Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Filipino at nursing home. Mon, Nov 27, 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, November 27, 2006

Filipino at nursing home. Mon, Nov 27, 2006.

11/27/2006. 759. I went to visit someone at a nursing home in the next town over. His roommate was receiving some kind of therapy, and while waiting on the therapy machine, the therapist was free to chat. I mentioned something about his name, which was prominently displayed on his name tag, and asked where his family was from. He said the Philippines. I asked, in Tagalog, if he spoke Tagalog, and he did, plus a couple other languages. We chit-chatted about the local Filipino club and other stuff.

Due to moving, I didn't have my Book of Mormon inventory in my car. I normally have all the Filipino language Books of Mormon in my car. Murphy's Law. So I gave him one of my custom-made pass-along cards* and my calling card, that I keep in my wallet. I said I'd bring some copies of the Book of Mormon next time I visited, and leave them for him at the front desk if he wasn't there.

When he had to go back to working on my friend's roommate, I switched back to conversing with my friend.

* The church's pass-along cards are an odd-size, and are not convenient for men to carry in their wallet. So I went online to Office Depot and used one of their online standard templates, and designed one, and bought two boxes of 1000 for $15.99 per box, including shipping. You design it and see a proof online, and they ship directly to you. No need to go to the store.

I chose the template that has a main line, a small line under the main line, and text in the four corners.

The main line says: Free Book of Mormon (use a large point size)
The sub-main line says: Another Testament of Jesus Christ
The upper left corner says: From The Church / of Jesus Christ / of Latter-day Saints
The lower left corner says: Available in over / 100 languages.
The upper right corner says: www.mormon.org
The lower right corner says: Indianapolis: 317-802-9650 / Toll Free: 888-537-2200
( / = line break )

That's the Indianapolis Mission office, and that 888 number is on the church's official Book of Mormon pass-along card.

Labels: nursing home, pass-along cards