Chinese declined at restaurant. Fri, Dec 14, 2007.

12/14/2007. 932. I took the ward's two full-time missionaries (elders) to lunch at a Chinese buffet restaurant.

I placed some material on the table right after sitting down, Chinese Liahona, Chinese/English Bilingual New Testament, Simplified Chinese Book of Mormon, Traditional Chinese Book of Mormon, English Book of Mormon, and "Finding Happiness" DVD.

The waitress did a few double takes on them, but wasn't interested. We could tell from later interaction with her that her English was limited to restaurant vocabulary.

I've made little labels that I tape to the books, that say in Chinese "This book is free". A Mandarin-speaking friend did those to me, and emailed a graphic to me to use.

But she just wasn't interested, or perhaps she misunderstood and thought we were trying to sell them.

The hostess/cashier wasn't interested either.

After lunch, we stopped at a gas station so the missionaries could buy some snacks and so I could get a newspaper, but we didn't see any opportunities there.

Some investigators lived in an apartment complex on the way back to the missionaries' apartment. And since the missionaries are on bicycles this week (trading their car off with another set of elders), we stopped by there so they could drop in. They actually saw two households of investigators/contacts, and introduced themselves to a friend of one of them.