Dear Friends and Family,
This week past week, we have had so much going on. We had our first session of the art class on Tuesday and it went great. One of the kids brought one of their friends and she was a non-member. Her parents came into the chapel and we were able to chat with them for a minute. We have also been doing quite a bit of visiting with members. There is a less active whos name is Brian. He has been split up from his wife for 3 years but they aren't divorced. He is from South Africa and konws some of the Rudmans. That was pretty cool and we were able to teach him an awesome lesson. We told him about LDS.org and he had a lot of problems that we said he could find answers to there.
We went over to the Cromptons house this week and were going to teach them about prophets and Jesus Christ. They seems to have a lot of problems with the fact that prophets, god, and priesthood holders are men. It is Jane (the mother), and her two daughters and son. The mother and daughters are kinda feministic though. Last week we tried to help them understand who god was and stuff about the bible but they said, "The bible, book of mormon, and everything else is all run by men."
We explained the immense importance of women in the church but they didn't understand. We told them that the only way they were going to find out if the message we share is true, is by studying the book of mormon and praying about it. When we followed up this week, only Kate(a daughter) was home and we weren't able to teach them. She did say, however, that her mom and other sister prayed about knowing who god was. We were super glad to hear that and we are going to see what kind of answers they recieved when we see them next. I really hope this family gets baptised. They really need the church so bad and I can see all the blessing they would receive from it.
We went on Saturday to see a part-member family (the Farrils) and I was on exchanges so Elder Webley was my companion and he had served here before. We went over there expecting to teach a simple lesson but Sister Farril up and told us to follow her in the car right when we got there. We drove to a place almost to Cowaramup(about 20 miles away) and she showed us the new house they have been building for the last year. It was MASSIVE and the architecture of an airplane hanger. It was about the same size too. While We were walking around her kids (from baby to 12-yrs-old) were jumping around me and swinging on my arms. It was heaps fun and it reminded me of when we would look at our house while it was in construction. They also had some huge water tanks and about 30 acres of land. It was so cool to explore the place and the whole time she was talking about how blessed her and her family were. She only joined the church a year or two ago. We are hopefully going to teach her husband. They were such a nice family and we were able to see them at church for the first time in a while yesterday too!
Yesterday at church was way funny. In our branch the missionaries get to church early(so we did that) to prepare the sacrament and bless it. Nobody plays the piano so I have pretty much been called as the ward organist. Elder Scragg and I also had to do a musical # in church yesterday too so I was running back and forth all of the meeting. It was fun though.
I have really been loving it here while serving Heavenly Father and I hope everyone is doing the best they can to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. Find every oppurtunity to be a missionary!
Love Elder Joshua Butts