In the course of the last 3 years, I've had just one visit from JWs: A visit from from an old Bethel roomate and another elder, just to check up on me, and see if I might want to rejoin the fold. You might well be able to imagine my responses.
Then, last weekend, a nice young fellow (Mitch) and his young (teenage) daughter, stopped by, while I was working in the yard. Offered me the Keep On The Watch brochure. Oddly enough, as I was disposing of recycle materials at the apartment, I found one of those brochures in the trash (rather like going to Goodwill LOL). So I told Mitch that I already had that brochure , and we proceeded to talk about the "signs," e.g., earthquakes (I mentioned the USGS site and had in mind Carl Jonson's works), pestilences (I mentioned the Black Plague), and he rapidly retreated to "it's the perception that matters." I invited him to take a Star Trek time-warp back through history, and re-visited a couple of things (like the American wild-west, and the French revolution), and how that every generation has its "regrets" about how things used to be. I even reminded him about the biblical proverb that 'it's foolishness for a man to say that the former days were better than now,' as evidence that such subjective perceptions are just that: foolishness.
At the close of the conversation, when I said I was happier now, after having been a baptized JW for 40 years (more years than this young fellow has even lived), he said, and I quote: "I'm sorry to hear that."
I also very explicitly told him that I had no problem with JWs as people, but that my problem was with the WTS as an intellectually dishonest organization. I invited him back, and also intimated that he might to make a mark on the territory card of my address as a "do not call." He said he wouldn't do that. We'll see.
My "effectiveness" in conversing with Mitch became almost irrelevant. When he and his daughter walked away, and I walked back to my yardwork, (to repeat) the primary thought that ran through me head was "He came to my home, offering me happiness; I said I am happy, and he said he was sorry to hear that."
Perhaps, as in my case, just another example of "when you're ready to really face the truth, you're ready."
Craig