Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Romanian declined at grocery store. Sat, Aug 18, 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.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Romanian declined at grocery store. Sat, Aug 18, 2007.

08/18/2007. 867. I was shopping at a grocery store that was on the way home, after leaving the evening session of Stake Conference. In the store, I passed by two young adult men, 20-somethings, who appeared to be brothers and were speaking a foreign language. They came out of the store just a few seconds after I did, and so I asked them in the parking lot what languages they spoke other than English. They said Romanian. I offered them a free book in Romanian from my church, and one asked what church. After I answered, he said "We're Orthodox" in a tone that indicated he was declining the offer. I wanted to continue the discussion, but the tone of his "We're Orthodox" response was rather dismissive, so I didn't intrude any more upon them.

I did give the other young man a customized pass-along card, so they have something in case they get curious. I like those over the standard ones because it also says "Available in over 100 languages", whereas the church-produced cards don't mention foreign languages.

Labels: grocery, Romanian declined