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!