Dear Friends and Family,
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Well probably more-so in Utah considering that there is no snow here but there are a few people here and there who have been putting up Christmas lights. In fact we helped out putting some up for Ian, Our investigator we will be baptising this week! I am so excited. We asked him all the questions in our last interview and he answered them so well and bore an incredible and sincere testimony.
This past week has been pretty darn slow. My companion has been having back problems for a good while and one of the zone leader elders had gastro so I exchanged with his companion most of the week while our sick companions stayed at the flat. We did a lot of work though. We taught a couple of their investigators about the plan of salvation and people like me to draw it for them, So while he was talking about it, I would draw each level of it and people seem to like looking at all the steps and the pictures that represent each one. They probably liked it because it was a little more elaborate that a bunch of circles.
We did so well together that we even got 8 lessons in one day. It was a very productive day. We also sang at a retirement home on Saturday and it was hilarious. Fortunately they were all old people and most of them probably couldn't hear to well because we were terrible. Well... not in gods eyes because we were doing service but I would probably never willingly go to a concert with singing like what we did. One song we sang was "Once in Royal Davids City" but when we started, apparently nobody knew the tune of it so they started singing it to the tune of "Hark the Harold Angels Sing" and eventually we got to the end of the page and ran out of words but there was still tune left. Our choir director freaked out and stopped us immediately and had someone from the choir give a sample of how it was supposed to sound and we resumed by starting over. During another song, one of the pages was missing and nobody knew the words so we sang quite nicely during the first half of the song and then all the sudden you could hear everyone mumbling their own version of what they thought the words might sound like if there was a page adjacent to the first. At least this time they were doing something to the tune. It was quite an eventful service project that I will probably never forget and will always enjoy the memory of it.
I hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas season full of joy and giving!
Elder Joshua Butts