Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Signing on the missionaries. Sun, Nov 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.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Signing on the missionaries. Sun, Nov 4, 2007.

11/04/2007. Journal entry. Our ward's missionaries seemed to have caught the vision of international language placements when they received a referral from Temple Square to deliver a Chinese Book of Mormon, to someone who had requested one while visiting Temple Square. Last Friday the 2nd, I had delivered a couple Chinese copies of the Book of Mormon to them for that purpose.

As I was chatting with them about my Book placements, they seemed to catch the vision. So I offered to give them a supply of foreign language translations if they'd keep them in their car. The senior companion agreed.

Today, Sunday the 4th, I gave them a first installment of a "car kit" with 22 different translations, plus a couple more English: Amharic, Arabic, Chinese-simplified script, Chinese-traditional script, French, Haitian, Hindi, Igbo, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Lingala, Portuguese, Russian, Shona Spanish, Swahili, Telugu, Thai, TWi, Vietnamese, and Zulu.

I believe there were Post-it notes in all the copies, denoting 3rd Nephi chapter 11-26, and Moroni 10:3-5. All had info-flyers listing the chapels in town. All were in zip-lock plastic bags to keep out dirt and moisture.

Labels: ideas, missionaries