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