Chad Buttery

Chad Buttery

Having been born and raised in Oklahoma, I grew up in a small community called Blackgum, a place that consists mostly of family and friends.  As a young boy growing up in the country, my childhood was spent much playing in the woods or with a fishing rod in my hands on the bank of the Illinois river and Lake Tenkiller.  My parents, Bart and Charlotte Buttery, married young and soon later had their hands full with four boys.  I’m number three in the bunch.  It was through the witness and faith of my mother that my dad was introduced to the Lord’s restored church.  He was later baptized, having received his own personal testimony. 

Mom and dad faithfully made sure my brothers and I were also in the pews every Sunday and Wednesday night for prayer and worship services.  We were a very close family and unified congregation.  It was a very joyful and happy time in my life. However, as it is in life, sometimes we are blessed to walk on the mountain tops and other days we are called to walk through the low valleys.  Unfortunately, there did come a time when that unity was broken, both in the church and in our family.  Our faith was tried in ways that it had not yet been.  I remember during those days feeling as if there was a vast void of emptiness deep inside my soul, and there was nothing I could do of myself to fill it.  I was weighed heavily down with sorrow and uncertainty.  None the less, praise be to God, for it was in those dark and cloudy moments that I was reminded of the things that I had been taught of my parents.  I began to pray like never before.  I began to read to try and to understand those words of life and place my burdens at the foot of the cross of the Lord.  For the first time in my life I had exercised real faith, having a broken heart and a contrite spirit. 

Today, I stand as a witness that indeed God’s promises are sure and true.  Just as He promised His disciples of old that He would not leave them comfortless and that He would come to them, He came also to me through the power and gift of the Holy Spirit.  I received an abundance of joy and peace, even that peace that surpasses all understanding.  He also restored my family through the gift of forgiveness.   At the age of sixteen, through the witness of the spirit and by way of a dream, I came to know of the assurance of the Lord’s church renewed and the fullness of His gospel.  

Since then, I have strived to walk in that spirit shared with me, but I know I still fall short too often.  Fortunately, my Savior continues to lift me up as He does for all that love and seek after Him.  I praise him for all that He has done in my life and for the hope and vision of the Kingdom, even for that great and marvelous work of restoration that He continues to perform in His church and in the lives of His people as He earnestly calls us home!