July 22

Dear Friends and Family, It has been amazing seeing the progression in the work here in Karratha. We have recently gotten ANOTHER baptismal date with Ella, Torres Strait woman who has been taught for a while. Also there is a less active Aussie woman named Tony who we saw recently and she said her 10 and 11 year old boys will be super excited to get to start coming to church. When we saw them at church yesterday the two boys expressed interest in being baptised. We are hopefully going to be able to set two more baptismal dates this week with them which would give us 4 total(not to mention we are baptising a recent converts son this Friday because he just turned 8). Here are potentially the baptismal dates that we could have next week. Bunna(He will be baptised this Friday July 27) Ella(August 10th) Kelvin(August 25th) Preston and Jamelan (the two young Aussie boys), Hopefully sometime in august. maybe the 25th. This is very exciting for Elder Case and myself, especially since Karratha is not an area well known for having much missionary work happening. It has completely changed since we have both been put together. We are not sure how everything has been going with Kelvin. He has gone down to Perth(but is in Busselton for the weekends where he said he would be attending church). We called the missionaries and they told us that he was not at church on sunday which was a bit of a disappointment because he told us so surely that he would be there. We are hoping that it was just a case of unusual circumstances. We are praying for him that he will meet with the missionaries down there and prepare himself for his baptismal date. We also had a pretty interesting experience with Rowand(Row- Wand). He is Muslim but very open. He showed us this HUGE manuscript he wrote comparing the Qua'ran and the Bible. He wants to find out the differences and similarities between the two and pick the one that is the best. He said he is seeking the truth and we believe he is, but I think this is gonna be a while. We gave him the book "Jesus the Christ" because many of his questions would be answered if he read that. Well that is a little bit about what is going on here in Australia. Hope you are all having a wonderful week!! Love Elder Joshua Butts