Spanish to street vender. Mon, Mar 5, 2007.

03/05/2007. Journal entry. After attending the singles Family-Home-Evening, I headed towards the Spanish-speaking missionaries' apartment on that side of town. I had some custom-made Spanish language pass-along cards that had their phone number on it, that I wanted to give them.

When I pulled into their apartment complex they were talking to an Hispanic street vendor, and buying some of his food. I parked, and took over a Spanish New Testament, an English New Testament, a Spanish Book of Mormon, an English Book of Mormon, a Special Witnesses of Christ DVD, and an Our Heavenly Father's Plan DVD which have Spanish audio tracks.

Okay, that may have been a lot to give one person, but the missionaries don't have Spanish Bibles to give out, and I like to give out Bibles to illustrate that we believe in the Bible. The missionaries are also afraid to give out any English Bible other than the KJV. However, I think it unfair for us to expect people who are trying to learn English to read the English Bible in King James (Jacobean?) English. Therefore, when I give an English Bible to someone who is not fluent in English, I give them the NIV (New International Version) Bible or New Testament. Remember that part of this project is the bilingual aspect. If that person joins the church, or seriously investigates, we can always get them a KJV Bible at that time.

The vendor can always give the two DVDs to someone else if he doesn't want to watch them, or when he's done watching them. Or he could give them back to the missionaries. I also don't mind at all if he just keeps them. I just really want gospel material, of whatever sort, Bible, Book of Mormon, Gospel Fundamentals, Gospel Principles, videos, DVDs, Liahona magazines to be "out there" so that Heavenly Father has "touch-points," so to speak, to use when people are ready for the gospel or even if they are only ready for some kind of contact or information.

I gave the business-card sized pass-along cards to the Elders, too. The generic Book of Mormon pass-along card I made in English has the local mission office number on it, but no one at that office speaks Spanish. So I wanted the Spanish speaking missionaries to have something with their apartment's phone number on it to give out. There will very likely always be Spanish-speaking missionaries in that apartment, so that number should be good for a while. Also on the same card was the phone number for the Spanish speaking missionaries on the East side of town. (Example: Indianapolis (East) call ###-####. And: Indianpaolis (West) call ###-####. And it's in Spanish, of course.) So I'm giving half the cards to the other Spanish speaking missionaries too.

I realize I interrupted the conversation the missionaries were having with him, but it was a quick in-and-out. And it provided them material and more talking points to have with the gentleman, even if the only benefit was him asking the elders "Who was that crazy guy, and what's this stuff all about?"