Moment #587. Hindi/Bengali/Punjabi/Malayalam at home. Tues, May 23, 2006

05/23/2006. I was going to the gym this afternoon to work out. I took a couple copies of the Book of Mormon with me out to the car to restock it due to the ones I gave out yesterday.

A taxi pulled into the court-yard and let out a passenger on the other side of the parking lot. It was a taxi company that employs many drivers from East Africa. And there I was holding an Amharic Book of Mormon in my hand. "Too easy," I thought, "I'll just wait until he pulls around, because he'll drive right past me and I can flag him down."

He took a few seconds to fill out his log sheet, and pulled around the parking lot, and I flagged him down. He stopped, and I asked what languages he spoke other than English. He spoke Hindi, Bengali, Gujerati, and Arabic. I told him my church has free books in those languages, and he asked for Hindi and Bengali.

I had the wrong one in my hand, but I was standing about 3 feet from the trunk of my car, so I asked him to hold on, and I turned around, and put the Amharic back in and got out Bengali, Hindi and English Books of Mormon, and presented them to him. He thought that was cool. I offered more for any of his friends, and he asked for Punjabi and Malayalam. I said those were in the house, and asked him to hold on again.

There's no book of Mormon in Punjabi yet, but there is Gospel Fundamentals, so I retrieved one of those from inside my apartment, and the English to go along with it.

There is Gospel Fundamentals and the Joseph Smith Testimony pamphlet in Malayalam, and I had the Joseph Testimony pamphlet, but I had forgotten that I had it. I had the Malayalam Bible handy (from International Bible Society) so I retrieved that too.

I went back out and gave him the Punjabi and English Gospel Fundamentals, and the Malayalam Bible. He was very pleased. I mentioned that the church address and my card was in the books, if he wanted to learn more or visit.

He was pleasantly surprised about the encounter, and did not give any indication that I was troubling him.