My Soul Hungered

 

Hello Family!

I can't tell you all how excited I am to be able to listen to General Conference this coming Saturday and Sunday! We get it a week later here on a tape, and I am so ready to receive more revelation and instruction from our living day prophet and apostles again!
It's incredible how fast time is flying though. It feels like the last general conference was not that long ago, and I still remember many of the talks almost as if I heard them last week.

We have two sets of elders living in our house here in Hinobaan, and this morning we said goodbye to one of my good friends in the mission and an even better missionary, Elder Saure, as he is finishing his mission and going back to his home in Manila. Every time I get to be around good missionaries going home I always can feel the reluctance they have in laying down the mantle and leaving the ministry they have come to love, and it makes me think about how fast my mission is going and how short my time really is. I love my mission so much and it will be a very bitter sweet day when I will have to take this mantle off and return back to where I came.

But the wonderful thing is that I still have time! And I'm going to do my best to make it count.

In fun news, our neighbor’s dog decided to have a litter of puppies right on the side of our house, so we've been enjoying having some little friends to play with when we get home from a long day of proselyting :)

We also were able to enjoy a semi uninterrupted week of proselyting this week which has made me feel a lot better and back into the swing of things. And we also were able to have another baptism of Sister Sara Jane, an 18 year young woman that we've been working on for the last 3 plus months. She was a good example of a very line upon line and precept upon precept investigator, who at first was incredibly shy, especially to Americans, and had a great difficulty understanding a lot of what we taught. But she had a desire and a good friend, and now she is teaching her friends, the first convert in her family, and she knows that this is the true church and has a determination to serve to the end. Just another wonderful miracle that the gospel has brought to which I was able to witness.

We also held a special sacrament in one of our farther areas this Sunday that went great! We had many of the members of the branch come to support making the the total attendance 34, and out of those 17 were from the area that would be attending regularly in the future, and out of those 17, 7 were investigators. So we're really excited to get things moving and get a group fully established!

It sounds like things are getting pretty crazy back at home! I'll be putting in a few extra prayers for Dad and his work.
And Mom's question on hearing angry words. The answer would be yes. I'm pretty sure every missionary has to go through a lot of that, especially with Jesus promising His apostles that the world would hate them because the world hated Him first. But those experiences pale in comparison with the good words we hear and the good things we feel.

That's all I have time for today!

I love you all so much!

~Elder Butler