Chinese DVD declined. Mon, Nov 13, 2006.

11/13/2006. 746. I had lunch at one of my favorite nearby buffets. I've placed a couple books in the past here, but don't remember with whom. I placed a "Finding Happiness" DVD in Asian languages on my table. When the employee (the only one visible since I had come in) came by collecting plates, she didn't seem to notice it, so I offered it to her. She didn't verbalize a response, but her facial expression and body English said no, so I didn't press.

It was one of those cases where I couldn't figure out what her reluctance was about, so I didn't know how to respond. Some recent immigrants need glasses to read, and don't know how to obtain them here. So, not being able to read the title, she may have thought the DVD was in English. The title of the DVD is on the cover in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English, but it is hard to read. So she may not have known it was in Mandarin, and assumed it was in English, and declined because she didn't understand English outside of restaurant vocabulary.

She may have remembered me from a previous visit if I had given a Book of Mormon to her, and was not interested in any more Christian material.

Or, she may already be of Christian faith, and if I had already given her a Book of Mormon, she may have mistakenly thought LDS are not Christian. This is also easy to do since the title of the Book of Mormon in Chinese reads "Mormon Bible" instead of "Mormon Book." The Chinese symbol we use in the title of the Book of Mormon is the same symbol they use for "Bible." So it's difficult to convey the idea that we use the Book of Mormon in addition to the Bible, not to replace it. And I had forgotten to place a Chinese Bible on the table.