Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Moment #623. Chinese at Asian grocery. Fri, Jun 23, 2006.

Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon

(One drop at a time.) My journal entries about offering copies of the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and other LDS church books, mainly to immigrants in their native language, mainly in Indianapolis, Indiana. With 106 translations, the Book of Mormon (along with the Bible) is a good "Rosetta Stone" for learning English or other languages, in addition to being a missionary tool.

My goals in keeping this blog/journal are: to encourage others to offer people copies of the Book of Mormon and the Bible, to illustrate the incredible number of recent immigrants who are eager for bilingual material, to illustrate the ease of encountering them and offering them material, and to make known the wonderful deeds of the Lord (Ps 105:1, Isa 12:4) in arranging many of these encounters. I realize that the concept of offering foreign language books to strangers is just plain weird to many people, so here are some hints if you are intrigued by this and wish to try it. Respectful comments and constructive criticism are invited.

The goal of the book placement effort is to provide, in a friendly non-threatening way, gospel material to someone who is willing to receive it in their native language and English.

To the recipients of these books who read this: I thank you again for allowing me to be of service to you. I encourage you to read the material, and pray to God that He confirm the truth of it to you. The Bible and the Book of Mormon are both the Word of God. Living according to their teachings brings happiness.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Moment #623. Chinese at Asian grocery. Fri, Jun 23, 2006.

06/23/2006. On my way home I passed an Asian grocery store that I haven't been to in a while. I forget if I made a placement there before. After a while, it pays to follow up in case they might want to meet the missionaries and know more, but also because of employee turnover, or there might be new owners.

I went in carrying two multi-lingual DVDs, "Together Forever" and "Finding Happiness".

I bought some noodles, some Chinese dates, and some gel-snacks. If you want a unique treat, shop at an Asian grocery store in their snacks aisle for cool stuff.

After paying I offered the cashier the DVD's. He was enthusiastic about them, and he was not turned off when I said they were from my church. The other employee came over and he was interested too.

His enthusiasm led me to offer a Chinese Liahona magazine, and a Book of Mormon, so he followed me out to my car, and I gave him those. The Liahona is in traditional Chinese script, and they were from mainland China, but the Book of Mormon I gave them was in simplified script. He didn't want the English Book of Mormon at first, saying he couldn't read English well, but I went into explanation mode, opened both to 1 Nephi 1:1, and read it while pointing to both, and he seemed to catch the parallel reading idea.

Labels: Chinese, grocery