September 30

Dear Friends and Family, It was such a great week! We had two investigator as Sacrament meeting. We still have Preston coming and his mother (His brother Jamella who is 9 has decided that the world is more important that church right now but I believe that he will follow his mother and brother eventually). We are VERY excited for Preston because he finally decided that he wants to be baptized. He said originally that he wanted to wait a few months but yesterday at church, he decided that he is ready and wants to be baptized in a few weeks. He is going to talk to his mother about it and they will tell us the date he would like to be baptized on Thursday. I am SO excited. It has been amazing to see Toni(his mother) and her family go from complete estrangement to the church to coming every week and striving to be worthy for every blessing the lord has for them. It is incredible. Hopefully their influence will affect everyone in the family. We had another cool tracting experience this week. We chose a street to knock a street and had no success during the first 10-15 minutes. We suddenly came to a large house to which we had no thought of the resident being even remotely interested in Heavenly Father when they must have had such vast wealth. We had a particularly surprising experience upon actually knocking though. An unusually inviting catholic man opened the door and excitedly invites us in for some dessert and a drink. How is that for a surprise? He took us out back where we saw his wife and the puzzle was put together. We knew her because we do service at St. Vincents thrift shop once a week. He sat with is and started talking about the history of the catholic church. He is a historian of some kind. We mentioned that he should become acquainted with the history of Our church. He was surprisingly interested, especially when we told him about the third book that would come forth before Christ comes again, but He still spent pretty much the rest of the time talking about more of the history of the catholic church. Before leaving we asked if he would like to read the Book of Mormon. We got the expected response that if he was inclined to read any religious book, we would likely only choose the Bible which he specified to be the King James version. Now this I can testify is how I know that the Holy Ghost Can guide conversations because we told him that we read that same bible. It was ONLY after that comment that he chose (of his own free will) to ask us for a Book of Mormon. I don't know why he suddenly changed his mind but I am sure it's because of the spirit. Karratha is a great place! Hopefully you are all enjoying the new temple! Love Elder Butts