Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Hindi at restaurant. Mon, Oct 9, 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.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Hindi at restaurant. Mon, Oct 9, 2006.

10/09/2006. 731. On my way home from meeting the ESL teacher at her church, I passed a chain restaurant and felt inspired to stop there for a drink. I had to go down to the next intersection and turn around, and ended up making a detour into a drug store looking for something else before going back.

I got there just before closing and got something quick and a drink. I supposed the man behind the counter was the owner, and guessed that he was from India. When he handed me the food I said "Thank-you" in Hindi, and that elicited a smile from him. We chit-chatted a bit, and I offered him a Hindi Book of Mormon, and he accepted.

I went out to the car to retrieve it, and brought back in an English copy too. At first he only wanted the Hindi, but I pressed the English copy just a little bit, so that he could use the pair to teach Hindi to his children, and then he accepted it. I'm sure he and his whole family are 100% fluent in English, but having both languages will help his family keep the Hindi language alive if they read them.

Labels: Hindi, restaurant