Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Bengali at restaurant. Wed, Oct 6, 2010.

10/06/2010. 1257. It was getting towards dinner-time, and I didn't want to fix supper at home so I tried to figure out which restaurant to go to. I was trying to decide between a sit-down Chinese restaurant and a Chinese buffet. I was leaning towards the buffet while I was out doing some errands prior to eating. However, before I turned down the street to go to the Chinese buffet, it seemed like the Spirit was tugging me to a different shopping center a few blocks away.

As I got there, I still wasn't sure which restaurant to go to. But as I looked at the signs in front of the shopping center, I saw the name of one restaurant, and it seemed like the Spirit was directing me there. I've been there before, it's a national chain (and non-ethnic), and I didn't remember any ethnic employees.

I haven't been as close to the Spirit lately, so I wasn't sure about the promptings, but it felt stronger than the normal "background noise" so I decided to give it a shot.

Several of the employees looked Hispanic, but the cashier looked South Asian (from India). As I got to the cashier, he obviously had an accent, but when I guessed he was from India, he corrected me and said he was from Bangladesh.

There was no one immediately behind me in line, so I ventured to offer him a free book in Bangla (Bengali) from my church and he was very interested, and accepted the offer. I said I'd go out to the car and get him one. I made sure he knew it was Christian religious material, and he was fine with that. I also asked if it was okay to give it to him while he was on duty, and he said that was okay too. In fact, he wanted it then, and was very positive when I said I had one in the car.

After paying, I took my food to a table, then went out and retrieved a Bengali copy and an English copy of the Book of Mormon from my car. When I went back in, no one else was at the cashier station, so I had the chance to go and present it. He was very grateful for it.

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1 Comments:

At 10/19/2010 02:14:00 PM, Anonymous ldsfamily said...

My husband and I take people on LDS Temple Tours about 3-4 times a year. This last September, our group went up to Alaska. Our first temple we attended was in Anchorage. When my husband took the first group to the temple, the driver turned to him and asked him...can I go in that building. When I arrived with the second group for the next session, my husband had spent the last 2 hours teaching this good man about the gospel. When he was telling me about it, two ladies pulled into the parking lot asking to find a family history center. They said they weren't members of the church, but might be interested. The mission president was having a zone conference inside the church building that shares a parking lot with the temple. My husband was able to get the attention of a missionary and they came to set up appointments with the ladies. He gave our driver my traveling copy of the Book of Mormon and let the missionaries know about him also.
On the way home we were unexpectedly delayed, so our driver in Seattle got a Book of Mormon and all of the primary teachers on the bus sang him the articles of faith. We've been doing trips for 12 years, and it doesn't always happen like that, but it can. http://www.ldstempletrips.com

 

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