Flooding the Earth with the.... Bible.

I've written before that my mission president, over 25 years ago, sent my companion and I to Chinese restaurants with Chinese copies of the Book of Mormon. No baptisms resulted, but we had some "Hmmmm" moments. I forget if we paired them with Spanish copies or not.

I still attribute that as my main inspiration for this Book of Mormon distribution project. Here is another item which I believe influenced my thinking on the importance of scriptures.

I've recently given thought to a book that I read in my youth, God's Smuggler, by Andrew van der Bijl, a.k.a. "Brother Andrew."

Starting in the 1950's Brother Andrew smuggled Bibles and other religious literature into communist countries. He started an organization called "Open Doors" that currently ministers to persecuted Christians worldwide, and distributes millions of Bibles annually.

The LDS church owes much to various other churches and denominations that have prepared most of the undeveloped world to receive the fullness of the restored Gospel. Although LDS missionaries went to Latin America early on (prior to 1850), serious efforts to establish a presence did not begin until the 1970's. Yet the Catholic church had a presence that coincided with the arrival of the Europeans. And, Protestants (especially Evangelical denominations) made considerable inroads in Latin America starting in the 1950's.

In the African continent, the LDS church had a presence only in the country of South Africa prior to 1978, and actively proselyted only caucasians prior to the revelation on priesthood. Again, the presence of Catholics and Protestants long pre-dated the LDS church's effort.

Many peoples and nations who had little or no knowledge of Christ in their culture were given a basic understanding of God, Christ, the Atonement, the principles of repentance and forgiveness, redemption, and resurrection, by our brothers and sisters in other churches.

Therefore, those who later received the Mormon missionaries had already received the basics. Those other churches did a lot of the ground-work, infusing significant swaths of many cultures with a basic knowledge of Christianity, which essentially saved the LDS church decades of time and effort, and made the one-on-one preaching and teaching as done by individual LDS missionaries much easier and quicker. Most of the hard work of cultural transformation had already been done, compared to the "pre-Christian" state of those peoples and nations.

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Other Bible societies of which I am a fan are:

International Bible Society, now called Biblica. (Sells non-English Bibles.)

American Bible Society. (Sells Bibles in many languages here.)

United Bible Societies.

English at gas station. Sat, Sep 26, 2009.

09/26/2009. 1191. I was in another town for a church fair. Before leaving that town I felt inspired to stop at a certain gas station. I went in and purchased some soda. I was the only customer so I had opportunity to talk to the cashier. I said I liked to give out Bibles and I asked if he'd like a free one. He wasn't too enthusiastic, but said okay. I went out to my car and brought back in a plastic zip-lock bag containing an inexpensive Kings James Bible, and an English Book of Mormon. I presented the Bible and he accepted it. I pointed out the 3 pass-along cards I had put inside the front cover. He asked which church, so I told him The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I then showed him the Book of Mormon, and said we used it along with the Bible, and asked if he'd like a free copy. Again, he wasn't enthusiastic, but he politely and graciously accepted it.

It can matter where you do your laundry. Thu, Apr 2, 2008.

04/02/2008. 1129. Laundry day. I didn't have to do a late night run like normal. So I considered other laundries along the route I was going on to do another errand. I remembered one that I had been to before, but didn't want to go there because it is more expensive and kind of small. However, I received a clear and strong spiritual impression that I was to go there.

It has front-loading washers of various sizes, and I figured I needed the largest size. There were only four of them, and using two of the others was an Hispanic family, who looked like a mom and two daughters of high school age. (Later I learned that the second girl was probably another relative, not a daughter.) So I had a legitimate excuse to be within conversation distance. After I got done loading mine, I started reading the latest Ensign. The family was just a few feet away from me, and one of the daughters was reading something aloud to the other two. I casually looked over, and it was a Spanish Bible. I walked the couple steps over, and asked (in Spanish) if that was the Bible, and they said yes. I said I like to give out Bibles in Spanish to those who need or want them, and I kept a Spanish Bible with me. I asked if anyone in their family or friends would like a Bible, and the mom said that the other girl, the one not reading, had been asking for one.

Soooo...., I walked the three or four steps back to my laundry basket and whipped out the plastic zip-lock bag containing a Spanish paper-back Bible and a Spanish hard-back Book of Mormon. I took out the Bible, and handed it to the girl who had wanted one. Having one "at the ready" like that seemed to impress them. I made some chit-chat, and then introduced the Book of Mormon as another book that the church uses along with the Bible. They agreed to receive that one too. I pointed out the list of chapels inside that included the Spanish branch, and the phone number for the Spanish-speaking missionaries that live near the laundry.

They were definitely interested, and after the conversation, the second girl started reading the introduction pages aloud to the other two.

I talked to them again right before leaving.

Spanish at restaurant. Wed, Feb 18, 2009.

02/18/2009. 1113. I took the missionaries to their appointment with the African investigator. It went pretty well. On the way back to their apartment, I offered to take them to lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant, during their scheduled lunch break. I said the deal was that I'd pay, but they had to offer our waitress church material. They accepted, and agreed to meet me at the restaurant later.

We met up there, were seated, and ordered. I showed them what I had brought: Spanish and English Bibles, Spanish and English copies of the Book of Mormon, a Spanish and an English Liahona magazine, and 2 multi-lingual DVD's.

After we were served, I put the two Bibles and two copies of the Book of Mormon on the outside of the booth's table. On one of her trips back to check on us, the senior companion offered her a Bible, and she perused the material. She accepted the Spanish Bible, but didn't want the other material. Inside the Bible was a flyer listing the local chapels, including where and when the Spanish branch meets, and listing the Spanish-speaking missionaries' phone number.

After we paid at the cashier counter, the junior companion offered the cashier a multi-lingual "Introduction to the Church" DVD, which the cashier accepted.