Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Chinese at Restaurant. Tue, Mar 20, 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.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Chinese at Restaurant. Tue, Mar 20, 2007.

03/20/2007. 805. I went to a Chinese restaurant not far from where I now live. It's in a shopping district that is convenient. Since it is within reasonable distance, and I figured I'd be back, I decided to try a recently new approach and offer material on the second visit. But I did take in the current Liahona magazine in English to read.

After eating and paying the waitress, I started to leave, and the hostess/cashier was at the cashier counter. I read something on the wall in the lobby that caught my attention, and decided to go back and strike up a conversation with the hostess/cashier.

I found out that the staff is from various places China and Hong Kong, and they speak both main dialects, Mandarin and Cantonese. The hostess spoke Mandardin and her husband spoke both Mandarin and Cantonese, so I offered the couples video "Together Forever" to her since it has a Cantonese audio track. She said she didn't have time to watch it, so I asked if she liked to read. She said she did, so I offered her the Book of Mormon in Chinese and English. I didn't say it was the Book of Mormon, but I did say it was from my church, and that it was Christian.

She agreed to see the book, so I went out to my car and retrieved three copies of the Book of Mormon, one each in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and English. I also brought in a "Finding Happiness" DVD and a "Together Forever" DVD, just to show her the cover. She accepted all three books, plus the "Finding Happiness" DVD, which is only five minutes.

Labels: Chinese, restaurant