LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" - Inspirational LDS Stories
Popular LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" gives members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints the opportunity to share their stories of inspiration and hope to other members throughout the world. Stories that members share on Latter-Day Lights are very entertaining, and cover a wide range of topics, from tragedy, loss, and overcoming difficult challenges, to miracles, humor, and uplifting conversion experiences! If you have an inspirational story that you'd like to share, hosts Scott Brandley and Alisha Coakley would love to hear from you! Visit LatterDayLights.com to share your story and be on the show.
LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" - Inspirational LDS Stories
Finding Your Talents & Using Them to Share the Gospel: Gordon Buttars - Latter-Day Lights
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In this episode, Gordon Buttars shares some of the difficult trials and challenges he's faced throughout his life, and how God was there to help him and his family get through them.
He also shares how, while in his 50's, he discovered an incredible talent for writing that has given him the opportunity to turn many of his life experiences into powerful stories of hope and faith, to help entertain and inspire others.
*** Please SHARE Gordon's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***
To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/ggW1FhYPA8Q
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To READ or learn more about Gordon's books, visit (direct link): https://gordon.buttars.me/Author.html
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Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.
Gordon's Journey of Faith and Inspiration
Scott BrandleyHey everyone , I'm Scott Brandley .
Alisha CoakleyAnd I'm Alisha Coakley . Every member of the church has a story to share , one that can instill faith , invite growth and inspire others .
Scott BrandleyOn today's episode we're going to hear how one man's health challenges revealed a talent for sharing his testimony in ways that he didn't know he could . Welcome to Latter-day Lights . Hey everyone , welcome to another episode of Latter-day Lights . We're so glad you're here with us today and we're really excited to introduce our guest , gordon Butters . Gordon , how are you doing ?
Gordon Buttarstoday I'm doing well , thank you . Thank you for having me on .
Alisha CoakleyYeah of course . Thanks for reaching out . So , Gordon you I believe it was the LDSPMA page that you reached out to us on , Is that right ?
Gordon ButtarsThat's right . I had asked if anybody had any experience with doing podcasts to kind of promote their work . And you responded to me and here we are .
Alisha CoakleyI know that's awesome . So see , you didn't even hear our show and you managed to be a guest on it , right how ?
Gordon Buttarscool is that .
Alisha CoakleyI love that like if Heavenly Father wants you to share a message , he'll he'll figure out a way to get you there , he'll find a way Kind of takes a little bit of pressure off of Scott and I's shoulders to make sure that we can reach everybody , right ? Oh , nice . Well , Gordon , thank you so much for being our guest . Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself ?
Gordon ButtarsAll right . Well , like you said , my name is Gordon Butters . I was born and raised in Burley , Idaho . I grew up on a farm and served a mission in Colorado way back when and farmed for a few years and this will come out more in my story later but ended up not farming anymore and got into computer programming . This brought me to Rexburg , Idaho , and been here for the last 40 going on 40 years now .
Alisha CoakleyWow . That's a big change from farming to computers .
Gordon ButtarsIt was a big change , and I'll touch on that a little bit in my story too .
Scott BrandleySo , gordon , I actually own a software company , but I do not know how to program . I don't even know how to read code .
Gordon ButtarsI wouldn't anymore . This is back in the olden days I went when I was into that . I haven't worked in the field for over 20 years now . Okay .
Scott BrandleySo it's probably changed a little bit since you were in there .
Gordon ButtarsYeah , I still remember enough email to make my web page and to do a few things , but that's about it .
Alisha CoakleyOh gosh , well , no problem , and now you're married , family yeah we're thinking the same thing .
Gordon ButtarsMy wife and I have been married going on 40 , 45 years . In December Wow , my name is Bonnie . We met at a young adult dance and asked her out about a month or so later and we dated for a while . The natural thing happened and we've had four children , three boys and a girl . Our third child only lived for 26 hours , and that was quite an experience in our lives as well . And of our three children , none of them are presently married . Our daughter and two grandsons are living with us , and we only have the two grandsons . So that's the extent of our little nuclear family .
Alisha CoakleyOkay .
Scott BrandleyWell , that's fun you get to hang out with your grandsons .
Gordon ButtarsSometimes it's challenging .
Alisha CoakleyYeah , boys are hard .
Gordon ButtarsYeah , nine and six . Oh wow , okay .
Alisha CoakleyOkay , yeah , that's a rambunctious age .
Scott BrandleyYes , they are . I would say you could give them candy and send them home . But if they live at your home , yeah , yeah , it doesn't work .
Gordon ButtarsThat doesn't work so well . There's no tail lights heading out the driveway , yeah .
Scott BrandleyOh awesome . Well , gordon , we're excited to hear your story , so let's turn it over to you , my friend . Okay , very good .
Gordon ButtarsWell , like I say , I was born in Burley , idaho , and grew up on a farm and that was the thing I always wanted to do was to farm up growing up . My testimony started after a rather tragic happenings in my family , and I'll start with that . I guess when I was about 11 or 12 , my folks were involved in a very nasty divorce and I was caught right in the middle of it , that's between a rock and a hard spot , and knowing what had happened , I chose to go with the rock rather than the rock . So I ended up staying with my dad on the farm and my mother and my sisters and moved to town . So I really didn't grow up with my sisters much and my dad was born from pioneer stock with a rich heritage in the church , and so was my mother as far as that goes . But my dad was quite antagonistic towards the church , so it was kind of a source subject around their house . But when I turned because of the divorce , I quit going to church . I mean they would send me to church , drop me off at the door and come back and get me that kind of thing and I would go to church . But when this all happened I just lost everything I felt and quit going to church . I quit going to scouts . I would have dropped out of school if they would have let me . There wasn't no way . So it was really a hard time in my life and I had really hard feelings towards my mother . That lasted for years and years . But when my dad remarried my stepmother , who also was not a member of the church and was quite antagonistic , she helped me in a lot of ways to be able to get over my place . I was in at the time , I guess you'd say , but what really helped was my friends . I had some of the best friends I could ever have , and they're still my friends For this day . We're in touch and see each other often .
Gordon ButtarsSo when 9th grade came around , they all enrolled in seminary and I wanted to be with my friends , decided I'll go to seminary too . So I enrolled in seminary and that year was the Book of Mormon . Back then , freshman had the Book of Mormon and then sophomores had the next , then juniors and then finally the seniors had their own course of study . But it was the Book of Mormon and one of the earliest things that the teacher talked about in the Book of Mormon was the first vision . And as things were going into that , I started getting confused . Not that I didn't believe . Is this confused Mainly about the nature of the Godhead ? Who was who , how do you tell them apart ? And all of that . That was kind of confusing to me . And having heard the Joseph Smith story , he was a 14 year old young man , I was 14 . We had questions , I had questions . He went to a grove of trees to pray . We happened to have a good stand of trees back behind our house , so that's where I went to pray .
Alisha CoakleyNice .
Gordon ButtarsAnd it was a when it was over with . I had a it's kind of a peaceful feeling no answer or anything but about . I don't know . A few days later might have been a week , I don't remember how long Sitting in seminary . All of a sudden the light went on and just everything came clear to me and I understood the things that I was confused about and I understood the things that were being taught , and from that time forward I never had a problem understanding any of the principles of the gospel as they came to me , and that was really the foundation of my testimony . A few weeks later there was a stake youth conference up in Oakley and as part of it they had a testimony meeting and I found myself bearing my testimony and that experience in and of itself strengthened my own testimony , it's been said . I think Elder Stevenson in his last conference talked about how bearing your testimony strengthens your testimony . Well , it did for me there and it solidified my testimony . So , needless to say , I started going back to church sitting with my friends and their families . I was a little bit late in getting ordained a teacher , but that happened , and I worked my way through the Aaronic priesthood and through school and my school years .
Gordon ButtarsAfter graduating from high school , I wanted to go to Rick's College , so that's where I went to spend a year up here . But as I was getting older and closer to a mission age , I really was giving some serious thought to that . And that did not set well with my dad . But the closer it got , the more pressure he put on me not to go . I was his right hand man on the farm and he needed me and he didn't understand why I wanted to go . As far as he's concerned , I was going off on an extended two year vacation , leaving him with all the work and it . The pressure got really hard .
Gordon ButtarsAnd one day I was out in the field disking . I can remember the exact spot . I was on the tractor kicking up dust and looking back behind me and pondering this . And I was that close to going back to the house and telling okay , you win , I'll stay home . And at that moment Scripture came to my mind but seek ye first , the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you . See , he had threatened to disown me . There'd be no farm when I got home , all that kind of stuff , and that Scripture answered my concerns that go and serve the Lord , and it'll be here when I got back . So when I told him that I was going , he was so angry he wouldn't speak to me for three days and then when he would speak to me , it was only when he had to .
Alisha CoakleyIt was a really hard time .
Gordon ButtarsBut I put in my mission application and was called to the Colorado Denver Mission and entered the Mission Home with no MTC in those days . It was just the three days . At the Mission Home in Salt Lake there's an old schoolhouse across from the church office building . It's been torn down now to make room for the parking lot or something . So that was entered the Mission Home on December 14 , 1974 , and three days , three or four days later I found myself in Eastern Colorado , way out on the plains , and that was a great mission .
Gordon ButtarsI really thrived on my mission , despite some challenges , with a few companions and things like that . I was a farm boy and I was in farm country . Our first area was farm country and I really loved it and some of them , in fact all but six months of my mission was in farm areas . I spent six months in the Denver suburb of Littleton but I had experiences like one day we went to call back on a man who we had met earlier and went to the door and his watch says he's out back changing water . So we drove out there and down the ditch bank and I could see , you know , his ditch was running over and he was setting his siphon tubes as fast as he could . Well , I jumped the ditch and I started setting tubes to draw down the ditch and after we got the water set we sat down on the ditch bank to talk about the gospel .
Challenges, Faith, and Unexpected Opportunities
Gordon ButtarsAnd another day we tracked it out a little old man he's probably in his 80s or something , and while we were visiting with him he was more visiting with us than anything Two women and a whole bunch of little kids pulled in in a truck to get a load of hay .
Gordon ButtarsBut he sent us out there to make sure that they only got so much that they didn't . They didn't . We were going to cheat him , those two women and those little kids . They weren't going to be able to load that truck . So I took off my jacket , hung on a fence . Folks said , all right , bring me the hay , and so I'd stack it on the truck . And they went on their way and the old man got his money . And a couple of days later we were attracting in that same part of the country and man says are you the two fellows that was stacking hay and wearing suits yesterday ?
Alisha CoakleyYeah , that was us . Well , come on in .
Gordon ButtarsAnd so we got to talk to the gospel about to the gospel with him as well . So just experiences like that on my mission , that really thrived .
Gordon ButtarsYou know , but then when I came home in December of 1976 , that attitude in my home and my family was hadn't changed . It was still just as negative as before . Here I was all excited to be home a few days before Christmas and it was such a big let down because of the attitude in my home and the cloud of gloom and cigarette smoke and things like that . So it was kind of rough coming home . But the farm was there and I got I didn't go back to school I should have but I didn't and kind of drifted for a year or so . And then after I'd been home about a year maybe a year and a half or so is when I met my wife and we were married six months later and settled down to start the farm and we had our first son there in Burley and our daughter was born also in Burley . And but I had a crop failure one year . Um , the fourth of July frost wiped out my bean crop and come fall I didn't have any anything really to show for it . I was able to farm one more year after that but I wasn't able to make up the difference and the farm economy was bad at the time and I couldn't get refinanced . My dad had just had a heart attack and later in January he had double bypass surgery and didn't didn't survive the operation . And here I was , okay . What do I do now ? My farm's gone , my dad's gone , and that's when , for some reason , I was led to computers . This was 1983 , january of 1983 . And I had never really even seen one , let alone what they did . But I was always kind of a logical thinker with things and it kind of appealed to me . So I I didn't have time to go back to school , I had two kids to raise and I needed to get into something . So I found a 12 week course at a technical school in Salt Lake , so packed everything up and moved down there and started in this course and within a two or three weeks I was beginning to feel like I was in over my head and having a wondering you know , what am I doing here ? So one night we went to the Jordan River Temple and and this was on my mind and I was in a contemplative attitude and a matter of prayer about it and , just like before , all of a sudden the light came on and I understood the things that I was learning in this class . And from that point on I was able to to to pick it up and to learn and then progress and did quite well with it At the end of the 12 weeks .
Gordon ButtarsIt took a while to find a job . I thought I'd have to stay down in Salt Lake because that's where everything was , and I was told well , they don't have computers in Idaho . Well , come find out , they did . I started looking around in Idaho and I got hired on here in Rexburg by a company that that took a chance on me and you know , I worked for them for about seven or eight years and that was a good job and when everything was going well and then they sold out the company and do an outfit in Pittsburgh and they fired 200 of us and kept five which they took back to Pittsburgh and after a year they they let them go too . But fortunately I was able to get on at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory in Idaho Falls and if you're not familiar with that , that's a . That's a big nuclear reactor testing facilities where they do a lot of nuclear work and radioacted cleanup and things like that . But I was able to get on there .
Gordon ButtarsIt was quite a miracle because I did not have a degree . All I had was that 12-week course and seven or eight years of experience , but that was enough and they hired me on and I worked for them for another what 10 , 12 years or so , something like that . And then they had a big layup where they were laying off hundreds of people and guess what ? My number came up . But here's another one of those stories of faith in my journey . I really suspected that I might be on the list . Here again went to the temple the night before in Idaho Falls , and during the time I was in the temple it's almost like a voice in my mind that says regardless of what happens tomorrow , you will be in my hands and you'll be taken care of . So you know that pretty much told me yeah , okay , here it comes , and later that night we're going to bed . This exact same thing happened , and again the next morning before I went to work . So when I got , my phone rang at my desk and my manager asked me to come in her office , I knew exactly what it was all about and I was okay . I had no idea what was going to come next , but I gathered up my stuff and got a ride home and that was the end of that .
Gordon ButtarsWell , I spent the next two or three years trying to find work here . I was 48 years old , with 20 years of experience or so , but nobody wanted to hire me because they were all wanting the young kids right out of college . They wouldn't have to pay them as much , so finding work was really difficult . I looked all over the country . Finally I decided well , if I can't find a job , I'll make a job . I started looking around to see what we needed here in Rexburg and it occurred to me that here we are a college town and this was just barely when BYU Idaho became it came into play . But here we are a college town and we don't have an honest to goodness bookstore . There was an LDS bookstore that sold church books , but there was not an honest to good and this bookstore . So I started looking into that and I found resources to help me get going .
Gordon ButtarsI took a business planning class and come up with a business plan and then started trying to get started , but I couldn't get anybody to finance me . I couldn't get anybody interested . It will never work and , looking back , it probably wouldn't have because Amazon hadn't come onto the scene yet . You know , everybody buys their books from Amazon now . But during that time , about the time , I decided , okay , this is not going to happen , what are we going to do next ? We kind of hunkered in for the long haul and we cast in what remaining money we had and got us a decent car and a few things that would last us , because we didn't know how long it was going to be in that shape . And then one day in June in 2004 , my little finger started twitching like that and within nine months I was shaking all over my body . Just you can see my head bouncing around in this on the screen there , and so I just thought that was because you're excited .
Gordon ButtarsI'm excited to be here . No , but within nine months that just took over my whole body and it really threw me for a loop . Things that I used to do I couldn't do anymore .
Alisha CoakleyAnd what's the cause of it ?
Gordon ButtarsWell , I started going to doctors and nobody could tell me the only . If there are any doctors out there listening , don't take offense at this , but here's what happened to me . If doctor doesn't know what is going on , they just have an ego that they can't say I don't know . So they pulled this crazy card out of their sleeve and said you need a psychiatrist . I had three neurologists tell me that and I had one who had the courage to say , well , I don't know . And so I bounced around from doctor to doctor , from Denver to Seattle , to Salt Lake , to Boise to here in Idaho Falls , and finally I just gave up and just started living with it , and it made life really challenging .
Gordon ButtarsMy wife had to take over and do a lot of things that I needed , and in those days my tremors were a lot worse than they are now . I kind of settled down a little bit but never could find anything that really helped . But during all that time and here's where it led me to discover that God had a gift for me in this stage in my life my oldest son was majoring in creative writing and he was home at that time and he was working on a project for some kind of a national writing contest that they have in November . Any writers out there might know what I'm talking about Nemo , rymel or something like that . I think you know what . That is right , Alisha . I have heard of it .
Alisha CoakleyI haven't done it or anything like that , but I have heard of it yeah .
Gordon ButtarsThe goal was to write a 50,000 page novel in 30 days , and so he hunkered down in his room and he was just writing away . I think the story , the name of the story was when pigs fly or something . I don't remember what came of it or what the gist of it was , but while he was doing that , I got to thinking I can tell a story , and so this was in about January of 2011 or 2012 . I can't remember which . So I got the idea for a story and I sat down and I started writing . I could still type . I never really learned how to type , but with my fingers shaking like they are , you can imagine , the most used key on my keyboard is the backspace key .
Gordon ButtarsSo I started writing and it was supposed to be the story about a naval aviator and he was becoming a captain of a ship . Now , the reason why this was interesting to me my dad served in the Second World War aboard the USS Enterprise , if any of you know what I'm talking about . That was the aircraft carrier that fought all the way through the war and he had some incredible stories and battles and things that he was in , and I was always fascinated with his story , so I read a lot about the Second World War , particularly the naval involvement in the Pacific , where he was , so it was a subject that interested me , so I decided I was going to write this story . Well , what was supposed to be kind of the introduction turned out to be two volumes .
Gordon ButtarsI just kept going and the time I was done , I had a great , big , huge , long monstrosity . And so over the next few years I went back through it probably eight or nine times , cutting things out , improving it , making it better , and got it down to 10 volumes . And I thought , well , gee , I wish I had something to show for all of this . And I wondered about how do I go about publishing ? Well , the first thing I needed to do is have somebody edit it for me . So my best friend's wife lives in they live in Jerome and she had a friend who was a professional editor and she was telling her about my story and her response was well , I'm kind of in between things right now . I'm kind of just looking for something to read for fun . I can edit it while I'm reading it . And so we agreed on a price , which I won't tell you , because then it was they should have to give it to everyone , right ?
Gordon ButtarsYes , she really gave me a good deal on it and she started through it and she kind of got hooked on it . I really liked the story and so she went all through all of these volumes and I reworked the stuff in them and then we went through it again a second time and after the second time through , it was , I thought , and she thought it was pretty solid , it was pretty good
Self-Publishing and Personal Reflections on Writing
Gordon Buttars. So I sent it off to publishers the big five LDS publishers and they all blew me off . You know , I wasn't anybody , I was just somebody who thought he could write Well , yeah , I am , but I thought it was worthwhile , but nobody wanted it . So what do I do ?
Gordon ButtarsI was heard about self-publishing and it intimidated me . I thought , how do I do this ? And I got a whole of a book , that kind of a step by step how do you do it , how to format your pages , how to do your covers , how to do all of this , what Amazon is looking for , because there was Amazon's KDP publishing that I was going through , and so I started going through it and I figured it all out and I submitted it and it got back and what do you know ? I had a book in my hands of what I had written , I said look , there's my name at the bottom . I wrote this this is just the book .
Scott BrandleyWhat's it ?
Gordon Buttarscalled Gordon , the series is called Fly Boy and this volume is called wings of gold . It's the first volume and after getting got that out , I Did the same thing with all the rest of them , and the only way Marketing I've done is just the people that I know , you know on Facebook and people that I've been known all these years . So , yeah , people have bought it . There's been a handful of people have read all the way through them . There's been more that have started but haven't finished . But that's what led me to To writing , and so , in addition to my series , I have a couple of other books that I've done .
Gordon ButtarsHistorical fiction is always interested me and that's kind of my main focus , but I wrote this one called worlds without and , and the premise is I was read this off the back . Not very far away , nearly 26 trillion miles , is a star slightly larger than our son . The inhabitants of of A world about the size of Mars referred to it . Referred to it as astrum . That's the name of the star . This , this world , known as Avon , is a satellite of a ring blue gas giant . The avonians , like those who populate the worlds without and Including you and me , are the children of the same Heavenly Father .
Gordon ButtarsThis is the parallel story of two people facing the challenges commonly experienced by human beings on earth One in need of forgiveness for his sins and the other who needed to forgive someone who had wronged her . Each finds forgiveness and healing . You're a savers infinite atonement . So the purpose of the book is to Is to emphasize that the Savior's atonement is infinite and eternal . It applies to everyone , on any and all the worlds created by God . And and so here's where , in my writing , my testimony comes through . There's a , there's a lot of Things in here that are related to the gospel . In fact you , if you read that so you would recognize . You'd recognize things that have different names but you would recognize what they are the same with my , with my historical novel series , my . There's lots of places that are that my testimony and signs through and have references to do the gospel in it , the family , the Curly and Jeannie . Let me get a picture of them for you . I Right there .
Alisha CoakleyOkay , they .
Gordon ButtarsMy neighbor drew their faces and I kind of photoshopped in the rest of it , but anyway they had an experience similar to ours , with the loss of it , of our child , of our baby . He , our baby , was born . He had a heart defect , the left ventricle of his heart . It was either undeveloped or not there at all , and there was just no way for him to pump the blood to his body , to oxygenated system and and they flew him off to primary Children's Hospital and that's where they found out what the problem was . And I got a Call back saying that there's what the problem was and that there was nothing that they could do , and at the time they couldn't . And so they , they sent him back home and and we had him in the , in our hospital room and Holding him In , loving him . It was the most amazing thing . He started to revive , his color would come back , he'd start breathing , but then after a while he would cycle down and then he'd come back again , but each time it was it wasn't much as much , and Finally he got to the point where there just wasn't . He was just barely gasping for air and my wife knew that she had to leave because she was holding him there . So she gave him to me and her and her mother Went to left the room and I was holding him in my arms when he took his last breath and I knew that was it . That was a such . That's a tender Feeling at the time is devastating . But 35 , 36 years later , you know it's just , it's a tender , sweet memory .
Gordon ButtarsSo I incorporated that story with with curling and genie in my story where they lost the baby . It was the same experience that we had and in the story there they were devout Methodist . They were from both from religious families . In fact , his father was a Methodist minister , so church in religion and Faith and those kinds of things were a part of their , their likelihood . In fact , the subtitle is balancing faith , family and career , because that came into to play a lot .
Gordon ButtarsWell , it caused genie to start questioning the things that she had been taught to believe all of her life about , about things , and wondered is there more than just this life and we'd be together as a family in the eternities ? And she started asking questions . She asked her , her Brother-in-law , who is now a minister as well , and he couldn't answer her questions . And she had these questions and she started studying scriptures on her own and she was making notes and I've come up with all these questions and you can imagine what kind , what kind of questions they were and that she couldn't find the answers to them . So she carried this , these , with her and it started to nudge them a little bit towards , you know , looking for something else . Well , as the story progresses , he is transferred to Hawaii where he's serving as a he's a commander now and he's not a pilot anymore .
Gordon ButtarsAnd while they were in Hawaii there was an open house for the Honolulu Tabernacle and she thought well , maybe they can answer my questions . I've never heard of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , but maybe they have the answers . So she went by the . It was going to go to the , the open house of the Tabernacle , but on the way she had to stop off at the drugstore to get some things . While it was , she was there . The man in front of her held up the , the drug as the proprietor . She happened to have a little pistol in her purse after another scary experience as he had earlier . That was quite challenging . But she pulls this out , holds it at the back of the guy's head and he turns around , looks at her and he scoffs and he starts to run , so he she shoots him in the leg and drops him All of this concert and miss going to the open house and miss getting the answers to her questions .
Gordon ButtarsBut a little bit later just before the Things were heating up with it with the , the clouds of war , that's the name of that volume they were going to send her and their two children back to the States because it was becoming quite serious there in Hawaii with the war Preparations and stuff . So they took one last family trip up around the island and coming down the the one side of the stop , they saw this big castle palace looking thing off the side of the road there in Laie and they wanted to see . Wanted to see what that was , and so they drove in and it was on a Sunday . No , of course the temple was closed , but they were walking around when ?
Alisha Coakleyis everybody .
Gordon ButtarsThis is a church when there's nobody here . But she said this place has the answers to my questions . I got to know more about it so she wrote it down on her piece of paper . It's when I get back to Virginia I'm looking it up . Well , without spoiling the story , she never makes it back to Virginia and During the , as the war goes on , curly , he goes by Sheffield .
Gordon ButtarsNow he is the captain of an aircraft carrier and he they are about ready to all . They had some . Some action is up . They're heading to the South Atlantic to operate on the South Atlantic , hunting you boats , and they were going to be operating out of Brazil as they were crossing the equator . You know , in the Navy they have this big To do about crossing the equator and initiating those timers .
Gordon ButtarsWell , there was this one seaman who was brought to the captain saying that he had crossed the equator before and he didn't think he Needed to be go through the initiation . Okay , well , prove it to me . So he went back to his cabin . He got his passport in his journal that showed that he had sailed from New York To Rio de Janeiro in 1938 , or whatever was . Well , what are you doing in Brazil ? Well , I was a missionary for my church . It's interesting . Do you happen to speak Portuguese very fluently ? Well , whatever it is you're doing now , you're working for me .
Gordon ButtarsAnd he took him on as his personal assistant because he needed a translator for while they were in Brazil , and he Gave this young man quite a bit of responsibility as his personal assistant and he watched him and Could tell that there was just something about him . But being the captain and him being enlisted meant they couldn't , you know , they just couldn't . There was barriers . That happens if you watch this young man .
Gordon ButtarsFor the long all during the war , he was at his side and when the war was over with , by this time , jeff ill and his new wife , without trying to give away what happened , they one day got a wedding announcement from From him saying that they're going to be sealed in the sealed for time and eternity in the Logan Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . But that Remembered , to curly their experience , that the temple grounds in Hawaii , and so they they called him up and says we're coming , I've got something I need to talk to you about . So when they got there , they were introduced to the church and then the story goes on from there . Of course they joined the church and and and have .
Gordon ButtarsTheir family and . But then the Korean war comes along and he's recalled the duty , and this time he's he's an admiral by now and he got to do some missionary work . He's not only sending missions off on on the bombing runs into Korea , but he was actually doing missionary work and had some success while he was on active duty .
Alisha CoakleySo , gordon , you said you have ten volumes of this story . I do that's really cool . So how much of like your own life . You know , did you kind of draw from experiences ?
Gordon Buttarsinto your story . I yeah , pretty a lot of the things that that happened in in my stories and all of them Are from experiences that I had . Like the one of our baby had things on and Later on , when and one of the later volumes he is , he's called to serve as a mission president in Hawaii . Well , a lot of those missionary things that happen in .
Gordon ButtarsThat story are either experiences that I had or that I knew about , and so there's there's a lot of things . There's a , there's a part later on where one of his grandsons has a as a goes through some things similar to what I went through and and that . So I draw a lot on my own experiences and stuff through through these and here again that that's my testimony , shying through as as principles of the gospel are brought up . It's not really in a preachy way or anything , but this kind of the natural flow of how they joined the church and then their service in the church after is just kind of a extension of my own Feelings , my own beliefs , my own testimony , my own experiences in the sets . So , yeah , that's and that's the part that I wanted to talk about is how , or the , the soul leading up to is how , by my , by writing . It lets me express those those things .
Discovering and Sharing Personal Testimonies
Gordon ButtarsI've got another one that I did , just I'm like , last summer . This is based on my uncle , my mother's brother , who Was In his experiences growing up as a teenager . That starts this book starts with him at the Just before a 17th birthday , on the day the Pearl Harbor was attacked , and Leaves wondering well , what's this going to mean for me ? Well , he goes through school and they hate school and he eventually drops out . You know , he joins the Navy and and there's some of the things that a Lot of the story is this , things that I conjecture on my part based on what I knew about his life . And here again , it starts off with him Learning different principles of the gospel in his life and then , once he's in the Navy , defending those principles and there's , there's an experience he has with the devil himself that I had . That , that that come , come out and so , yeah , I Think that's so cool .
Alisha CoakleyI know I'm . I'm in the process of revising my first book too , and even though mine is a fiction , it's this is all you where . I I have a lot , of , a lot of true life Experiences that I put in it and I love what you said earlier in the interview . You talked about how bearing your testimony Helped you to build your testimony right .
Alisha CoakleyAnd I think that that's so cool that you're taking this talent that you didn't even know that you had . You didn't even discover until you were . How old were you in the in your fifties ? Yeah , and so you had , you know , like you never thought that you would have had this talent or this ability , and you're able to actually take it and like bear your testimony in a very Normal , natural and loving way , right .
Alisha CoakleyWhich is what , what the apostles have been telling us to do lately , like they've been really trying to stress just taking what your life is and Learning how to bear your testimony through the things that you're already doing right . And so I love that you've taken this new talent of yours that you discovered and you just went with it and you just started bearing your testimony in really normal , natural , loving ways , and I really love that . You're kind of like not only are you Sort of journaling in a sense , right which is something else that we've learned is really important because you're you're putting some of your own real life experiences in there , but you're also doing some ancestry work by sharing a little bit of pieces of you know , like your , your uncle , right ? Is that what it ?
Gordon Buttarsis .
Alisha CoakleyYeah , your uncle's story , and so I just think that's so neat and I I I had to take a little bit of a note here because I didn't want to forget it .
Alisha CoakleyBut I also liked when you it towards the beginning of your interview you talked about when you first had those those you know questions about the church when you were 14 and you went and you pray . It's not like you immediately got an answer right , but you got peace . You mentioned that you felt peaceful and you were like , okay , but then you continued to show up in the places where Heavenly Father could give you those answers and it was because of that that you had that light bulb go off . So I wanted to ask you , gordon , how have you in your life Seen you know , I know you mentioned the temple a few times where he showed up at the temple and you were able to receive information and revelation . But have you , I guess , where in your life have you been able to Be in those places where Heavenly Father gave you more knowledge ? You know where he had those those light bulb moments like can you tell us any anymore about those experiences ?
Gordon ButtarsWell , yes , I suppose it could run . One that comes to mind I was serving on the High Council in the Ricks , in a ricks college student stake back when it was ricks college and what my assignment was ? The temple and family history . And so the stake president come to me , says , gordon , I want you to teach the young members of our stake the doctrine of the temple . I said , okay , what is it ? What do you want to talk with ? You ? Go find out , come back and tell me . And so I've done a lot of thought and pondering and then praying about it . And one day , as it worked , working away , and all of a sudden I'm Get a knock on the door and this all is all of us . And just whoo , all of this information Just come to me and I started writing it out as fast as I could , as fast as I could , and I said , work , but that's where he chose to give it to me , for whatever reason . So after writing it down and going through figure , I went back to stake president and read it , you know , told him what I , what I had learned and stuff , is that's what I want you to go and teach in this stake .
Gordon Butters
Gordon ButtarsSo now , that was another one of those kind of experiences . It happens quite often there .
Gordon ButtarsThere's been times in my life when I thought I received inspiration about something that never came about . That left me wondering what was that all about ? And I'm sure we all have those kind of experiences . But now that was , that was another one of that . So all through my life I've been helped by that promise that I made of just the night before I lost my job that he , we , would be taken care of , and Ever since then we have been . I mean , there was some really hard years . For about three years , well , I was trying to figure out what I was had going on and before I could finally get On to social security disability to be able to have it , we were totally relying on the church for Everything and it was a hard , hard time and it was hard to ask for help . It really humbled me to be asked for help and Then , with all them , then that was before all my challenges came on and then we were really stuck and needed , needed help .
Gordon ButtarsAnd then , through all these , through all of this , the Lord has held us in his hands and he's taken care of us . We we shouldn't have our house to this day . We should have lost it . We , we have just been taken care of . Now or through through blessings , we've really been taken care of and blessed . Now my wife has got some serious health challenges and so I'm trying to help take care of her and our daughters there with us to Take care of things . But but you ? It's just a testimony to me that the Lord is interested in our lives . He knows us , he knows our needs and he wants to bless us , and so in return , I'm trying to use what he gave me to try to pay it back . You might say you call it a talent , I call it a gift . I think I'm still trying to make it into a talent there you go .
Gordon ButtarsBut the folks that have read my stories and have given me reviews have been really positive about it .
Alisha CoakleyAwesome .
Gordon ButtarsYou mentioned ancestors a minute ago . The work I'm working on now that should be coming out in the next month or so , after I make one final proofread through it , is based on . It's a pioneer story and it's based on my ancestors in Clarkston , utah . It's the brother of my great grandmother , who died when he was 17 . Well , I kept him alive and I gave him a life and it was real interesting . It was a fun story to do . It takes place in the late 1800s and kind of a step back from my World War II type era of things . But I've really enjoyed writing it and it's turning into a trilogy . So the first volume is the 1870s , the second one is the 1880s and I've got that one written too and my editor has it now . But the last part will be the 1890s and maybe a little bit beyond there , and it involves pioneer life . It's really kind of an interesting and a fun little story that I've done too , and here again the testimony comes out in that book as well .
Scott BrandleySo yeah , that's interesting to bring up the pioneer stuff , because when you were telling me about your Navy books I kind of thought about the work in the Glory series .
Gordon ButtarsYeah .
Scott BrandleyRight when they tell it's a fictional story based on true events that happened in history . It's kind of the vibe I got when you were telling me about how you put it together , and I remember reading the work in the Glory and I was just fascinated , just hooked on every single book . I wanted to see what happened to the characters and how they progressed , and so that's really cool .
Gordon ButtarsWell , I took and worked the characters into history . I didn't change anything in history , I didn't have them . Nothing historical changed at all , no alternative history or anything , but I worked their lives into history and a lot of historical events that took place . For example , jeannie's father was running for the United States Senate and he had been in the banking business and had worked with Herbert Hoover when he was the Secretary of Commerce . So now Herbert Hoover was president , so she calls up the White House and invites him to come campaign for . So they work in President Hoover and just all these different historical things . They interact with Charles Lindbergh and all kinds of historical things . And I really did a lot of research because I didn't want them . For example , when they went to San Francisco in 1925 , I didn't want them going across the Golden Gate Bridge , which wasn't there then , so I had to make sure what the times were like . And so and I learned a lot and hopefully people have read my stories I've learned a lot from this I didn't know . Yeah , that is so cool .
Alisha CoakleyNow , if someone's interested in looking up your work , where should they go ?
Gordon ButtarsWell , all my books are available on amazoncom , but I have my own web page that kind of consolidates everything together and with the little synopsis of each one , and then they can click on the book and it'll take them directly to Amazon .
Alisha CoakleyWhat's the name of your website ?
Gordon ButtarsThe website is gordonbuttersme slash . Author with a capital A .
Alisha CoakleyOkay , we will be sure to put that link in our description so that anybody who's interested in checking out your books and stuff can definitely do it .
Gordon ButtarsWell , I hope they will . I hope to be able to share this with more people than what I've been able to so far . So I appreciate this opportunity to be able to tell my story about myself and also about what this crazy twisted up mind of mine is . As Conn's heard up , my wife says where do you get all this stuff ? Right , I don't know . It just writes itself . I'll be writing what's up .
Alisha CoakleyIt just gets downloaded and you're like , okay , cool , what happens next ?
Gordon ButtarsI can't wait to see what happens . Next there's Conn's . Yeah , I hope people will find it and enjoy it and let me know what you think about it .
Alisha CoakleyThat's awesome . That's awesome . We definitely can .
Scott BrandleyI love your story , Gordon . You writing stories is part of your story . I love that you've tied the gospel into a lot of your stories . That's really cool . That's a really cool way to do missionary work , but it's genuine and it's from your heart .
Gordon ButtarsIt limits my audience of readership because I've kind of walked into LDS readers , but maybe somebody else will come across either . One thing I want to mention out to anybody like you I'm pointing at you , especially Alisha is if you got something that you're writing and you don't just have all these empty they're unfinished files on your computer , finish it . Have something in your hands that you can say look , I wrote that there's my name on the bottom . Nobody buys it . So what ? You've got a copy of it . You've got something to show for your work . So that's what I would say to anybody that's a want to be author , like myself .
Alisha CoakleyYep . So I recently started offering book coaching and editing services and stuff and one of the things that I talked to my clients about , which actually helps me myself , is write a little every day . It doesn't matter if it's one sentence . If you feel like you want to write stuff , just take five seconds , write out a short sentence .
Gordon ButtarsYou have to make a note of what you got in your head .
Alisha CoakleyYeah , just do a little something every single day and all of those little things add up and maybe soon you'll have a 10 volume series like you , Gordon .
Scott BrandleyThat would be a big deal yeah .
Alisha CoakleyCool .
Scott BrandleyAny last spiritual thoughts or deep thoughts you want to share before we wrap things up ?
Gordon ButtarsBecause I know that God lives , that Jesus Christ is His Son and is our Savior . And they are interested in me and in you and in everyone . They are interested in the details of our lives . Sure , they've got a whole big universe full of worlds without end . They create and they govern and all of that , but they still have the infinite capacity to know me and to care about me and to direct my life and to hold me in their hands and carry me through the hard times in my life . And that's my testimony in the name of Jesus Christ , amen .
Scott BrandleyAmen , I love that . Thank you , gordon .
Alisha CoakleyGordon , it has been such a delight having you on today . Your whole story just made me feel so good and happy . I'm just going to leave this episode with a lot of thoughts and a lot of lessons that I already knew , but it was really nice to be reminded of them . I think sometimes hearing a story , it may not teach you a new thing , but it may reaffirm the truth to you .
Gordon ButtarsI really love that , but there are really new things you already know .
Alisha CoakleyYeah , yeah , I love that you're so willing to share your story with us and to share your work . Listeners , I want to encourage you guys to go check out Gordon's website . Like I said , we will put a link in the description . Check out some of his work . Give us some feedback , Let us know what book you're most interested in reading and picking up for yourself or maybe for a loved one and let us know how you are sharing your story and sharing your testimony and what this interview meant to you guys . We would absolutely love to hear back from you .
Scott BrandleyYeah , and if you like to work in the glory , it sounds like Gordon's series is your next one .
Gordon ButtarsWell , if you like being used as muddy and river , you will like the deep gun site . When I'm working now it's very much in that flavor Awesome , and how many books do you have available right now ? 12 and 13 and 14 will be out soon , and then 15 is in the works . Wow , in the back of my head .
Scott BrandleyThat's incredible .
Alisha CoakleyAnd .
Gordon ButtarsI've got other things in mind as well . It just keeps the gray matter stirred up and keeps me from . I love it . It just helps me keep it together . I guess is what I'm saying Right .
Scott BrandleyAwesome , yeah , well , keep up the good work ?
Alisha CoakleyYeah , absolutely , absolutely . The world definitely is in need of more light and more ways of hearing about the testimony of the gospel and all of the good things that bring us closer to our Savior . So don't stop doing what you're doing .
Gordon ButtarsI won't Thank you for having me again .
Alisha CoakleyYeah .
Scott BrandleyYeah , you bet . So let's share Gordon's story . Everybody Go hit that share button . Let's get some light out there and let's help Gordon share some light with his stories . Yeah , and with that we will leave you till next Sunday , where we'll have another fun guest on Latter-day Lights . Till then , take care , and we will see you soon . See ya , bye .
