home for both of them — Brown is from Utah, while Lopez is from the San Diego, Calif., area. The assignment to the area comes from the LDS church’s leadership — the leaders pray over each missionary application and then assign them a region — but the missionaries pay their own way.

“It’s a misconception a lot of people have that this something we have to do as part of our religion,” Brown said. “It’s all volunteer — nobody pays us for it.”

The decision to do mission work wasn’t easy, but it made sense after prayer and reflection, Lopez said

“At first, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I like it,” he said.

“Growing up in the church, it is missionaries that are held up and you are told, ‘That is what you want to do, get out and tell people about Jesus Christ.’ But you also want to do other things — a lot of times life gets in the way of Jesus Christ, so the thing that decided it for me was He put himself first for me, so I put myself first for Him, because I want people to know and experience what I have experienced.”

Sometimes people don’t necessarily want to hear that message and will slam the door in their faces when they approach with an offer of church literature and an opportunity to discuss it. The only way to respond to a slam is to laugh, Brown said.

“We know we can’t make them do anything they don’t want to do,” Lopez said.

For the most part, that’s now what the experience of mission work in the area has been like, though.

“The people here have been some of the nicest I have ever met,” Brown said. “They have been very kind. We even had a family who was sitting down to eat when we came, and they invited us in to eat.”

And other times, the missionaries have been able to serve people in ways they wouldn’t have anticipated when they knocked on a door.

“We met someone who was having a bad day, and she said we were an answer to prayer that someone would come and reaffirm that God loves her,” Brown said. “It makes it worth it to help someone like that.”