"You knock on the door very simply, you say, 'Bonjour, Madame. Nous sommes deux jeunes Americains,'" Romney would recall. "That means 'We are two young Americans.' And continuing, 'We're talking to people in your neighborhood about our faith and wonder if you'd like to ...' BANG! The door shuts. And most people assumed we were salesmen and said, 'No, I don't want any,' and would shut the door. A lot of people would say, 'Americans? Get out of Vietnam!' BANG!"

Romney became a passionate defender of America's role in Vietnam. And he worked hard to memorize key French words and phrases that would help in his missionary work.

"Whenever we had a discussion he hadn't learned, he would go have a long, hot bath, and when he would come out, he would have the discussion memorized," Miller recalled. "I was dumbfounded."

Romney also stood out for his rarefied background. One of his fellow missionaries, Gerald Anderson, now an Alberta agrologist, recalled how Romney, on a trip to Paris, stunned everyone with his familiarity with the fine French perfumes in a shop on the Champs Elysees.

At the urging of a church official from Utah, Romney encouraged his fellow missionaries to read "Think and Grow Rich!" a 1937 self-help book by Napoleon Hill that had been reissued in 1960. The book argued that wealth and success grew out of the rigorous application of personal beliefs. There was little that was rich or comfortable in the missionary experience, but fellow missionaries say Romney applied himself with the faith of a true believer.

In the "Conversion Diary," then a newsletter of the French Mission, he is mentioned repeatedly for standout numbers of hours spent door-knocking, numbers of copies of the Book of Mormon distributed and numbers of invitations for return visits. He was promoted through the ranks, first to zone leader in Bordeaux, and then to the highest position attainable by a missionary, that of assistant to the mission president in Paris.

But his time in Paris was marred by the car accident that killed Leola Anderson, wife of the mission president, Duane Anderson. Romney was driving when the crowded Citroen was hit by another car.

Romney's injuries were serious enough that his father asked Mitt's brother-in-law, Dr. Bruce Robinson, to fly to France to oversee the medical care. But within a few weeks, Mitt was seemingly back to normal, and his friends were struck by how quickly he threw himself back into work, determined not to let the tragedy slow the mission.

"His resilience was truly astounding," said Joel H. McKinnon, who was the senior assistant to the president in the mission home. "He would have 20 ideas in 35 minutes, and it'd take me a week to have that many.... He didn't seem to be particularly pensive or particularly concerned about the accident, as to what had happened to him and how close he'd come to death.... He was back and ready to work."