Moment #537. Chinese. Sat, Mar 11, 2006.

03/11/2006. Tonight I decided to eat at a new Chinese restaurant. I first saw it on the night of Thursday March 2nd. That night I felt that I was "tugged" by the Spirit to a nearby gas station, and when I pulled into a parking spot, I noticed this restaurant across the street at a location that previous had a Chinese buffet restaurant.

There is an elderly lady who lives near this restaurant who regularly goes to our singles Family Home Evening at church. She's a good cook, and regularly brings extra food to our Monday night dinners that we have as part of Family Home Evening. It occurred to me to invite her to be my dinner companion. So I called her and invited her and she accepted.

I took in my small bag with 2 Simplified Chinese, 2 Traditional Chinese, and 2 English Books of Mormon.

The restaurant had been redecorated very nicely. It was no longer a buffet, but an upscale sit-down restaurant. We were seated at a regular 4-person table. But there were two other big round tables with about 10 people sitting at each. Much of the menu was in Chinese, and all the other patrons when we got there were Asian.

Our waitress said she was from Malaysia, and she said the other wait staff was from China.

After we placed our orders I went out to my car and brought in my bigger book bag that had an Indonesian Book of Mormon in it. Malaysian and Indonesian are basically the same written language.

I put the Chinese and Indonesian and English Books of Mormon on our table. When our waitress came back, I offered her the Indonesian Book of Mormon, but she indicated she already had the Simplified Chinese Book of Mormon from her uncle who is Mormon. There are two brothers who are members of my ward, who are ethnic Chinese from Malaysia, and who speak Mandarin and Indonesian/Malaysian.

The next time she came to our table, I asked her who her uncle was, and she said his first name. It was one of the brothers I know at church! I then told her his last name, and she confirmed it was indeed him, and she then gave the names of her two other uncles, whom I've also met. Cool!

She declined to receive more books, but I took out an "info flyer" that lists the address of the local chapels, and wrote down the name and number of a local Anglo member who speaks both Mandarin and English and who is a very good friend of her uncles' family. She didn't know him, but he helped teach and baptize her uncles years ago.

When we were done eating, another waitress brought and collected the check. This waitress was from China, and hadn't seen the Book of Mormon before. She accepted a Simplified Chinese version and an English copy. Hopefully, she'll have a conversation about it with the other girl who's the neice of the members I know.