Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Urdu at restaurant (Church out of Urdu BoM.) Tue, Aug 28, 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, August 28, 2007

Urdu at restaurant (Church out of Urdu BoM.) Tue, Aug 28, 2007.

08/28/2007. 873. The manager of the restaurant where I had supper spoke four languages, Urdu, Punjabi, Arabic, and English.

The Punjabi material that the church has (the Gospel Fundamentals Sunday school manual, and the Joseph Smith Testimony pamphlet) is written in a Hindi script. But Punjabi-speakers from Pakistan use a modified Arabic script for Punjabi, so she couldn't read the church's Punjabi material. She's not the first person I've run into who has explained this. The Punjabi language being written in several different scripts is explained here.

She wasn't interested in Arabic material, but she did want Urdu material.

Unfortunately, I'm all out of give-away copies of the Urdu Book of Mormon. I have two left, one of which is on display somewhere, and one copy I want to keep in case I need to make photocopies. I don't get any response when I write to the Salt Lake Distribution center about it.

So I gave her an Urdu and English copy of the Joseph Smith Testimony pamphlet. I also offered her an Arabic/English bilingual (diglot) Bible, but she asked if I had any in Urdu. I did, but they were back home. I had bought a couple Urdu Bibles from the International Bible Society. So I told her I'd bring her one next time. I'll make a special trip there to give her one.

Update: December 2007. The church has come out with the full Urdu Book of Mormon.

Labels: restaurant, Urdu