“Does anyone know who these people are?”

Photo by PoPville flickr user LaTur

“Dear PoPville,

I’ve had a few weird interactions lately and was wondering if anyone else has experienced the same thing. Three times in the past couple of months, two young women have stopped me while walking downtown near my office. They ask if I’d like to come to their study group and launch into a speech about “God the mother.”

The first time it happened, I didn’t think too much of it – they’re perfectly friendly but something about it is fairly aggressive.

They stand very close to you, don’t break eye contact, and don’t give you a chance to get a word in to politely decline their offer. They tried to show me a Bible verse, at which point I had a chance to say I wasn’t interested and said goodbye. I ran into the same thing about a month later, and the women said the exact same things.

Today this happened for a third time, but this time as I approached my office I noticed two young women talking with a tall, middle-aged man. I saw him point at me and then he stood aside as they approached me and gave me the whole speech. It just set off a lot of “this is weird” alarms.

Does anyone know who these people are? I’ve worked in this area for a couple of years and have only run into this in the past couple of months. All three of these interactions happened on K St, between Farragut Square and McPherson Square. Each time it was two young women who looked to be in their early twenties.”