Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: French and Wolof at home improvement store. Tue, Dec 5, 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.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

French and Wolof at home improvement store. Tue, Dec 5, 2006.

12/05/2006. 764. A lady friend and I went to a home improvement store to shop for some utility cabinets to supplement the cabinets in the kitchen of my new apartment. She also has a vehicle with enough room to transport a large box.

We picked out an assemble-yourself free-standing cabinet. I went to get a cart, and she flagged down a couple employees to load it on our cart. One of them spoke with an accent, so I asked where he was from. He said Senegal, and his co-worker was from Senegal too.

I asked "Parlez vous francais?", and he said oui. I then asked "Parlez vous Wolof?" and he said oui. He then asked, in French, if I spoke Wolof, and I said "Tuuti Wolof rek laa degg" which means "I only speak a little Wolof."

I offered them the Book of Mormon in French, and our Sunday School manual in Wolof, and they agreed to see them. I said we'd pay for the cabinet, take it out, and come back with the books. I gave them my calling card and a home-made pass-along card in case we couldn't find them later.

Oh, and it might have helped that my lady friend is from Africa too. She's one of the stalwards of the local LDS community. She and her family have been members for over 27 years.

We got the cabinet out to her vehicle, and I retrieved the books from my car. I got them French and English Books of Mormon, Wolof and English copies of the Joseph Smith testimony pamphlet, and Wolof copies of Gospel Fundamentals. My car inventory was out of English Gospel Fundamentals, and I've lost track of them in the move. The local info-flyer with the chapels and meeting times was in all the books.

We went back in and found them again, and presented the books to them. They were very very pleased. One of them said "jere jeff" to me which is Wolof for "thank-you." And when I replied "amul solo", which is Wolof for "you're welcome", they seemed even more happy.

I'll have to find my English Gospel Fundamentals and go back, and invite them to visit church.

Labels: French, Wolof