September 23

Dear Friends and Family, It has been a pretty busy week as usual, although it just wasn't as packed with teaching people. We have been doing extra knocking on doors. I gave a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday too. I'm pretty sure it's the longest talk i've ever given. I talked for almost 20 minutes. I'm so glad I prepared during the week and prayed that the spirit would guide me. I think it was amazing to see how much the spirit does for people who pray for it. We had another cool tracting experience this past week. We went to an area that probably hadn't been tracted for about a year (because I'm pretty sure all of karratha has been tracted 10times over) and we prayed to be able to meet someone who needed us. We met some teenagers because a lot of parents work all the time in karratha. We were able to give away 2 book of Mormons, a finding faith in Christ DVD and a CD with Mormon messages on it. We were getting close to the end of the street and we tracted into a house with an aboriginal family. It was the mothers birthday so we told her happy birthday and that we had a present for her. Her name is Joanne. We told her we were going to give her the gospel and she agreed that she needed to come back to church. "WHAT?, come back?" she told us she used to go quite regularly 2 or 3 years ago but her family was going through some financial struggles and stopped going (That happens to people a lot here is seems). Well her family is actually all non-members and they told us we could come teach them. That was a bit of a miracle. Nothing is set in stone yet, but we have lots of faith so hopefully we can help this family come back to the church and get some baptisms out of it! It is good because since she has been to church before, she already knows some of the members. On Saturday we went to an art competition at the visitors center. So the story is that about a month ago, we stopped in just to check out the visitors center and saw a flyier for a recycled art competition. I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to get into the public and share some of our beliefs. I got some pizza and cereal boxes and glued them together to make a board. To make the image, I got newspapers and magazines we found (Don't worry, I didn't cut up a single church magazine) and used the clippings of color to make an image of the Pilbarra and I placed Jesus Christ in it. When I was finished I felt that it looked like a 12year old did it but at least it will get the message across. On Saturday we went to the opening night and were able to meet some of the other people who had done artwork. It was a great way to talk about Jesus Christ and hopefully we will be able to get some people to ask some questions in the future. I love being out here serving! I hope you are all finding opportunities to serve those around you! Love Elder Butts