Punjabi at restaurant. Mon, Nov 5, 2007.
11/05/2007. 912. After leaving the Chinese restaurant, I shopped at a nearly "dollar" store for some stuff. Then as I got in the car, I felt a "tug" towards a discount department store in the same shopping center. The "tug" didn't exceed the "obvious" threshhold, but was of sufficient intensity that I believed I should follow that prompting based on past experience.
So I went into the discount department store with my eyes open for an opportunity. Inside near the entrance was a fast food restaurant of a chain known to have many franchisees from India. I backtracked a little to see who was working there, and I saw an employee with a turban, and realized he was from Punjab.
I went in and bought a soda and struck up a conversation with him, and offered him the Punjabi translation of our Gospel Fundamentals Sunday school manual. He agreed to see it, so I went out to the car and got it, along with an English translation, and Punjabi and English copies of the Joseph Smith testimony pamphlet. He politely received them and started to flip through it. He declined the English Gospel Fundamentals though.
Labels: Punjabi, restaurant
posted by Bookslinger @ 7:15 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I think a straightforward approach to getting people to read the bible has a backfire effect on Christianity. I was appalled as a kid because there were people on the street shoving the Holy Bible in my face. (I'm a Christian now, it's just destiny.) But then again, is there another way to bring people to becoming Christians? If you don't spread the word , who would ?
God bless you.
I try to be careful not to shove material on anyone. I explain that it's a book from my church, and is Christian (and free) up front, and then I ask if they want to see it. And if they say yes, then I go get it from my car.
An exception is when I eat in at a restaurant, I'll put the books on the table while I'm eating. But in that situation, I'm basically "renting" that table for a few minutes while I eat, so I have a license, so to speak, to put my personal effects on the table.
Although I have been bold a few times, and given a book to people before they had a chance to say "no", those constitute less than 2% of encounters.
The vast majority of people do want to receive the material, and most are genuinely enthusiastic to boot.
It's a trade off. If I avoid offending a very small minority, then I also miss out on pleasing the vast majority.
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