Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Vietnamese at restaurant. Thu, Feb 15, 2007.

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.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Vietnamese at restaurant. Thu, Feb 15, 2007.

02/15/2007. 794. A friend and I went out to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant that we haven't been to before. I took in a Vietnamese and an English Book of Mormon, and put them face down on the table. We ordered, and while waiting on the food, I turned the Vietnamese book face up. Our waitress was Vietnamese. I asked her if she liked to read in Vietnamese and she said yes. I offered her the Vietnamese Book of Mormon, said it was free and was from our church. She seemed eager and started flipping through it. But when she realized it was Christian material, she very politely begged off, saying she was Buddhist, and gave it back. I accepted it graciously, and put it back on the table, between myself and the edge of the table. But before leaving us, she changed her mind, and asked for it again. This made me think she was accepting it just to be polite, but I'm not sure on that. She was not really fluent in English, so I think the curiosity of reading something in Vietnamese and English overcame her reluctance to accept Christian material. She accepted the English edition too.

Labels: restaurant, Vietnamese