Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Polish at Post Office. Fri, Oct 5, 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.

Friday, October 05, 2007

Polish at Post Office. Fri, Oct 5, 2007.

10/05/2007. 896. I checked my PO Box at the Post Office. As I was passing through the lobby, there was a lady with a small boy talking to him in a foreign language. It sounded Eastern European. At an appropriate moment, and from a respectful distance I asked her what language she was speaking. She said Polish.

I said the reason I asked is that my church as free books in Polish. I offered her the Book of Mormon in Polish. I forget the order of what we said, but she asked which church, and I responded. At first she said to just give her a phone number to call, but when I said I could bring in a copy from the car, she agreed to see it.

I went out and brought in a Polish copy and an English copy. She accepted both. I asked if she was going to the International Festival at the State Fairgrounds the first weekend in November. She didn't know about it. So I wrote down the info on a piece of paper, and told her the local Polish club usually has a booth there. She didn't know about the local Polish club, and was definitely interested in making contact.

More of the back-story...

I wasn't going to check my PO box that day. But I had a flat tire (fortunately I had a good spare tire) and took my car to a repair shop that happened to be near the Post Office. After getting a new tire (it was a side puncture, so the tire couldn't be fixed), and some other car work that I needed anyway, I decided to check my PO Box while I was in the area.

There was actually a tire repair shop down the street from where I had the flat, but they were booked up all day with appointments, and the next nearest store (of this tire store chain that I like) was near my Post Office.

While I was changing the flat tire, and lifting five boxes of the Book of Mormon out of my trunk so I could get to the spare tire underneath them, I realized that this event was going to put me on a path that I would not otherwise have been on that day. I started to think "Aha. Something interesting is going to happen."

Labels: Polish, Post Office