November 11

Dear Friends and Family, It has been such an amazing week! We had a bit of a miracle happen on Thursday. Kelvin contacted us and said he wanted to be baptized on Saturday...(LAST WEEK). That meant we had three days to plan it. I was so surprised but happy that he made the decision to change his date to the original date. It was incredible. We were able to get everything set up in time and the spirit was felt so much. When he went in the water, I felt the spirit more than at any other baptism since I've been in Karratha. We had 4 investigators show up too. Zakir and Reza, the two men from Afghanistan came, which was really surprising and Emma came for about 5 minutes during the video so she didn't get to watch the baptism but we were so glad that she came. We met Emma about a month ago and it was from contacting. She didn't have time to talk to us but an hour after contacting we went to a teaching appointment. As we were walking in, we saw her walking out so we talked to her for a minute. She said she was actually a bit interested in finding out more about the purpose of life and she likes learning about what others believe. We told the member to set up a teaching appointment for us but that never happened. About a week or so later, we were tracting and remembered that the past missionaries told us about a woman they tracted into a few months before. We went to the house to follow up and when we knocked, who could have answered but her. She didn't have time to talk but we were able to arrange an appointment and get her number. While talking at the doorstep, we didn't quite know what to expect at the appointment because she seemed a bit timid and we were unsure about how committed she was but with all the experiences before, we felt that there was a reason that we have been led to her. Our appointment was Friday and we were in for quite a surprise. She had all kinds of notes she had written about the bible and what she believes. She asked us questions about verses in the bible and we had no idea how to answer them. We taught her about the plan of salvation which she found quite interesting but still had a bunch of things she had questions with the bible. We are pretty excited for our next visit and are hoping she has read some of the book of Mormon. We have also been blessed to teach Peter and Julie. We actually met Tia about a month ago from street contacting. Tia is their daughter who just graduated from high school. She didn't seem very interested but told us that her parents like talking about religion. We made our first stop with president Lindsay and Julie answered. She didn't seem too interested at first but after a bit of persuasion, we were able to convince her to allow us to come back. The next week she told us she was going to talk about it with her husband, Peter and for us to come back in 2 weeks. Well we were finally about to get an appointment with them for Saturday, just before the baptism. It was great and Julie has so many questions. We ended up teaching them the Plan of Salvation AND the restoration. They just kept giving us plenty of questions, most of which we couldn't really give answers to(such as if someone is talking to spirits for people as a business and giving those people a sense of peace, is that from god or the devil). We were able to get them to understand that they can know if it is true by reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. Julie told us that she was a bit skeptical because she grew up in an environment where her father was constantly saying negative things about Mormons and she has gained a bit of a bias because of that. They didn't want to obey all the rules such as the word of wisdom and tithing, but I believe that they will receive an answer and eventually know the truth. I am so thankful that heavenly father has given us the opportunity to meet them and I really hope we can change their lives. Things are going very well with our investigator Ardi. He is Indonesian and we were able to have our first Real lesson with him when President Lindsay was here too. We retaught him about the restoration and it was like a light bulb lit up in his head. He understood why there was a need for the Priesthood to be restored and he said he would be reading the Book of Mormon more intently now. He also said he wants to come to church next week to see what it is like. That was a bit surprising because he has been going to the baptist church and we didn't expect that he was so willing to find out if this is true that he wants to see what our church worship is like. I am going to be praying a lot this week that he will follow through with his commitment. I know that he is very special to heavenly father and there is something planned for him. We had a lesson with Caitlin at Albertos house which went really good. She even came to the baptism on Saturday which I believe she got a lot out of. She completed her reading assignment from the Plan of Salvation lesson but didn't get too much out of it so we are probably going to teach it to her again sometime. She is moving to Perth in 5 or 6 weeks though so we hope she will gain a witness that our message is true. We taught her the restoration on Friday and showed her the movie. It seemed like she got a lot out of it and she told us about her friend Anita(who we exterminated her birds last Saturday). Anita has been thinking about what we said a bit and we stopped by to see her yesterday after church. We told her that the reason she hasn't been very happy lately is because she has distanced herself from god. We taught her about the Restoration and told her about some experiences that helped us know if the church was true and strengthened our faith. She said she really doesn't even know if god exists sometimes and she doesn't feel like she gets answers to prayers. We hit her with the comment that "Maybe god IS answering your prayers by sending two young men to teach you about his true church. We are really praying for Anita to have some kind of spiritual experience to help her gain answers to her prayers and know the truth. Well that's a bit about our week. I know.. kinda crazy. I have so thankful that heavenly father has been blessing us with so much work here in karratha. I hope you are all finding people that are willing to let god bless their lives through you! Love Elder Joshua Butts