Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Spanish declined at laundromat. Thu, Oct 4, 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.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Spanish declined at laundromat. Thu, Oct 4, 2007.

10/04/2007. 895. I was doing a late laundry run at the 24-hour laundromat. The lady using the folding table next to mine looked like she could have been Native American or Hispanic. Her T-shirt had a Native American theme, so I asked if she was a Native American. She was. She said she was also from a country in Central America.

She spoke Spanish fluently, and said she spoke another language besides English. I offered her a Book of Mormon in Spanish, but she politely declined. She said she knew members of the church back in her home country. I gave her a custom pass-along card, and suggested any of her other friends who spoke some of the other languages she mentioned could call and get a free Book of Mormon in their language. She accepted that card. She also mentioned several other languages, but I wasn't sure if they were her languages or her friends'.

It was a polite and friendly encounter, but she just wasn't interested in receiving any material. She did claim some knowledge about the LDS church, and mentioned Joseph Smith, so she probably had already learned as much as she wanted.

Labels: laundromat, Spanish declined