Russian at EQ picnic. Mon, Sep 7, 2009.

09/07/2009. 1186. Our elders' quorum had a picnic on Labor Day. We used a picnic shelter next to a playground in the community area where a few members live.

A woman who I did not recognize as a member of the ward came to the picnic shelter and sat down on one of the benches while supervising her daughter in the play area. I encouraged one of the sisters at the picnic to greet her, which she did. She wasn't a member, but lived in the area and had just come to supervise her daughter play while she organized some papers.

As with most picnics, there was plenty of food, so after a while, I also approached her and suggested she could help herself to any of the food. She politely declined.

I detected an accent in her speech, so I asked her where her family was originally from. She said Russia, so I explained that we were a church group, and that our church had some free material in Russian if she'd like to read some. Since many Russian immigrants are Jewish, I asked if she was Jewish, and she said yes, but she still accepted the offer of material.

I excused myself to retrieve the material from my car, and to my horror, I discovered that I had not restocked the car with another Russian Book of Mormon after giving out my previous copy. But I still had a Russian Liahona, a Russian Joseph Smith Testimony pamphlet, and a "Together Forever" DVD (which has a Russian audio track) in the car.

I took them back to the picnic area. She politely accepted the Russian Liahona, and Russian and English copies of the Joseph Smith Testimony pamphlet. She declined the "Together Forever" DVD. I wrote the mission office phone number on one of them. One of the sisters joined in the conversation, saying her brother recently got back from a mission in Russia, and she wrote his phone number down for her too.