Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon: Punjabi at gas station. Thu, Sep 1, 2011.

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.

Thursday, September 01, 2011

Punjabi at gas station. Thu, Sep 1, 2011.

09/01/2011. 1292. Wow. It's been too long since my last placement attempt. Since the last blog entry, I've had a couple of missed opportunities that I didn't blog. It's too easy to get out of the habit, of offering people material, and of blogging.

Tonight I was on my way home from a friend's house and due to a road closure, I had to take a different way home than I normally do. I passed a gas station where I think I had offered/placed material a couple of years ago. Gas stations usually have some turnover of employees, so I figured it was time to try again.

I went in a bought a newspaper, and the two cashiers seemed South Asian (ie, from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh).

I asked my cashier if he spoke Hindi or Punjabi, and he said Punjabi. I offered him a book in Punjabi from my church, and he agreed to receive it. I made sure he knew it was Christian material, and he was okay with that. So I went out to the car and retrieved a Punjabi copy of the Joseph Smith testimony. I wrote the phone number from the Book of Mormon pass along card (888-537-2200) on it, the local mission office number, and my name and number. I went back in and offered it to him, and he graciously and gratefully accepted it. The other cashier seemed interested too.

Labels: gas station, Punjabi