Over the weekend I attended the Skokie Body, Mind and Spirit Expo. The Chicago area readers who volunteered to help had met several days prior to practice working effectively at a booth. They did a great job of inviting passers by to check out our book. This led to many great interactions with the Expo attendee’s.
David Kulieke and I gave the talk on Sunday which was well received and was attended by about 15 people. It seemed that pretty much everyone there came by our booth later and purchased a book. One lady jumped up in the middle of the talk and went to the booth to buy a book.
One young man came by the table who I recognized as he had bought a book from me last year. He was beaming and excitedly shared with us that he had read the book three times. His girlfriend grinned approvingly and said she had started reading because her boyfriend had got so much out of it. Sure feels good when we get to see the results of our efforts!
We also heard from people who had found the book and stopped reading as it was too difficult for them. This reinforced our training to tell folks that the book is difficult at the beginning and we regularly suggested they read some in the last two sections before reading the first part.
I hope I can put to rest the un-generous notion that it is wrong to reach out to people and invite them to take a look at the revelation. The master reached out to his fellows so he could share the good news with them and this is simply one of many ways that we can reach out and share the good news in/of the Urantia Book. It is a rare day when someone is offended by being invited to take a look at a book, especially at an event where everyone is marketing their products. On Sunday afternoon the volunteers were pretty relaxed as the Expo wound down when a young man walked hurriedly by. I called out to him to get his attention and he turned around and came up to the table. In less than a minute he took money out of his pocket and bought a book. He was more than delighted to hear there was a book on the planet with such information as I was telling him about. He thanked me several times as he was leaving.
I sense our job is not to judge, second guess, assume, be overly polite, patient or correct, but to just be of service to our fellows.
We sold and/or gifted 39 books and handed out 62 Free-Book cards plus various literature.
Thank you to the wonderful Chicago area readers, too many to name, who made possible the gift of revelation to so many people this weekend.
Thomas Orjala
Book Outreach
Outreach Committee
GC UBF