Dear Friends and Family,
This has been an awesome week! Ian was baptized!!! and not only that, but he truly showed his commitment to the gospel on Sunday when his fellowship and family was sick and couldn't make it to church (Most people would use this as an excuse to stay home) but he still drove himself to the ward and showed up to church alone. Fortunately we were still there and he wasn't completely alone at church. It was such an incredible experience to help him get baptized and I will not forget it ever.

After the baptism the ward did their Christmas party at the foreshore and we ate there for the lunch. It lasted quite a while so Elder Fatupaito and I decided that rather than wasting time, we would go proselyte for a while on the sidewalk along the beach. We had little success but then we offered a card that had a picture of Jesus Christ on it to a guy who was smoking and his girlfriend. He then started asking us all kinds of crazy questions about Jesus Christ and the end of the world. When we would start answering his questions he would interrupt with more questions and we felt like we were getting nowhere. We decided to ask him if we could say a prayer with him. I started praying and he interrupted during the prayer by talking as if he was continuing the prayer for me (which I figured was good because he was making an effort) but as he was talking, his words all the sudden became directed at us so we didn't get to finish right off. He talked about how his life was so bad and we asked if he believed if he had ever followed Jesus Christ. He replied with a definite NO. I told him how he had already chosen to follow Jesus Christ in the spirit world and that is why he was on this earth. He started crying heaps and we didn't know exactly how to react. He all the sudden said thanks for the chat and left. It was quite an interesting experience so Elder Fatupaito and myself said a prayer together to thank Heavenly Father for the experience and to finish the prayer we had started saying while we were talking to the young man.
Another quite spiritual experience I had with Elder Fatupaito was when we were at the same foreshore but this time we were doing some creative finding. I had gotten a large sheet of paper and some pictures of Jesus Christ and we sat in the middle of the sidewalk while I would draw pictures of Jesus while people would walk by and some of them would ask questions. Nobody was really stopping by much and the flies were getting so bad that I was afraid that if I blinked, a fly would get stuck in my eye. I asked Elder Fatupaito if we could say a prayer that I could draw with the convince of not having flies buzzing all around my face. Almost instantly after we prayed, the flied left(with the exception of 2or3 here and there. It was such a tender mercy from the lord.
We also had the mission Christmas activity by the temple last Friday and there was a really good turn out. Over 1000 people showed up to it and we even were able to receive some referrals and get some non-members interested in investigating. It was a great night full of fun and the spirit was felt greatly, Even though we did get home a little late.
I am very excited for Christmas this next Sunday! I hope you are all doing your best to gave the Christ spirit in your lives and doing everything you can to think about how you can give to others.
I love you all.
ELDER BUTTS

Dear Friends and Family,
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Well probably more-so in Utah considering that there is no snow here but there are a few people here and there who have been putting up Christmas lights. In fact we helped out putting some up for Ian, Our investigator we will be baptising this week! I am so excited. We asked him all the questions in our last interview and he answered them so well and bore an incredible and sincere testimony.
This past week has been pretty darn slow. My companion has been having back problems for a good while and one of the zone leader elders had gastro so I exchanged with his companion most of the week while our sick companions stayed at the flat. We did a lot of work though. We taught a couple of their investigators about the plan of salvation and people like me to draw it for them, So while he was talking about it, I would draw each level of it and people seem to like looking at all the steps and the pictures that represent each one. They probably liked it because it was a little more elaborate that a bunch of circles.
We did so well together that we even got 8 lessons in one day. It was a very productive day. We also sang at a retirement home on Saturday and it was hilarious. Fortunately they were all old people and most of them probably couldn't hear to well because we were terrible. Well... not in gods eyes because we were doing service but I would probably never willingly go to a concert with singing like what we did. One song we sang was "Once in Royal Davids City" but when we started, apparently nobody knew the tune of it so they started singing it to the tune of "Hark the Harold Angels Sing" and eventually we got to the end of the page and ran out of words but there was still tune left. Our choir director freaked out and stopped us immediately and had someone from the choir give a sample of how it was supposed to sound and we resumed by starting over. During another song, one of the pages was missing and nobody knew the words so we sang quite nicely during the first half of the song and then all the sudden you could hear everyone mumbling their own version of what they thought the words might sound like if there was a page adjacent to the first. At least this time they were doing something to the tune. It was quite an eventful service project that I will probably never forget and will always enjoy the memory of it.
I hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas season full of joy and giving!
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear friends and family,
It has been a good week but a little slow. My companion has been having some health problems and we were at the doctors for a bit while he had to get an X-ray and we found out that he has spinal problems but nothing too serious. The aboriginal lady we ran into last week that said she wanted to get closer to god wasn't at the appointment that we had made for her. We ended up feeling a little suspicious because of her requests but we are still going to go back this next week and try to help her out.
Ian, our investigator who we are baptising soon is the man aye. He has been keeping all the commitments that we have given him and doing everything in preparation for his baptism. Yesterday at church, we taught him about baptism in the Gospel Principals manual and the importance. We asked him what baptism meant to him and how it would be a new start. I am SOO excited for it and it is going to be a mean baptism.
The other day we were on exchanges with the missionaries in Rockingham and I was with elder Fatopaito. It was way fun, but super hot aye!! we biked out into this country area and tracted for a little while with flies buzzing all around us. It was fun but nobody was interested so we went to our next appointment in our zone leaders area. We did service for a lady in the ward by helping her weed her entire backyard for her house inspection the next week. It was super hot then because it was the middle of the day. It ended up being 98degrees outside. We later went to the ward mission leaders house for a BBQ because one of the YSA is leaving on a mission soon and he had some non-member friends we were going to teach. When we got there, we sat around the pool (sadly we weren't allowed to get in) and we talked with the other guys who were swimming. We ate and afterward chatted a little while one of the other young men was playing the guitar. After a little while the non-member friends started asking us why we weren't allowed to get into the pool and we told them about some of the many mission rules we adhere to. They were quite interested and we started talking heaps about standards of church member. I am so grateful that I had a 'For strength of Youth' pamphlet in my bag because I was able to read segments in it to tell them why we do the many things we do. We talked about the word of wisdom, tithing, law of chastity, and especially about the book of Mormon right at the end. I told them that there is no way in heaven or on earth that they would find out if what we had been talking about was true unless they read it and prayed about it. The spirit was felt so much that night and they committed to start reading it.
It is so amazing to see what Heavenly Father does for us when we work hard.
Elder Butts

Dear friends and family,
What a crazy week it has been. It has been getting very hot here. It was 90 the other day and it is only going to get hotter. One of the days, we were out biking and my companion skidded down a road with his brakes on and since it was quite a hot day, his rims were soft and his weight on the back tire bent it and so we had to walk the 4 miles back to our flat, one of which included carrying the messed up bicycle till we could leave it at a members house. It was quite an adventure. Since his bike was unusable, the next day required us to walk all around our area to our appointments. My feet were quite sore by the end of the day. We even got to the point of laying down in the middle of the sidewalk because Elder Sualevai has back problems. It was quite an adventure. We had a good amount of lessons and were very productive though which showed how much Heavenly Father will help us as long as we are willing to go out and work.
Thanksgiving was such an incredible day. I had an enormous feast, but it was feasting on the spirit and love of Christ in the temple. I can't think of a better activity to do on thanksgiving that spend it in the temple, learning about covenants and receiving personal revelation. As for an actual feast, well. . . . A peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a pretty decent meal considering there are so many other people in the world who have so much less and I was very grateful for it.
Another interesting experience that we had this week was while we were biking. We passed a house and this aboriginal lady came shuffling out of the house with a sad look on her face and she was calling out to us. We stopped to see what was the matter and she told us this long story about how her brother had committed suicide and her aunt was dieing in a hospital ages away and her son was apparently contemplating suicide. She asked us to pray for her and we did so. We gave her a book of Mormon and invited her to church and she said she would probably make it sometime. Later she asked us for money so she could get petrol(gas) so she could get home from the hospital which her aunt was at. While talking she also asked us to come in her house and cast out some evil spirits that were making her house a place that she couldn't stand to live in. We walked into her house and felt nothing different so we said a simple prayer that she would be able feel the spirit and be able to discern right from wrong. She told us about how much better she felt and we talked with her a little more about coming to church and reading the Book of Mormon. It was a very unique experience and hopefully it sparked her interest to learn more.
I have been having heaps of good experiences here and I have been learning so much more than I have ever learned. I hope for the best for all you reading this.
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear friends and family,
It has been a bit of a slow week this past week but we have still had great progression from our investigators. Ian, our 50year old investigator with the baptismal date has come to church the last 5 weeks in a row which is awesome! We taught them last week about the law of tithing which his wife didn't really understand and she became really upset because she thought she couldn't afford it. We helped them understand that it is only 10% of what they earn. We also talked to them about fast offerings and keeping the sabbath day holy.
I am so grateful for the gospel principals manual. It makes teaching so many things so much easier when you are teaching classes for Sunday school. He is so solid and it is going to be an awesome baptism. We have been working hard to find some new investigators but it has been pretty tough. We go through our former and potential investigator list and almost everyone we visit tells us they don't want to talk to the missionaries any more so we end up having to cross them off the list.
We did talk to a Chinese family yesterday though and it was really good. We talked for a while just to get to know him and see how he liked Australia compared to China. He can't read at all and his English is pretty rough. He doesn't know much of anything about god or Jesus Christ, but he said we could come back and chat again and hopefully next time, we will get to talk about Heavenly Father and the purpose of life.
Everything else is going quite well. I got my new companion on Wednesday. He is from Samoa, but he lived in Roy, UT for the last 10 years, and he grew up originally in Samoa. He is way cool and it is pretty fun having a Polynesian companion. He went to Weber State for a year playing Grid-Iron and he also went to the U for a year. He is super fun to talk to and it is nice to have a companion who is clean and organized. I am getting so much done here and progress is happening.
Thanks everyone for the letters and love!

Elder Joshua Butts

This past week has been great. We got a baptismal date from one of our investigators and it was so scary at first becasuse his less active wife freaked when we asked him to be baptised. It was kinda funny but I was like "OH NO". He was still cool with it and we are going to baptise him on the 17th of December. His wife said, "No, he isn't ready for baptism. He still likes to have a drink now and then with buddies and have a tea occassionally".
It didn't even seem to fase him though. He said "Oh that isn't really much to give up. I can just go for Fizzy drinks instead" He is so solid and I am excited to baptise him next month.
Our single mother , Anna, Investigator finally got some fellowship this last week. We had some members(the preedy's) offer to have her over for a BBQ and we were super excited. Sister Preedy and Anna got on super well and I am so glad that now she has some friends in the ward because she will be more motivated to come to church. We were going to get her to come yesterday but she ended up being really sick and couldn't and we got a call from her this morning telling us that she had miscarried her child so we went over this morning and told her about how children who die will go straight to the celestiel kingdom and she will get to see them again if she gets baptised. We are so excited for when that happens and hopefully we are going to get her to commit to a date sometime this week.
last P-Day was pretty fun. We went to the Perth Zoo. It was HEAPS better than the hogle zoo but I still had a taste of dissappointment in it. We all had lots of fun there though. We took the train to Perth. It was a long train ride but it was still pretty fun.
The work is increasing and I am so excited to get some more baptisms soon. Our goal is to get 6 baptisms next transfer! I really hope that we can do it and I think that it will probably happen!!
Love you all!

Elder Joshua Butts

What a fun week it has been. We have been teaching heaps of people and have some golden progressing investigators. There is a couple who we were teaching the other night and the wife hadn't gone to church in 30 years. She had heaps of questions and as we were teaching her we all felt the spirit and she told us that she knew it was true and she wanted to start coming back to church. She told us about an experience she had with cancer and a priesthood holder gave her a blessing and as soon as he ended the blessing she knew the cancer was completely gone. They did another scan and couldn't find any traces of cancer in her and thought it was a miracle. Her husband in a non-member and we have been talking to them a lot about the temple. It is so great that they are both really excited about being sealed in the temple one day and he is keen to get baptised soon so that will be able to happen one day.
The work in our area is really progressing. We also have another family who we are trying to get to do the "quit smoking" program. When we told them about it they were really excited and have already pretty much quit. I don't really think they will be able to completely quit unless they go through the program though so we got an appointment with them to do it this week and they are super excited!
It is great being here and I hope for the best for everyone back home!

This week has been pretty crazy. The relaters sold our flat so we spent 2 days moving everything out and into the new flat(australian term for house). It was a little discouraging for us because it took heaps of time away from proselyting and we didn't get to help as many people as we had hoped but it is a new week and we are ready to change extra people's lives to make up for it. Our new flat is pretty big and has heaps of spiders around it. There is one in particular that is about 1.5 inches long. We call him Henry and we sometimes watch him eat bugs he catches in his web. The rest we are trying to exterminate.
It was so exciting!!! at the beginning of last week we got a Baptismal Date. it is for the 29th of October so I am way stoked to take part in a baptism. Is is for a boy named Morona. He is 9 years old and his family are all active members except for his mom. She is a non-member and she smokes so we are trying to get her to start the quit-smoking program soon so we can get her to want to be baptised. Hopefully she will want to come to church soon too. They are such an awesome family.
The other family we have been teaching was really busy last week and we didn't get a chance to start them on the quit smoking program so hopefully we will get an appointment with them this week to do that. I really want to see them quit smoking so we can get them baptised. We are praying for them all the time and working hard with fellowship. We are trying to fellowship them with Morona's family but they are really busy with their lives and it is hard to get members help sometimes. We are doing our best though.
It is also pretty exciting about a less active family we recently reactivated. They are going to the temple this Saturday to get their endowments and sealed together. It is amazing that we can be with our families together forever and I am so grateful for that.
I hope you are all doing well and that the church is strong in your lives continually.

my address:
elder josh butts
Perth Mission, PO Box 185
Tuart Hill, WA 6929, AUSTRALIA

Dear family, friends, and neighbors,
This week has been a little slow. My companion got mono(he got it from mosquitoes before his mission and it came back) so we didn't get to do a whole lot. I got to go to a baptism for someone in another missionaries area yesterday though. It was so incredible seeing a person who wanted to change their life around and be baptised as Jesus Christ was.
I am super excited for our investigators. This month we are going to get some solid baptisms. I know it! My companion is leaving tomorrow so I will be assigned a new one. I will miss elder Gilkes but I know that whoever I get will be a benefit to the area and that the work will thrive here. Even though the week has been a little slow, we had a really good lesson with a family of former investigators. They had a baptismal date 4 months ago but dropped the missionaries. We stopped by a week ago and they allowed us to come again and share messages with them. We committed them to pray together as a family each night till then. A few days ago we went back for our appointment and they had prayed and kept their commitment. They said they felt like something was missing since they stopped coming to church and we asked them to start reading the Book of Mormon again and that they would be blessed for it.
I am really praying for them to want to be baptised and we are going to do our best and with the help of Heavenly Father, I know that we can baptise them this month!
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Blog,
This week has been a smash. My companion and I were a little sick the first couple days of the week so it was off to a tough start but we had heaps of fun working. We have our investigator Steven, who we saw and was super excited to learn more and told us he wanted to be baptised. All he had to do was get married and he told us he would pray about what day he should get baptised so we were pretty excited for him to commit to a day. Sadley he told us yesterday randomly that he was no longer interested, but we think that there is more to it than what meets the eye so we are going to see if we can get him a desire to be baptised again. I believe it can't be to hard as long as we are persistant.
We are also teaching a part member family where the father smokes and drinks but we finally got a decent lesson with the father on saturday so we are going to commit him to stop smoking when he gets the desire which should be soon. He wants his children to grow up in the gospel, so we are also trying to get him to understand that he needs to be an example by following gods commandments and being baptised.
The mission is going great! Feel free to send me letters too ;)
Elder Butts
(photo caption: this is a guy in the ward who is nice to the elder and we help him sometimes)

Dear Blog,
It has been great this week. Apparently the area I am in has been rough the last year because slacking missionaries have been in it for a long time but since I have been here my companion says the area is really picking up because we work together so well. He is from Queensland in Australia. He also said he has met Steve Erwin a couple times and apparently Steve Erwin is a heap more popular in America than Australia.
We have been getting a few new investigators and most people we work with are less actives. We went to the store the other day and a lady was sitting outside the store smoking and stopped us. She said she was baptised about 11 years ago and hadn't really wanted anything to do with the church. She invited us to come over and talk to her though. We stopped by the other day and she told us about how 3 weeks prior to seeing us at the grocery store, she had gotten on a train and a met a woman on the train who professed to be an angel.
The woman on the train told her that she didn't want her to keep committing suicide and doing many other bad things that she was doing because there were people waiting for her on the other side who weren't ready for her to come yet. The lady also told us that everyone else on the train seemed to be oblivious to the woman as if she was the only one who could see her. She also told us that the woman on the train told her that she needed to get back to church. It seemed a little far fetched for us to believe, but I guess god works in mysterious ways so whatever the case, she is letting us talk to her about church and we are going to do our best to get her reactivated.
I am having heaps of experiences here!
Elder Butts
[PHOTOS:

Dear Blog,
This past week we got the best investigator in the world. His name is Steven. He had been taught by the missionaries about 10 years ago and started getting off the alcohol but then went back onto drugs. Apparently he decided to start drinking moderately because he realized that it was bad. A week ago he emailed the missionaries on Mormon.org and we called him. He told us his story and told us he wanted to meet us somewhere and asked us to bring a book of mormon.
He told us that he has studied Aramaic and Hebrew and he knows all kinds of stuff about the bible. He has been researching and studying all kinds of stuff about the LDS religion and really wants to be baptised. I am so excited about this and we are going to try to get him baptised this month! His wife(partner) is not interested but he leaves church stuff around the house because he wants her to get into it soon too.
The last couple days have been a little tough because my companion has been sick, so I have been doing my best to help him out and I have given him a couple blessings. Today he has actually been getting better so I am excited to get out there and start working crazy hard again.
The picture is of our neighbors backyard that I am paving for him as service. While my companion was sick, I got so bored and the neighbor wanted us to pave an area in his backyard but didn't know how. It looked like heaps of fun to me and I love building stuff. I figured it couldn't be too hard to figure it out so I got some bricks and smoothed out the sand and started paving. I was pretty happy with it and I'm gonna finish the rest tomorrow.
ELDER BUTTS

sorry about the blog josh's new address is
Australia Perth Mission
p.o. box 185
Tuart Hill, WA 6939
Australia

Dear Blog:
Everything is great since I have gotten to Australia. The plane flight was kinda crazy. I took the first 2 connecting flights to Los Angeles and when I arrived, I found out that my flight got cancelled. I went over to the desk to figure things out and they told me I could either take a flight to Oakland, CA and connect the flight to Melbourne and then to Perth, or wait till the next night and there would be a direct flight to Sydney. I decided to take their offer to stay in a hotel and wait till the next night. I went to the desk in the second terminal to get my arrangements and be taken to the hotel and after making the arrangements, the agent told me that there was a flight leaving right then if I wanted to get on it. I didn't really want to wait an extra day, so I had him book me on that flight and I ran to the terminal to get there just in time. After the flights I arrived in Perth not knowing what to expect. I got off the plane and felt like the missionary in Other Side of Heaven when I found that nobody knew I was coming. I was sitting there in the airport alone and with no money(it was only american so they wouldn't take it) and all I had was a desire to figure out what to do. After about an hour or two of wandering back and forth in the airport hoping that maybe someone would show up, I decided to sit at a coffee table and say a little prayer. Not a minute after I prayed, I had the idea pop into my head that I had a paper that the mission president had previously sent me and I pulled it out to find the phone number to the mission office on it. I was so relieved and immediately called the number and the mission presidents picked me up telling me they were expecting me the next night. It was such a builder of my belief in the power of prayer and the tender mercies of the lord. The next week at transfers, I felt famous because everyone who talked to me knew me as "the missionary who made his own flight plans"

Since then I have been serving in Kwinana which is about an hour south of Perth. It is so beautiful here. Contrary to popular belief, there are very few kangaroos here. In fact, I hadn't seen any. But missionaries have told me that there are a few in the more outlying outskirt areas so I will probably see them eventually. I am still working hard and it is great seeing the lords hand in the progress of people we meet. It is sad when so many people reject the message though because it would make their lives so much better.

Elder Butts

p.s. I had octopus for the first time today

This week has been very fun. The best part was on Friday night. It was about 10:29 when we got a call from the mission president telling me that I recieved my Visa! I was told I would be leaving on Monday, August 18th to Australia. I will be on a plane for a duration of 27 hours traveling across the entire world. My experiences here in Tuskegee were great and I am very anxious to find out what it will be like in Australia. It will also be pretty nice to get away from the humidity. The kingdom is growing quickly in Alabama and I hope to also help it grow quickly in Perth.

josh leaves for australia on monday the 15 of august and is very excited!

sorry about the blog josh's new address is
Australia Perth Mission
p.o. box 185
Tuart Hill, WA 6939
Australia

district: this is the district I am serving in currently(Montgomery)

this is Cameron Mills brother-in-law aka my companion

I am filling up.

This week has went by so fast. We have been working with less actives a lot and been trying to get them to understand the importance of coming to church. It is so fulfilling when you commit someone to do something and they actually keep the commitment. Earlier this week we did splits with the young men in the branch so I went with my companion, and my other companion split with the priest. Elder Cullimore and I biked a few miles out of town where there are few houses. We started tracting out a few and ran into a preacher. We chatted for a minute and got the same "the church is in our hearts" story. We decided that he wasn't going to listen but offered him a card. He told us that he didn't believe in the Internet or computers so the card was probably useless but we decided to ask if we could have a closing prayer just to leave on good terms. He stood up and grabbed our hands which took me off guard. I went with it understanding that in some religions, this is common. My companion said the prayer and the preacher would say "yes" after every phrase added into the prayer. Though something like this was not unheard of to me, it was the first time I did it on my mission and I just laughed. It sounded like my companion was praying to the preacher almost because the preacher would almost accept everything my companion said. I wondered if the preacher would say "NO" if my companion said something the preacher didn't want prayed for. I just laughed especially after the same thing happened with the next house(but that was the last time it happened for that day).

We had something happen that was pretty cool earlier this week. We were finishing up companion study in the morning and someone called who lived in the area. We didn't recognize the number but he gave this huge story about how he was on his death bed and prayed to be healed and know what to do. Apparently he had gotten the answer that he needed to join the church. He called us and wanted to be baptised. In the past the missionaries in the area had taught him but he dropped the discussions and never contacted them again until just recently. I hope that we can get him baptised before I leave to Australia.

These are my two companions currently. The one on the left is Elder Cullimore(he is realted to aunt Karen through Cameron Mills or something like that(he is adopted)) the one on the right is Elder Miller.

We were out tracting and this sickly kitten followed us for about 1/2 a mile.

Dear Blog,

This last week has been so awesome! I love serving in Tuskegee. We have quite a few investigators one of which seems like a forever investigator. His name is Ken. He seems pretty well educated and looks a black mixed with Jamaican. He had been being taught and fellowshipped for the last year by missionaries and has only recently decided he was willing to be baptised but the main elder who was teaching him got transferred to a different area after having served here for 10 months of his mission. Ken told us he would be baptised but won't unless it is by that missionary, so the missionary is going to be transferred back here for the last part of his mission to baptise Ken. The first time we talked was very entertaining for both of us. He asked some of the things I liked to do and photography, art, music, and especially hunting wasn't gonna cut it. He made it very well known to me that I needed to "get some culture". He could not believe that I never play video games or anime stuff. I guess I wasn't exactly up to par when it comes to governmental issues either, but I guess that it is a good thing that while I am out here the only thing I have to know is the gospel, and I think I am doing pretty good in that area.

Tuskegee has been tracted over time and time again. So we are just gonna keep doing it a couple more times. The people here are great and we are trying as hard as we can to get them to understand the concept of "there is only one true church". A lot of people think the true church is in your heart. It is so evident and easy to tell the people who just want to bash rather than learn. I love all these people and thoroughly enjoy it here.

The young men in my branch that we help keep active

Me, president Holzapfel, and Sister Holzapfel

Me pointing to BOTH of my missions

Me and My MTC companion in front of the Provo Temple

This last week has been incredible and we have been working so hard. There is a man named Alfonzo that we are teaching and he has been taught a little by other missionaries. We invited him to be baptised and he accepted so we are trying to get him off his tobacco so he passes the baptismal interview. The other day we were tracting down a street and ran into a Jehovah's Witness. He was very nice but we found out quickly that they have some wacked out beliefs. One strange thing he said was that we were supposed to be missionaries our whole lives, and not just two years. We asked him how we would possible get married and have children if we worked 24/7 proseliting. We told him about how every member should be a missionary, but he didn't understand and felt as though everyone had to be full time missionaries their whole lives. After a short amount of time we decided that it was pointless to talk to him and told him to have a great day and we departed. It was nice that we were able to disagree with him without bashing.My mission president is Richard Holzapfel. He is a very well known man and was the head of religion at BYU. He has written many books and done seminars in many countries. If I had any doctrinal questions, I'm sure that he would know all the answers to just about anything. The area I am currently in is Tuskegee. It is a very small area and quite a bit of country. It is about as black as the last area I was in and the branch includes about 30 people. We have been told to focus mostly on the youth in this area, so we will be setting up a BBQ this next week for the ward and we go to some young mens houses occasionally to play a little basketball to keep a good relationship with them and keep them active.As for some of the animals here, there are some that are cool and some, not so much. I got to see fireflies for the first time and they are so incredible. It's weird to think that an animal can create light with their body. There are also cardinals which you for sure don't see in Utah. Some of the animals that are not so pleasant are cockroaches and spiders that we have a lot of fun with disposing of. The work is continuing to press foward and I love serving. Elder Butts

over the last week i have gone tracting more hours than i can count. through this we have picked up many investigators who are somewhat interested in learning more. it is hard teaching people here because many of them can barely read and it is an entirely black community. it is very hot and humid, and just from standing outside in the shade. you sweat immensely. hopefully i will be able to leave to Australia soon, but i am working very hard here and accomplishing much.

I have been doing so much work here in the ensley part of alabama. It is extreemly humid and hot here and you can sweat literally quarts of water every day. At least my skin stays nice and moist and I don't get bloody noses from thin air. I got to go to sacrament meeting here for the first time yesterday and it was so incredible. They have 20 or so people in the branch that are active on average but they are great people. I have never been in a place where 99.9% of the people are black. It is like a different country down here. My companion and I have taught many lessons and we spend A LOT of time tracting. We usually leave around 10 and tract for hours. Yesterday we tracted for 6 hours straight and taught 4 lessons to people we tracted into. It is hard to get people to listen because almost all of them are either baptist and want nothing to do with our church or they are happy enough with their life and think religion doesn't matter. They just think as long as you are close to god, that everything is going to be fine but they don't understand that this is how to be close to god. Peope are very uneducated here and a lot of them have trouble reading the book of mormon when we give them one. We read segments with them and do our best to help them understand. We tracted into a man yesterday with a large family and it was incredible to see his openness to the message we had to share with him. He said he had a father and other relatives who were preachers and pastors of other churches but he liked going to other churches and finding out what they were about. We gave him a Book of Mormon and hope that he will read and pray about it, and tomorrow we will see what impression he got. After the lesson he asked if we believed if families could be together forever and it was the perfect question. We told him that the family was central to gods plan and we gave him a pamphlet about the proclamation to the family. I really hope he gets baptised and though I may end up leaving to australia before that happens, I know that he will feel of the spirit and do so. I feel like we are getting the work to progress and I am excited to see Australia hopefully soon. Thanks for all the support and I can feel of your love for me. The first week was extreemly difficult for me to cope with the change in lifestyle. I had no trainer and it was difficult to understand my companion at first because we have nothing in common except the gospel. I prayed harder than ever to have help from the lord and I was blessed for it and my companion and I are able to accomplish much. I am so grateful for this gospel and I don't know how anyone could deny the blessings of being a member of it. Elder Butts

The MTC has been so much fun and I am so ready to start teaching in Australia. I leave this coming Monday I am sooo excited but I am also a little nervous. For the 4th of July we got the opportunity to listen to a speaker who talked about the sacrifices of people in the war and how some of them are still willing to take extra time to attend sacrament meetings. They had people come in and play bagpipes and carrying flags from all the countries that have missionaries. It was so cool and afterward we got to see the fireworks from the BYU football stadium (the Willard fireworks are 100 times better though). On Sunday we were given the chance to attend a devotional and listen to Jenny Oaks Baker(Dallin H Oaks Daughter) play the violin and she was so good. She also had her children all of which were under 10 and they played violin, cello, and piano. It was so amazing and the five year old girl playing the piano could probably play better than me. They have such an incredible family.

This last week it has been amazing to see how much I've grown spiritually. I have been continuing to memorize scriptures and so far I have about 15 memorized. A lot of the missionaries in my residence hall have seen some of the quick sketches that I do and they think they are pretty cool so whenever I get a little free time, I draw them some pictures. The Provo temple is so cool and it was a lot like the inside of the Ogden temple. We only got to go once because it is closed till after we leave but I was so glad to have had the chance to go inside that one. We have been teaching a couple (fake)investigators and they are going to great except for the ones that my teachers play because they make it so much harder. I feel like I am getting so ready to enter the mission field. One of the couples in the MTC presidency used to be mission presidents in Perth and they told us about some of the cool things there like the giant tarantulas and some of the poisonous animals that we will probably want to avoid. They said that some missionaries would catch the spiders and pin them onto the wall and give them names. I thought it was pretty funny.

Elder Butts

first week in mtc

The MTC is has been great. My companion is pretty good. I have been pretty impatient with him lately because he is major "dont break the rules"rule Nazi and basically chastises me for every little mistake I make. But I am glad that he is excited about the gospel and It is nice to have a companion who doesn't hold me back as to the progress of the work. The other elders in the room have found out quickly that I like to be organized and it was most evident when the room checks came around and my bed was the only one made and my side of the desk was the only one clean. (we found a little humor in that) We taught an investigator who was baptist a few times and he has been fun to teach as well as challenging. We asked him to be baptised and he said he already was so it was hard to get him to understand that his baptism wasn't exactly valid. It was nice that he was open to our message though. We also taught this black guy who was also baptist and it was one of the worst experiences that I have ever had. He accused us of being racist and for being responsible for all the slavery and everything simply because we were mormon and white. I was really mad about this discussion because in real life on the field, we would have just left because he completely drove the spirit away but since we are at the mtc, we had to teach the entire 45 minute lesson and we felt like we were wasting time because it was just a bible bash and kinda a joke. Everything else at the mtc has been great though. The food and classes, although some of the rules are kind of a joke. Like the rule that we aren't allowed to sleep only under our blanket. We have to have certain sheets in a certain order to sleep on and NOBODY tells me how to sleep. I am pretty darn good at following all the other nit picky rules to exactness though. I talked to some of the other elders in my district and they are also into some of the web design stuff so it's kinda cool to relate to them that way. they all think I am good at art so I have drawn them a couple pictures on note cards for them to use as book marks.Thanks for all your help and support