November 25

Dear Family, It has been yet another week in Karratha. There is some new news with this email though. I will be transferred to Rockingham this week and I have been assigned to be a trainer. I have already served a few weeks in the area, but they have decided to send me back there. Maybe there is some unfinished work I have to do. This past week I finished a charcoal drawing that is going to be put up at the library. The librarians seemed to like it so hopefully it will be the source of bringing in new people into the church. We have not had too much else going on this week other than one lesson with Emma. It has been such a blessing to have been able to be part of teaching her. She went through almost the entire "true to the faith" pamphlet and had so many quiestions. She is now at the point where she likes a lot of what we have been saying but she wants to find out whether or not there was actually an apostacy. We gave her a "Jesus the Christ" book and now its up to her to read it and find her answers. I hope you all had a great thanksgiving! I will keep you all in my prayers in the comming week as I hope you will keep me in yours. Elder Joshua Butts

November 11

Dear Friends and Family, It has been such an amazing week! We had a bit of a miracle happen on Thursday. Kelvin contacted us and said he wanted to be baptized on Saturday...(LAST WEEK). That meant we had three days to plan it. I was so surprised but happy that he made the decision to change his date to the original date. It was incredible. We were able to get everything set up in time and the spirit was felt so much. When he went in the water, I felt the spirit more than at any other baptism since I've been in Karratha. We had 4 investigators show up too. Zakir and Reza, the two men from Afghanistan came, which was really surprising and Emma came for about 5 minutes during the video so she didn't get to watch the baptism but we were so glad that she came. We met Emma about a month ago and it was from contacting. She didn't have time to talk to us but an hour after contacting we went to a teaching appointment. As we were walking in, we saw her walking out so we talked to her for a minute. She said she was actually a bit interested in finding out more about the purpose of life and she likes learning about what others believe. We told the member to set up a teaching appointment for us but that never happened. About a week or so later, we were tracting and remembered that the past missionaries told us about a woman they tracted into a few months before. We went to the house to follow up and when we knocked, who could have answered but her. She didn't have time to talk but we were able to arrange an appointment and get her number. While talking at the doorstep, we didn't quite know what to expect at the appointment because she seemed a bit timid and we were unsure about how committed she was but with all the experiences before, we felt that there was a reason that we have been led to her. Our appointment was Friday and we were in for quite a surprise. She had all kinds of notes she had written about the bible and what she believes. She asked us questions about verses in the bible and we had no idea how to answer them. We taught her about the plan of salvation which she found quite interesting but still had a bunch of things she had questions with the bible. We are pretty excited for our next visit and are hoping she has read some of the book of Mormon. We have also been blessed to teach Peter and Julie. We actually met Tia about a month ago from street contacting. Tia is their daughter who just graduated from high school. She didn't seem very interested but told us that her parents like talking about religion. We made our first stop with president Lindsay and Julie answered. She didn't seem too interested at first but after a bit of persuasion, we were able to convince her to allow us to come back. The next week she told us she was going to talk about it with her husband, Peter and for us to come back in 2 weeks. Well we were finally about to get an appointment with them for Saturday, just before the baptism. It was great and Julie has so many questions. We ended up teaching them the Plan of Salvation AND the restoration. They just kept giving us plenty of questions, most of which we couldn't really give answers to(such as if someone is talking to spirits for people as a business and giving those people a sense of peace, is that from god or the devil). We were able to get them to understand that they can know if it is true by reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. Julie told us that she was a bit skeptical because she grew up in an environment where her father was constantly saying negative things about Mormons and she has gained a bit of a bias because of that. They didn't want to obey all the rules such as the word of wisdom and tithing, but I believe that they will receive an answer and eventually know the truth. I am so thankful that heavenly father has given us the opportunity to meet them and I really hope we can change their lives. Things are going very well with our investigator Ardi. He is Indonesian and we were able to have our first Real lesson with him when President Lindsay was here too. We retaught him about the restoration and it was like a light bulb lit up in his head. He understood why there was a need for the Priesthood to be restored and he said he would be reading the Book of Mormon more intently now. He also said he wants to come to church next week to see what it is like. That was a bit surprising because he has been going to the baptist church and we didn't expect that he was so willing to find out if this is true that he wants to see what our church worship is like. I am going to be praying a lot this week that he will follow through with his commitment. I know that he is very special to heavenly father and there is something planned for him. We had a lesson with Caitlin at Albertos house which went really good. She even came to the baptism on Saturday which I believe she got a lot out of. She completed her reading assignment from the Plan of Salvation lesson but didn't get too much out of it so we are probably going to teach it to her again sometime. She is moving to Perth in 5 or 6 weeks though so we hope she will gain a witness that our message is true. We taught her the restoration on Friday and showed her the movie. It seemed like she got a lot out of it and she told us about her friend Anita(who we exterminated her birds last Saturday). Anita has been thinking about what we said a bit and we stopped by to see her yesterday after church. We told her that the reason she hasn't been very happy lately is because she has distanced herself from god. We taught her about the Restoration and told her about some experiences that helped us know if the church was true and strengthened our faith. She said she really doesn't even know if god exists sometimes and she doesn't feel like she gets answers to prayers. We hit her with the comment that "Maybe god IS answering your prayers by sending two young men to teach you about his true church. We are really praying for Anita to have some kind of spiritual experience to help her gain answers to her prayers and know the truth. Well that's a bit about our week. I know.. kinda crazy. I have so thankful that heavenly father has been blessing us with so much work here in karratha. I hope you are all finding people that are willing to let god bless their lives through you! Love Elder Joshua Butts

November 4

Dear Family, We had a great baptism this week for Ti Whenua and JJ Erickson. They were Baptised and confirmed by their dad on thursday the 1st of september and Kelvin is scheduled to be baptised on the 15th. We did a lot of tracting this week. We met Emma and we are very excited to teach her. We had actually tracted into her a few months ago but she was busy and said to come back some other time. This time must have been the charm because she seemed to have a desire to learn about the plan of salvation and other things about Jesus Christ. We are going to teach her this week! The rest of things have been going a bit slow but I still think we can get another baptism aside from Kelvin before the end of the year. We taught Rachel the Plan of Salvation this last week too which went amazing. She is very receptive to the gospel. We have also set a goal to activate her before the end of the year because she is already a member. She told us that we answered questions that she didn't even know she had. We had a great experience while we were at Volleyball. Since the branch did the youth trip this year, there was nobody who showed up except for the 2 men from Afghanistan. Zakir hasn't been able to read much more about the book of Mormon but while I was sitting on the chairs, Reza came up to me and asked what we did all the time. I told his about our schedule and the plan of salvation. Fortunately I had some pictures that I was able to put out and I went through the plan of salvation with him. it caused him to ask questions about why there are so many churches in the world. I was able to share the restoration and Joseph smith with him which made him really quite interested. He said he wanted to look at the website and learn about it. we are really hoping that we can teach him. I hope you are all having a wonderful week! Love Elder Joshua Butts

October 28

Dear Family, It has been such a great week! President Lindsay came up and we took him out to do some visits with us on Wednesday. I don't think it could have gone better. He loves the work we are doing and we taught two incredible lessons(one of which wasn't even remotely planned). We went to visit Rachel, who we found out is a member but doesn't know really anything about the church. She ended up being busy so we set up an appointment to visit tomorrow. We didn't really know who we might be able to catch home at that time but I remembered Ardi, an Indonesian man whom we tracted into and gave a book of mormon to two weeks ago. When we visited with president Lindsay, he was miraculously home and invited us in with a friendly smile. He is a christian and goes to the baptist church but is open to new ideas and was curious about the Book of Mormon when we told him about it last time. We showed him some Scriptures in the bible which talk about the book of mormon such as Ezekial 37, and John 10. He had some questions about baptism and we helped him understand that the gospel has been restored by Joseph smith. This week we are going to teach him about the Apostasy. Our mission president was quite pleased with the visit. We next had an appointment with a woman named Jen who we had also recently tracted into and given a book of mormon. She was so inviting to us and President Lindsay. After some conversation we taught the lesson of the restoration with the movie. It was so amazing the spirit we were able to feel and I could tell that she was thinking. She lit up after the movie and told us that Now she understood what the book of mormon is. It is not our mormon bible, but it is additional scripture. Later in the week she told us she had been reading and was looking forward to our visit this coming week! We have also had many other great experiences including exterminating some pests from a woman's yard to teaching Jayjay and Ti Whenua. They are going to be baptised this Thursday. It is simply so amazing that Heavenly father has seen fit so bless us with so many of these baptisms. We were able to teach them and Kelvin(who will be baptised in the next two weeks) about the baptismal interview questions which they answered the questions with flying colors. I feel so blessed. They also did the primary program in this branch yesterday. I must say, it was quite a comical event. I always love watching the children sing and talk about how the church has blessed their lives. There are going to be many more blessings seen in karratha in the near future. Have a great week! Love Elder Joshua Butts

October 21

Dear Family, It has been such a great week! Prestons baptism was friday and it was such an amazing experience. There were even a few non-members who showed up and we were able to give one of them a book of mormon. I was given the privilege of confirming Preston on sunday. It was a very spiritual experience. I believe that he will be such a great member of the church. We have had lots of success this week with investigators and lessons. Alberto has a neighbor that works in the school system with him. She is in her mid 20's and her name is Caitlin. We were finally able to teach her at his house on Wednesday. We taught her the plan of salvation and she was really intrigued by it. She said she'd read the book of mormon, so we are going to follow up with her the next time we are able to meet with her. We have gotten 3 more baptismal dates with other investigators this week too which has been so rewarding. We are teaching Te-Whenua and Jay-Jay. They are both children of Regan. He is an active member and is getting married to another member in November. He told us that he wanted us to start teaching his kids a while back and we finally got to teach them on wednesday. Since they already come to church, they are pretty clued on and know a lot. The lesson was a breeze and we asked about them being baptised. We were able to set it up for November 1st. I am very excited. We are going to have to compact the lessons a bit, but I'm sure they will be able to handle them. Kelvin is also doing really well. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and he loved it. He has a brother who died a few months ago because of bad decisions but Kelvin was very comforted to know he will see his brother again. He even called us yesterday and told us that he was telling his mom about the plan of salvation and she had a lot of questions. He had no idea how to answer them and asked for help. We are going to try to find a way to get missionaries in Busselton(where she lives) to be able to visit her. I am very excited about the progress. Kelvin is scheduled to be baptised on November 10th. All our hard work is starting to pay off. I will have been blessed to participate in 5 baptisms since being in Karratha. I know the Lord has really been in the work here. We also have a lot of other potential investigators who are coming to church and schedules appointments with us. A month ago we were tracting and met a family who had been to church before. The mothers name is Joanne. they are aboriginal. They are all non-members but used to go to church quite regularly about 2 years ago, but just stopped. We invited them to church a few weeks ago but they never showed up and when we went over to their house, they didn't seem too excited to see us. Surprisingly, when we were in sacrament meeting yesterday, they just showed up. It was quite a shocker for me. When I was talking to her after church, she said her little boy had to go to the hospital during the week and it must have caused her to start thinking. She said she did want to start meeting with us again. I am so excited for our appointment this week. It will be good if we can teach them and eventually help them to get baptised. It is hard with aboriginals because of their culture but hopefully that won't stop this family and hopefully they will be active. That's a little bit about whats in Karratha right now. have a wonderful week everyone! Elder Joshua Butts

October 14

Dear Family, it has been such an eventful week. I don't even know where to start. We have a baptism this coming Friday with Preston. He is so prepared. He begged his mother to allow him to go to general conference on Sunday even though she was sick. His brother dropped him off and we kept an eye on him during the session so his brother could pick him up afterward. He is pretty excited. We are having his interview with the branch president tomorrow. Volleyball went so great on friday. The two men from Pakistan (Zakir and Reza) came and brought their volleyball because ours is flat. The week before, I gave a Farsi book of Mormon to Zakir. I asked him about it last friday and he had read 20 pages (about to 2 nephi). I was astonished and I think he will start having some questions soon. They are both Christian. One last cool fact is that a week ago, we built a sand sculpture of the Brigham city temple at the community gardens. well, I guess that people liked it so much, they left it and it's been up over a week. I wonder if we will be able to get anyone to investigate because of it. People seem it like it though. We have been making a big influence on the library as well. They have commissioned me to do a poster sized charcoal drawing of the SLC temple to put up and they have changed all the backgrounds on the computers to temples. How is that for making an influence. We had such an incredible experience yesterday. We got a call from a woman who we hadn't even heard of (It turned out that it was because she was on the branch list but the name said "DO NOT VISIT" on it so we never bothered). Well the call was to ask us to teach her husband who isn't a member and consequently is the reason that we weren't allowed to visit. Apparently 10 years ago he told his wife that in 10 years he would take the discussions. Yesterday was our first discussion and we taught the restoration. It was so incredible the spirit we were able to feel during the lesson. He works a lot, but hopefully we will be able to see him progress in Book of Mormon reading and in the gospel. General Conference was so amazing this past weekend. I hope you were all able to get a lot out of it last week. Love you all, Elder Joshua Butts

October 7

Dear Family, It has been a very good week full of great spiritual experiences. We are SO super excited. We got a baptismal date with Preston(Toni's son). He has been thinking about baptism for a while and now he is finally making the decision. He wants Bro Otto to baptize him on the 19th of October. We were also able to get Kelvin to start coming back to church. He wants us to start teaching him the lessons again and get a baptismal date at our appointment this week! I am so excited for Preston. It was amazing to see him and his mother start coming to church 3 months ago and now he has made the decision to be baptized. Miracles truly have not ceased and god has not ceased to be a god of miracles. We had another really cool experience with talking with everyone last weekend. We went to the community gardens as usual to do service and we met Deklin(a 14 year old boy who was there last week also). It is hard to find a way to slip gospel conversation in with the other people who help there because bro Otto has pretty much told everyone about it and they aren't really interested. We have never talked about it to deklin though. While helping I decided that we didn't need to wait for him to ask who we were so I asked what he was doing on Sunday. He said just sitting at home doing nothing. I asked why he didn't go to church and he explained that he does bible study classes during the week and occasionally attends the Anglican church on some Sundays. I started talking to him about some of the passages in the bible and then started getting into the book of Mormon (which he had never heard about). I asked what he would think if god called another prophet right now like Moses. He said that it's possible and that he wants to follow the bible as closely as he can. We then invited him to church but the problem is that we didn't talk to his parents yet so we told him to see if it was OK with them and that we would love to explain more. It was so amazing how Heavenly Father was able to give us that teaching opportunity. I am very grateful for the work in this area. Have a great week everyone! Love Elder Butts

September 30

Dear Friends and Family, It was such a great week! We had two investigator as Sacrament meeting. We still have Preston coming and his mother (His brother Jamella who is 9 has decided that the world is more important that church right now but I believe that he will follow his mother and brother eventually). We are VERY excited for Preston because he finally decided that he wants to be baptized. He said originally that he wanted to wait a few months but yesterday at church, he decided that he is ready and wants to be baptized in a few weeks. He is going to talk to his mother about it and they will tell us the date he would like to be baptized on Thursday. I am SO excited. It has been amazing to see Toni(his mother) and her family go from complete estrangement to the church to coming every week and striving to be worthy for every blessing the lord has for them. It is incredible. Hopefully their influence will affect everyone in the family. We had another cool tracting experience this week. We chose a street to knock a street and had no success during the first 10-15 minutes. We suddenly came to a large house to which we had no thought of the resident being even remotely interested in Heavenly Father when they must have had such vast wealth. We had a particularly surprising experience upon actually knocking though. An unusually inviting catholic man opened the door and excitedly invites us in for some dessert and a drink. How is that for a surprise? He took us out back where we saw his wife and the puzzle was put together. We knew her because we do service at St. Vincents thrift shop once a week. He sat with is and started talking about the history of the catholic church. He is a historian of some kind. We mentioned that he should become acquainted with the history of Our church. He was surprisingly interested, especially when we told him about the third book that would come forth before Christ comes again, but He still spent pretty much the rest of the time talking about more of the history of the catholic church. Before leaving we asked if he would like to read the Book of Mormon. We got the expected response that if he was inclined to read any religious book, we would likely only choose the Bible which he specified to be the King James version. Now this I can testify is how I know that the Holy Ghost Can guide conversations because we told him that we read that same bible. It was ONLY after that comment that he chose (of his own free will) to ask us for a Book of Mormon. I don't know why he suddenly changed his mind but I am sure it's because of the spirit. Karratha is a great place! Hopefully you are all enjoying the new temple! Love Elder Butts

September 23

Dear Friends and Family, It has been a pretty busy week as usual, although it just wasn't as packed with teaching people. We have been doing extra knocking on doors. I gave a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday too. I'm pretty sure it's the longest talk i've ever given. I talked for almost 20 minutes. I'm so glad I prepared during the week and prayed that the spirit would guide me. I think it was amazing to see how much the spirit does for people who pray for it. We had another cool tracting experience this past week. We went to an area that probably hadn't been tracted for about a year (because I'm pretty sure all of karratha has been tracted 10times over) and we prayed to be able to meet someone who needed us. We met some teenagers because a lot of parents work all the time in karratha. We were able to give away 2 book of Mormons, a finding faith in Christ DVD and a CD with Mormon messages on it. We were getting close to the end of the street and we tracted into a house with an aboriginal family. It was the mothers birthday so we told her happy birthday and that we had a present for her. Her name is Joanne. We told her we were going to give her the gospel and she agreed that she needed to come back to church. "WHAT?, come back?" she told us she used to go quite regularly 2 or 3 years ago but her family was going through some financial struggles and stopped going (That happens to people a lot here is seems). Well her family is actually all non-members and they told us we could come teach them. That was a bit of a miracle. Nothing is set in stone yet, but we have lots of faith so hopefully we can help this family come back to the church and get some baptisms out of it! It is good because since she has been to church before, she already knows some of the members. On Saturday we went to an art competition at the visitors center. So the story is that about a month ago, we stopped in just to check out the visitors center and saw a flyier for a recycled art competition. I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to get into the public and share some of our beliefs. I got some pizza and cereal boxes and glued them together to make a board. To make the image, I got newspapers and magazines we found (Don't worry, I didn't cut up a single church magazine) and used the clippings of color to make an image of the Pilbarra and I placed Jesus Christ in it. When I was finished I felt that it looked like a 12year old did it but at least it will get the message across. On Saturday we went to the opening night and were able to meet some of the other people who had done artwork. It was a great way to talk about Jesus Christ and hopefully we will be able to get some people to ask some questions in the future. I love being out here serving! I hope you are all finding opportunities to serve those around you! Love Elder Butts

September 16

Dear Friends and Family, It has been a crazy week because it's getting so HOT! Just a few days ago it got up to 102 degrees. We have been drinking Tons of water but sometimes I still get headaches from either dehydration or heat exhaustion, so we have had to be pretty careful. We went tracting one day this week and had another cool experience. We have ben telling Alberto that we were gonna tract his street one of these days but never got around to it but one morning we just decided to do it. We didn't have any one who was super interested but when we got to the last house, we met Caitlin, his neighbor. She said she had talked to Alberto a lot and seen us go over there pretty often. We asked her what kinda questions she had about god and stuff and she told us that she liked finding out new things about him because she just wasn't sure. We told her about the Book of Mormon and she was interested in obtaining one so we offered to have a lesson with her and Alberto. We are going to set it up this week so it is pretty exciting! Not much else has happened. Hopefully we can get heaps of stuff going on this week though! Have a wonderful week everyone! Love, Elder Joshua Butts

September 9

Dear Friends and Family, It has been such an incredible week! We have been finding so many new investigators and helping people so much. One of the best pieces of news is that Kelvin came back up here from Perth. He came to church yesterday and he had an incredible Gospel Principals lesson on Charity. We had a really cool experience tracting yesterday after church. We went to a street we had tracted earlier in the week but nobody was home at the time so we decided to retract it. As we were knocking a few doors, it seemed that most people were just drinking and partying so it wasn't the best situation to be in for tracting but we still knew that no effort is ever wasted. We went to the next house only to find a very nice christian lady named Belinda, who opened the door and listened to us share for a minute about how god has called a prophet and how we can be with our families forever by being sealed in the temple. She didn't seem too convinced at first so I decided to just tell it to her straight that "Our church is the only true church on the earth". She replied saying that she felt the same way about her church to which we told her that she was only going to be able to find out which of us was right if she read the book of Mormon and prayed to know whether or not we were telling the truth. She seemed quite hesitant to accept the book of Mormon but the second she took it she said "You know. I'm gonna pray about this OK. And I'm gonna ask if what you're telling me is true". She said we could come back next week and find out how everything went. It was a really cool experience. We also sometimes spend some time at the library for a drink/bathroom break when we are biking out in the farther part of our area. Well this time while we were sitting, the woman at the desk at the library was talking to us about books. We asked her if she had ever heard of the book of Mormon. She told us that she hadn't but we could donate one to her if we had an extra one. That would be a really good way to get people exposed to it (but we mostly wanted the librarian chaz to read it). We gave her the book and she started reading right away. She even asked some questions about the Gold Plates and Joseph smith. A few days later we went back for another short break and showed her some pictures of the temples which she showed great interest in. She was especially interested in the Rome temple which is under construction and also told us we could bring the Book of Mormon Ensign to donate it to the library as well. It is so incredible how much missionary work has been going on in Karratha and we will be expecting some great miracles in the near future. Thanks for all the support again. Keep doing your best everyone! Love ya Elder Joshua Butts

September 2

Dear Friends and Family, It has been such an incredible week. We baptized Priscilla on Saturday! It went so great and she even bore her testimony during fast and testimony meeting at church yesterday. Elder Case baptized her on saturday and I confirmed her on Sunday. I hope you all had fun at the Brigham City Temple open house. I will be getting my new companion in a few hours. His name is Elder Pasina. He is from Tonga. I am pretty excited to keep the missionary work rolling with him. We have also still been meeting with Toni this week. Her and Preston(her son) came to the baptism of Priscilla and they seemed to really like it and they also came to church. Jamella is the one who wants to be baptised but he decided to stay at his friends house instead of going to church so we will have to keep working on his keeping the sabbath day holy so he and Preston can be baptised soon. I had a kinda cool experience with a member yesterday. We were talking with him at the chapel and he was telling us about a YSA activity they were doing that night. He said they were all going to get fast food for the activity because he didn't have that much food and he had done other things that were much worse anyway so it wouldn't matter this once. It reminded me of when we were teaching Preston and Jamella about keeping the sabbath day holy and we read a story from the friend to them called "Drive-Through Decision". I really felt like sharing the same story with the member we were talking to so I had him pull it up on his phone and I read it to him. Before I finished the story he said "OKAY I wont go anymore ok!" but a minute later he said it reminded him of when he was going to go to the store on a sunday but he stubbed his foot on the way in so he decided to leave. Later in the day he called us and told us thanks for helping him keep the sabbath day holy. I am so glad that we were able to help him with that and I felt like it was much inspired to read the story. I hope you all have a wonderful week!! Love, Elder Joshua Butts

Priscilla Baptism

August 26

Dear Friends and Family, It has been such a spirit filled week! We got 13 lessons which is pretty much a record for this area. We also have some amazing and exciting news. We will be having a baptism this Saturday! It is for Pracilla. We have been teaching her and she finally got an interview with the branch president at church yesterday and she passed it with flying colours so he suggested that we get in contact with the mission president and set up a time for the next interview. We called up President Lindsay and he said it was so great that she is going so well and that after he Skype's her on Tuesday that she is ready for baptism. Since Elder Case is going home next week, president suggested that we set up the baptism for this Saturday. there are many members of the branch who are leaving town but he said that if we felt good about it, that we should set it up for this Saturday. We both felt pretty good about it and after making some calls, we decided to go with it. I am super excited. We also are teaching Pracillas uncle as of this week too. We got a random call from Noretta (Pracillas sister who was baptised last November) and she said she had been talking to her Uncle Victor and he had some great questions about how our body is a temple and about other Mormon temples. It was an incredible lesson that we got to teach. He apparently went to a YSA activity the other day with one of the other YSA. The next step is to just get him to church and keep teaching him. On Saturdays we usually help out with some community gardens. While we were helping, we met Kurt. He is from Queensland and has been traveling through Australia. He is really big into Tai Chi so he likes meditating a lot. Sometimes he just stops whatever he is doing and stars doing hand and leg movements like he's dancing, or he'll sit on the ground with his legs crossed and his eyes closed. I didn't really mind, but sometimes it was a little strange to be mixing cement for a flower bed container and he would randomly disappear. He told us he liked reading the bible a bit and we shared with him about the book of Mormon. He seemed a little interested so we offered to give him one. The next day, bro Otto had talked him to church. That was a bit surprising. We found out that as bro Otto was driving to church, he saw Kurt at the side of the road. He asked what Kurt was doing and Kurt told him that he wasn't really doing much. Bro Otto just decided to bring him to church. He really seemed to enjoy it and I was glad that he came. Hopefully he will contact other missionaries on his travels. I am so thankful to be out here witnessing all these miracles and I really hope you are all finding people to share the gospel with also. Thanks so much for all your love and support. I love you all, Elder Joshua Butts

August 19

Dear Family, We got to do some pretty awesome activities this week. Jamella who does BMX got in a bad bike crash on thursday. He actually ended up in crutches but they decided because so many people are crashing their bikes they need to pave the BMX course. We offered to help so the majority of the morning on saturday they trucked in about 20 tons of hot blacktop and since you cant use a steam roller on the BMX tract, we had these poles with a roller on the end of them which we would roll back and forth on top of the pavement to set it. We would have to spray the roller with diesel fuel every now and then so it didn't stick to the rocks and tar. It was probably the most fun service project I have done since being in Karratha. We also got to meet a few new people there and Toni and her family were there. On one day this week we were getting back to our apartment for lunch and saw our neighbors relative outside putting together a trampoline. Colleen lives out on the other side of our area and we had never met her before but we started helping her put it together anyway. She told us that she knew Noretta, one of our Torres Strait recent converts. Colleen said she goes to the JW church sometimes because they tracted into her but she actually was baptised as a mormon ages ago. We told her about the church while we were helping and she became interested in the book of mormon again. We ran in and got one for her so hopefully she is reading it now and will come to church sometime. Those were the fun stories for this week. I hope you are all having a wonderful time! Love Elder Joshua Butts

PICTURE: Norettas kids. We baptised Keddie-Bunna a month ago.

August 12

Dear friends and family, It has been a pretty eventful week! I got in a pretty bad bike crash on Wednesday. My hands got pretty messed up but nothing else too serious happened. I am healing up pretty good by now. We have been teaching heaps of people. On Thursday, we went over to Dilia(Less active member) and Clint's house. They are both aboriginals and he took us out Kangaroo hunting. He had never been very receptive but they both allowed us to teach Dilia's children. We planned to teach them the plan of salvation by having elder case teach while I drew it out on a piece of paper like a pathway through life. They loved being able to picture it and Clint was very attentive. During part of it he said that what we taught is how it should be and he agrees with it. We told them to read Alma 40 about the spirit would and that we would ask them questions about it next time to make sure they read. The whole family seemed to like the idea and we really felt the spirit. We are going to see them again this week, so hopefully they kept their commitments. We also have great news about Toni and her kids. We finally got Toni's records in the branch yesterday so she officially was sustained as a member of the branch. Preston and Jamella were pretty excited about going to church yesterday. They even got new suits just to wear at church and it is pretty cool watching them participate so much. The primary teachers have even told us that they participate more than some of the other kids who are members. I am so glad they fit in so well. We were able to teach their family about temples this past week and we retaught "Gospel of Jesus Christ" to them on Saturday after helping them move a giant trailer from their backyard to the street. It was quite a task, especially because it was too big to fit through the car port so they had to drain most of the air out of the tires. I bet it was at less than 15psi because the rims were almost touching the ground. Their friend DJ also came to church the first time yesterday. He is so cool. He always was alright for a quick chat when we went around to see Toni and her kids but yesterday he actually came to church. I think it's because he finally has a week off work due to having had a BMX bike handlebar put through his stomach. While in priesthood meeting he really expressed interest in learning more and excited accepted a book of Mormon when we gave him one. I hope we can start teaching him soon. We haven't seen Rawand lately. He is still following Ramadan so it is pretty much useless until it's over because he can't read any other books aside from the Qua'ran. We will be teaching him next Sunday though because I think he finishes Ramadan this week sometime. Kelvin has been doing well in Perth I think. We haven't been able to get a hold of him this past week and he still hasn't gone to church since he's been down there but the First Counselor in our branch took him to see the temple grounds while he was down in perth for work this past weekend. It was such a relief to hear that yesterday. I am excited for all the blessing that the lord is giving us here in Karratha. It is a place full of great people who have great potential. I love you all so much! Elder Joshua Butts

August 5

Dear Friends and Family, The week has been pretty good even though we have gotten fewer lessons that usual. Kelvin(who is currently down in Perth) decided that he wasn't super excited about visiting with the missionaries there. He said he just likes us better. I am glad that he likes us so much but at the same time, I am disappointed because we are trying to get him to know and trust in the savior, not us. We have been working with the missionaries by phone to try to help him out but we feel that it might just end up waiting till he comes back up here to Karratha and we will likely have to push his baptismal date back. We aren't too worried about it though. I know kelvin still has a super strong testimony and it will not likely be pushed back very much. Preston and Jamella and also progressing still. We weren't able to talk to them the past week because Jamella was in Perth getting an operation. We gave him a blessing before he left and we called them over the weekend and he was fine. They didn't come to church though because Toni, their mom, was sick. We will be seeing them this week to continue teaching them. There is also Great news about Pracilla, our investigator who is half aboriginal and half Torres Strait. Since her baptismal date had to be dropped because of various reasons, we got a call from President Lindsay and he said he can interview her on skype after we have taught her everything. We have been having a lesson a week with her and everything is going awesome. I am so excited for these people. We are still on schedule to have these 4 baptisms before the end of the year(and likely even within the next month or two) I am so thankful for all of you and your prayers for me and the people in this area. Please keep doing whats right and you will never go wrong. Love you all! Elder Joshua Butts

July 29

Dear Friends and Family, It has been an alright week. We had lost contact with Kelvin after he left for Perth last week, but we finally were able to call him on saturday which was a major blessing. He didn't make it to church though which worries us a bit. I hope we will be able to get him to start meeting with the missionaries down there because we don't want to have to push him baptismal date back. The rest of the people we are working with are doing quite well. We were able to get Toni's kids to church on sunday. Toni is the less active member and she has the sons Jordan(18), and Preston and Jamella who are both about 10. The two younger boys and Toni came to church last week and yesterday we were actually able to get Jordan to come which we were quite excited about. Teancum(one of the prospective missionaries in the branch) even knew Jordan from school so they made a bit of a connection there. Preston and Jamella want to be baptised so we are working with them and hopefully we will be able to get the date for them within the next week or two. At least they are enjoying church. Preston even came to the baptism we had on friday for Keddibanna(The son of a recent convert) and Preston really seemed to like it. Toni said he couldn't stop talking about it the rest of the night. I am so thankful that the lord is blessing us with people here to be teaching and I hope you are all still seeing the lords hand in you daily lives. I love you all. Elder Joshua Butts

July 22

Dear Friends and Family, It has been amazing seeing the progression in the work here in Karratha. We have recently gotten ANOTHER baptismal date with Ella, Torres Strait woman who has been taught for a while. Also there is a less active Aussie woman named Tony who we saw recently and she said her 10 and 11 year old boys will be super excited to get to start coming to church. When we saw them at church yesterday the two boys expressed interest in being baptised. We are hopefully going to be able to set two more baptismal dates this week with them which would give us 4 total(not to mention we are baptising a recent converts son this Friday because he just turned 8). Here are potentially the baptismal dates that we could have next week. Bunna(He will be baptised this Friday July 27) Ella(August 10th) Kelvin(August 25th) Preston and Jamelan (the two young Aussie boys), Hopefully sometime in august. maybe the 25th. This is very exciting for Elder Case and myself, especially since Karratha is not an area well known for having much missionary work happening. It has completely changed since we have both been put together. We are not sure how everything has been going with Kelvin. He has gone down to Perth(but is in Busselton for the weekends where he said he would be attending church). We called the missionaries and they told us that he was not at church on sunday which was a bit of a disappointment because he told us so surely that he would be there. We are hoping that it was just a case of unusual circumstances. We are praying for him that he will meet with the missionaries down there and prepare himself for his baptismal date. We also had a pretty interesting experience with Rowand(Row- Wand). He is Muslim but very open. He showed us this HUGE manuscript he wrote comparing the Qua'ran and the Bible. He wants to find out the differences and similarities between the two and pick the one that is the best. He said he is seeking the truth and we believe he is, but I think this is gonna be a while. We gave him the book "Jesus the Christ" because many of his questions would be answered if he read that. Well that is a little bit about what is going on here in Australia. Hope you are all having a wonderful week!! Love Elder Joshua Butts

July 15

Dear Friends and Family, What an amazing week it has been. There were probably two big highlights to the week. The first one was about Kelvin, our recent investigator. We only met him on Friday, the week before last. He is the friend to Toesso(a kiwi member) and they met at work. He has Black hair and has some piercings but he doesn't drink much or smoke. He came to church that first Sunday with encouragement from Toesso though, and we had a great lesson on the sacrament. This past Wednesday we had a lesson with him at Toesso's home and it went so well(although that is a bit of an understatement). He said he was looking for answers and has been praying that if there is anything that he needs to sacrifice that he isn't already he wants to know so he can make those extra sacrifices. We taught him a bit of the restoration and asked him if he would be baptised. He gladly accepted and we set a date for the 25th of August. That is the fastest I have ever set a baptismal date with someone before and you can bet that we had a pretty crazy night. On friday he came to volleyball again with Toesso and he even brought some food for the BBQ. Another member brought a non-member which Kelvin saw and immediately started fellow shipping. It was like they became instant best friends. We were just so excited, so we invited Kelvin to the Branch Presidents home saturday evening for dinner and to meet the mission president. This time, he came by himself which really showed initiative. Sunday, we taught about the Sabbath and how to keep it holy. He shared the experience about how he made breakfast and his roommates told him that he had to clean up the house and he wasn't going anywhere. He told them he had to go to church though which they really weren't planning on accepting as an answer. He then realized that this was Satan trying to get into the way and he was going to keep his commitment to Heavenly Father. He said again that he would clean later and that church was the most important thing to be doing on Sunday. He did this by himself and didn't have anyone to encourage him when the time came. It was such an incredible expression of his commitment and we are SOO excited to get to baptise him next month. The other highlight to the day was meeting the mission president. He told us a little bit about what it was like working for the news and how he was so glad that we are working hard in karratha. We also talked a lot with Robby, His son. He plays the saxophone just like me so it was pretty sweet to be able to relate to him in that way. So it has been a week full of blessing from the lord and I am so grateful to be apart of it. Hopefully you are all seeing miracles like this often too. Have a wonderful week! I love you all! Elder Joshua Butts

July 9

Dear Friends and Family, It has been a good week. We have been working hard. We got a new investigator at the sports night we have on friday evenings that a member brought along. His name is Kelvin. He works at the mines with the member. He also came to church on sunday and we taught the gospel principals class on the Sacrament. He seemed to understand quite a bit and we are excited to go and teach him again this wednesday. We also volunteer at a Vinnies thrift shop on friday mornings. Yesderday we were tracting and felt prompted to tract a particular street because we felt that there would be a certain woman on the street who would listen to us. When we got near the end of the street, we knocked on a house that the manager of vinnies lived in. It was a miracle and I believe that the spirit led us there. They invited us in and we had a good long chat with them. We are going to be having our new mission president visit us in karratha this next weekend to do interviews and meet the people in the branch. I think it will be fun and I hope you are all having heaps of fun.Love you all Elder Joshua Butts

July 1

Dear Friends and Family, There was not too much that happened this week because I had a sinus infection, but I am all better now. I spent pretty much every day in bed so that was a little inconvenient. At least my companion and I got to do a lot of bonding and reading of ensigns, new era's and the scriptures. On Saturday we helped the branch do a car wash. It was a lot of fun and we got lots of people who wanted their cars washed. The coolest part was that one guy who pulled up was a less active member. He was with his partner and she is from Macedonia. They ended up staying at the branch presidents house in the front yard that night and they both came to church. I am sure they felt the spirit, especially in our lesson that we taught in "Gospel Principals" on Gifts of the Spirit. We also have some other referrals that we are going to be given by some members soon so we are SOO excited to start teaching some people. Keep doing you best and finding opportunities to serve others. I love you all! Elder Butts

June 24

Dear Friends and Family, It has been a good week although not much has happened. I am excited to start getting some people baptised soon hopefully. We have still been delivering bread from the bakery at the mall twice a week to people in need. It has been a good experience! We met one potential investigator who said he might take us out to see some animals next week so we are pretty excited about that. He even said he might shoot some stuff and give us the skull and skin of the kangaroo. I am pretty excited for that. Have a great week! Love Elder Butts

June 17

Dear Friends and Family, I am loving my new area. It is hard being so far away from pretty much everything and I now understand what it is like to be out in Aussie BUSH but it is pretty fun. There are HEAPS of aboriginals here and that is what most of our investigators consist of. We did our branch conference this past sunday and it went very well. We had an activity on saturday and we got 3 or 4 investigators to come which was pretty exciting. Our main investigators are SAM and SARA (he is from the Torres strait). We read the book of mormon with him the other day and he was excited to apply it to himself and he said he would read it during the week. I didn't meet Sara yet. She is his partner. Out other main investigator is Sharlene. She is an aboriginal. She was found by missionaries doing the bread run. The bread run is where we pick up the leftover bread twice a week from the bakery("Bakers Delight") and deliver it to people in need. The other day we taught her an incredible lesson about the restoration and the importance of the book of mormon. We weren't able to get any Investigators to church yesterday but I am excited for this next Sunday because we are going to be getting a bunch of non-members there! There is also a potential investigator (clint) who is an aboriginal and he said that next week he would take us around to some of the sacred aboriginal sites and see some of the old artifacts. He also is going to show us about the plants that can be eaten and used as remedies for stuff. In 2 weeks our new mission president will be coming. I am pretty excited although I will miss President Smibert. Bruce Lindsay will be coming at the start of July so it will be interesting to meet him. He will be coming up to Karratha next month! I hope you are all having a wonderful week and working hard! I love you all! Elder Joshua Butts

June 10

Dear Friends and Family, This has been a great week! We did the quit smoking program the other day with a new investigator we met while visiting formers. His name is Steven, and he is chinese. We were able to do it at a members house and the lesson went SO great! He committed to all the steps and was so willing to work hard to make the effort to follow each step precisely. We will be calling him each day this week and the member will be calling him too. We even committed him to come to church next sunday. Yesterday we got Sebastian to come to a cottage evening. It went so well and we held it at the chapel next to the temple. Sebastian loved it and we also got shaun (a Taiwanese investigator who's been coming to church) to come too!) After the meeting, president Smibert pulled me aside and told me that I will be moving to Karratha. That means it will be the NINTH area I will have served in! I think i'm going for a record. I am very excited to be moving there and that means tomorrow I will take a 3-4 hour plane flight up north. I am hoping that it will give me a chance to see Dominique, because he is up in Port Hedland, which is not too far.At least now, I don't have to suffer with the rest of winter because it is Much warmer up north! Sebastian will be getting baptised on Saturday which is very exciting. We have worked very hard to make sure he has learned everything and now he is ready to be baptised! I will not get to go to the baptism but I am so grateful that I was able to be apart of it anyway. Have a wonderful week everyone!! Love, Elder Joshua Butts

June 4

Dear Friends and Family, It hasn't been as productive a week but we are still VERY excited for the baptism of Sebastian. It will be on JUNE 16 as of right now and we have been seeing him as often as we can to keep him excited. He didn't come to sacrament meeting which worried us a bit, but we are still very prayerful for him and I believe that everything will still go well. We have been meeting many new people and trying to get new investigators but the work has been a little slow so we are trying to come up with new finding ideas. One way we are trying to make "morning exercises more meaningful is with a finding activity. There is a big foreshore we live by across from the city that tons of people run past every day. There is one part where there's a big stretch of sand next to the sidewalk and it remains undisturbed most of the time. We are going to come up with a list of quotes and small phrases to write in the sand each morning. It will be freezing cold (it gets down to the 20's-30's and night here) but it will sure wake us up. We are also going to write Mormon.org at the bottom and hopefully we can get some referrals from it! I am pretty excited but for various reasons, we are not able to start it till next week. WA day was yesterday so we got to go work and try to contact people but it is absurd how many people are so quick to judge us and have no time to talk even when they are doing nothing. I know that the lord is blessing us though and we will have great success in the coming weeks. Have a wonderful summer everyone! Love Joshua

May 27

Dear Friends and Family Thanks for remembering my birthday everyone! I had such a wonderful time. Some members planned a surprise appointment for me so when we got there, it was at a pizza place. It was sister Guillens idea. They are from Los Angeles but he is here for work. I love their family. Everything is going pretty well with sebastian. He didn't come to church yesterday but when we called him to find out why he said he had actually tried to call to get a ride but wasn't able so we were relieved to find out that he at least put in the effort. We have been a bit worried that he may not have the level of commitment needed to be a member of the church. He finally started obeying the word of wisdom though so we are very optimistic. His baptism is scheduled for June 2nd and we are crossing our fingers that it stays solid. We had one of the most amazing experiences yesterday. After church there was an 8yr old girl being baptised. We decided to stay for the baptism and help out. There were many people from other wards and just other family members there so we were getting to know some of them. We talked to a man named Peyman who was standing around. We originally thought he was there for the baptism but it turned out that he just lives down the street from the Chapel and said he felt prompted to show up. He is from Iran and I think he is having some family issues which is why he said he felt he needed to start coming to church. We gave him a book of Mormon and answered many of his questions. We also were able to help him start making some friends of members in the ward to get some fellowship starting already. It was incredible how receptive he was. During the confirmation he said, "maybe next time, it will be my turn". I am so excited to start teaching him and I hope we will be able to make this a 4 week baptism if that's what the lord see's fit to allow us to be apart of. Thank you all for your love and support. I am so happy to be here serving Heavenly Father. Love, Elder Joshua Butts

May 20

Dear Friends and Family, It has been such a wonderful week! We had an awesome day yesterday! Well, on Saturday, we finally got to meet our investigator named Sebastian. He had a baptismal date but it fell through because he is more on the scale of social conversion and his commitment is a little low. We had a great lesson with him about how much of a commitment it requires to become a part of gods true church. He realized that he believes this is the true church but he is doing nothing with that belief. We were able to help him have a desire to grow his faith by coming to church and he recommitted to baptism. He will be getting baptised on June 2nd. I am so excited. Now yesterday, through much communication with different people, we were able to get him to come to church. Not only did got bless us with his attendance, but another Asian couple just randomly showed up(Lia and Shawn). Lia is a member and her boyfriend(Shawn) is not and they speak very little English. They moved recently from Taiwan. The first counselor came up to us and asked if we could come help with his communication problem. Joel, a YSA in the ward who has been studying Chinese at university, came to try to help translate but wasn't very fluent. Then we remembered that Sebastian was still in the Sunday school class. Of course he could speak Chinese because that is where he is originally from. We brought him in and it was incredibly to watch the spirit work to get all the information we needed to help this couple and we are going to try to start teaching Shawn. It was incredibly to have gotten so many people at sacrament. We also were able to get Alistair, one of the converts who was baptised a month ago, to bless the sacrament. On top of all these blessings, we had a wonderful missionary fireside where we had a recent convert, less active member, and investigator attend. I know that we could not have gained these blessings if the church was not true. I hope you all have an incredible week and do your best to follow the spirit and find those who need help and help them. I love you all! Love Elder Joshua Butts

May 13

Dear Friends and Family, Here is a picture that we took last week while we were having some fun on P-day. I haven't gotten much time to take many pictures, but I'll try to send you some other pictures soon. love you all. Elder Joshua Butts

May 6

Dear Friends and Family, I have been moved to a new area called COMO. (we live in south Perth). It is super pretty. We get to ride the bikes past a park every day and the park is across from the city with a mile wide river separating the two. It is way pretty, especially at night when you can see the city light up and see the reflection in the river. We have been working hard and even have a college student with a baptismal date. Apparently he has some Word of wisdom issues to sort out with coffee, but that can't be too difficult for him to stop. We have a wonderful ward. Most of the people are above 60, but there are still 3 or 4 families with little kids. We did have a cool experience on the first day that we were biking. We went near the college and were contacting people. We saw one girl(mid 30's) and started talking to her. She was speed walking to get to her apartment to get ready for her next class, but she was still willing to talk to us which was a little unexpected. She asked "do you know why I'm talking to you?". quite frankly, we didn't. She told us that its because she was already a member of the church but she "fell away". After talking a bit, we found out that she really loves the church and had many friends in it. She always felt supported and lifted up, which is why we couldn't figure out why she left. She told us it was because it was too hard to follow the standards of the church. She just likes smoking and other things too much. She was still very nice to us and actually seemed quite interested in us coming over and teaching her a little more. We are going to try to get some fellowship and people involved to get her to come to church soon. It was very exciting to be led by the spirit to find her. I hope you are all having a wonderful week. Happy birthday Sarah! I'll talk to you guys on Sunday! Love Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Family and Friends, It has been a week full of experiences. On Saturday we spent the morning trying to finish the roof of a Less Active member. We still weren't able to finish, It is the fifth time that we have gone over to help. Hopefully the next time, we will be able to finish it. We got 3 investigators to church yesterday!!! It was so exciting. I haven't gotten that many people to church in ages and it felt so good! I am so grateful that our work has started paying off and that Heavenly Father is softening peoples hearts. We were even invited to dinner at one investigators house yesterday. We taught about the power of prayer and scripture study. We asked Jess(the investigator) to say the prayer because every time we have taught her, she said she would the next time but never has. She finally accepted and we felt the spirit so strongly. I believe she did too. It was such a great experience. I will be getting my new companion in 2 days. It will be more new experiences. I am so glad that I get to see so many people changing their lives. I would love to see more but I consider it such a blessing to have the investigators that we do have. I hope you are all seeing the hand of heavenly father in your lives and working hard to be worthy of every blessing he has for you. I love you all! Joshua Butts

Dear Friends, and Family, It has been a good week. We haven't found any more new investigators but we are sure working hard. Hopefully we will get our current investigators to really start progressing soon. One experience we had was pretty cool even though it didn't give us a new investigator. We were on exchanges and I was with Elder Reeder. We had just finished tracting and saw a teenager walking by. We figured it would be better to contact them and at least give it a chance. We said hello and started up a conversation. We found that she was a determined "I only believe in science", person and couldn't accept that god existed. she was about to leave and we asked her if she would merely give us one chance to tell her what we were about. She said, "OK. GO". We were caught a little off guard but decided that it was fair enough and taught the whole restoration lesson. It was good and we almost were able to give her a Book of Mormon, but she still didn't accept it. We at least gave her a card and felt great because we had at least given her the chance to accept or reject that knowledge we had to offer. Anzac day is this upcomming week. (it is basically like Australias memorial day). I hope you all have a wonderful week! Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Friends and Family,
This week has been a little slow but we have still been seeing miracles. We got a part member family to come to church on Sunday which was so awesome!!! We have been working very hard with them and through the spirit in the lessons we have been able to get the less active dad to have a great desire to come to church. We are now teaching his son who wants to be baptised soon and his partner came to church too.
We also had a cool experience while biking around trying to visit some people. We had visited the last house which nobody was home. I remembered that we had tracted a street nearby only a few days prior and there was a specific house that nobody had answered. I really felt like we needed to go and knock on it. We went back and when we knocked on it, we met a man who had talked to missionaries in the past. He decided to stop taking the lessons but seemed a bit interested when we offered to talk. He is on vacation now but said we could come by and talk to him about the Book of Mormon when he gets back. I was so thankful for being worthy still to be lead by the spirit to go and visit him.
I hope you all had a wonderful Easter!! We watched "Finding Faith in Christ". I love that movie so much, especially when Christ comes to show the people the prints in his hands and continues healing and blessing people. I love that movie so much! I hope you are all striving you hardest to find ways that you can be lead by the spirit and do everything you can to remember Jesus Christ!
I love you all! Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Friends and Family,
We finally got some new investigators this week. Earlier this week, we were trying to go around to visit more members and less actives because we are still quite new to the area. While we were biking, we saw a guy standing by a pond and he was throwing a stick into it for his dog to fetch. I decided that we needed to go and say hello to him. We biked up and said that we just saw him and wanted to come and talk. We found that he had just recently gotten off drugs and is trying to clean up his life. He had been stabbed in the past and is an inactive Seventh-day-Adventist. We got to know him for a bit and he said he might be interested in learning more about god so he can get his life back into better order. It was such a cool experience that was very much led by the spirit.
We also had a cool experience with a part member family last night. Petina(the less active members partner), has been having a lot of troubles accepting the role of women in the church because some members have given her the wrong idea about it. She thinks women should rule the world basically. We decided to show her the Emma Smith movie because we thought it might help her to realize that women are much more important in the church than she might think. She didn't seem too interested in the movie while watching it and actually, it seemed like she took more negative things from the movie than good, but something incredible happened. Brett (who didn't seem to have payed too much attention during the movie) told us that it really touched him. He said he hadn't felt that way in a long time and now has a stronger testimony and wants to come back to church more. It was so cool how something we had brought for his partner, ended up being more effective for him. He now wants us to bring more movies so we are going to get some like "the testaments, and the prophet of the restoration".
I am so thankful to be here and receiving these blessings of the spirit and missionary work.
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear family and friends,
It has been a good week. The stake I am serving in, had a stake conference
on Sunday and it was an incredible experience. Elder Pearson of the
seventy
came and spend an hour talking to us and it was an incredible talk. He
talked of how we must start now to prepare ourselves to receive the
messages that will be given at general conference so that we can get the
most out of it. When we have the holy ghost in our lives, we have so much
more the advantage to gain the knowledge we seek and to progress toward
our
heavenly father at an ever more rapid rate.President James Hamula also did
a zone conference with us earlier this week which I learned so much. He
focused on how to bring happiness more into our lives and to learn to like
things we don't like. He told the story of an elder who came up to him and
said "I simply just don't feel like tracting"
President Hamula could not believe that the elder was so caught up in
simply not wanting to tract when there was nothing more effective to do at
the time. He told the elder that he was just going to have to do it until
he wanted to. I have also realized that it works with most everything,
that
we are judged on our actions and our thoughts when they affect our
actions.
We don't have to want to do something to do it, and just doing something
brings us to enjoy doing it.
I have been learning so much while working here and my faith and
has grown astronomically. I love serving so much. I hope you are all
having
success in you service for the lord and others back home too.
I love you all.
Elder Joshua Butts.

Dear Family and Family,
This has been an absolutely wonderful week. On Friday we had a big
conference with the General Sunday school president (Pres.
Osguthorpe), The general young mens president (Pres. Beck), and Elder
Watson of the seventy spoke to us. It was a great meeting filled with
the spirit. I learned so much.
We had a neat experience yesterday too. We were tracting and most of
the housed we knocked on the people weren’t interested. The other
ones, nobody was home. We finally got to a house that had an elderly
couple in it. The husband came out to talk to us. He was quite
friendly and showed us around his garden in back. He had many flowers
and other Lilies that were uncommon. He told us about how he had been
married for 70 years and had just had his wedding anniversary. We were
quite impressed that he had been married for so long considering the
state that society has come to. They didn’t smoke or drink which was
also very impressive.
He told us about the dementia that his wife had been coming down with
in the recent years. She has slowly been losing her memory and was
becoming increasingly incapable of taking care of her-self. He told us
of the many things he does for her and showed us an article in the
newspaper that had been written about the couple because they had been
married so long. We asked if we could talk about the gospel but he
wasn’t willing to be taught, but we were still very grateful that the
lord led us to someone who was able to give some time to talk to us.
On Saturday we had the annual Branch Dance activity. They set it up in
a dance hall and it was medieval themed. My Companion and I told them
we weren’t allowed to dance because of the white handbook rules but we
were quite happy that we didn’t have to considering that it was pretty
much square dancing. I wasn’t too keen on looking that silly. We had a
good time though and were able to talk to some non-members which was
fun.
We are still working very hard in this area and though it is slow, we
are still seeing the hand of Heavenly Father in the work. Thanks for
your prayers. I love you all!
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Family and Friends,
I have been moved to a new area. I am in Forrestfield. It is in the Kalamunda ward which is one if the city wards. I really was sad to have to leave the branch that I was most recently serving in, but I know that the lord does things for a reason and I am doing my best to accept where I have been moved to and work my hardest. We have already been seeing the work progress in this new area. Just in the few days of us being here, we have met 3 investigators with heaps of potential for baptism and gotten 4 or 5 addresses of people we have street contacted who have accepted to have us over for a chat.
My companion is Elder Rockwood. He is pretty cool and we seem to get along quite well. He is also from Sandy and is on the movie "Turn Around", But he goes home in 5 weeks so I won't get to serve around him long. He is my 10th companion. We have been doing heaps of biking and on saturday we spent all morning roofing. We were putting up sheet metal panels on their house and got really sun burnt by the time we were finished. It was fun though.
Thanks for everything. I hope for the best for you all!
Love Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Friends and Family,
It has been great this past week. I got my new companion on Wednesday
and I am very excited for this transfer. We have been doing heaps of
biking! I love it. I barely got to bike at all last transfer. My new
companion is from Bunderburg in Queensland. It is where they make
ginger beer. It is really popular in Australia and they sell it here
and there in the states.
One experience we had the other day was pretty cool. We were biking
around and had biked probably 15 miles during the day and when we were
about to go back home, we ran into a kid who was walking home from
school. He had already met with missionaries before but he wasn’t on
the records. He said he might be a little interested so we are going
to see him sometime this week to hopefully teach him. We were
surprised that he was that willing to talk to us.
We also went to a member’s house earlier this week and on the way, we
saw a guy who had just gotten home from shopping and offered to talk
to us for a minute. We talked about his beliefs and he mentioned that
his wife had been to Utah and talked to sister missionaries at the
Salt Lake Temple. It was really cool and he offered to feed us
sometime (which doesn’t usually happen when you street contact
someone).
It has been a fun week but hopefully there will be more going on this
week. We still have people who said they would be coming to the art
class so that will be good. Unfortunately, however, we won’t get to do
painting near the beach because the mission president said that we
shouldn’t be doing it. He didn’t give a very definite reason, but I
know that he is inspired so we are going to follow his counsel.
I love you all. Keep doing your best to do what god wants us to do!
Love
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Friends and Family,
It was a great week. My companion(Elder Scragg) finished his mission on Friday and went home so I have been in Rockingham with a missionary who has been out for 6 weeks. He is quite well trained and we have been having fun together. Just in the last few days we have gotten 3 new investigators. One of them we contacted at the foreshore. He was from Zimbabwe and was quite open. He told us that he used to be catholic, but he felt like he was sitting and going nowhere by doing that so he changed to Pentecostal. He let us share with him about Joseph smith and said he would pray about if he was a true prophet.
Unfortunately, I will be going back to Busselton in 2 days so I wont be able to find out how the teaching goes with him. When I do go back, however, I we have an appointment with a volunteer center and they may have me teach one of their art classes, so I think that will be pretty exciting and we will get to meet heaps of new people.
That's pretty much whats been going on lately. I hope all the best for all of you!
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Family,
This has been a wonderful week. We got to go to the beach on Saturday
which was really exciting. We still didn't get to go swimming but it
was fun just being there anyway. It was because they were doing a
branch activity and we had a less active family we had invited and a
family with a less active mother and a non-member son. It was such a
great activity because everyone that we invited CAME! What was even
better was that the non-member son didn't really want to swim because
he had been at the beach earlier in the day and was a little sunburnt
so he stayed on the shore and we were able to talk with him the whole
time and start growing a relationship. I love activities like this
because they are fun and rare activities for the missionaries to do
and it was a missionary activity! I guess it obviously was because if
it wasn't, we wouldn't have been there.
On Sunday it was pretty fun too because It was my week to play the
organ. The songs the chorister had picked were pretty hard and I had
never played any of them in my life. Heavenly Father has surely been
blessing me though because I played them all quite well with the help
of an hours practice earlier in the week.
We went the "Hands" house on Friday and it was quite fun. They are
less active and we went to do some weeding for them (and accidentally
pulled out one of her flowers which we thought was a weed because it
was dead as) but she didn't mind and when she saw it she was very
astonished and said it hadn't looked like that in months. We felt like
we did a good job. Afterward, she invited us inside for dinner. She
was still preparing it and while we were chatting she mentioned how
her son played the saxophone a little but hadn't for a while. I told
her that I played sax and she got it out and asked me to play for a
bit. It was fun especially since I haven't toughed a saxophone in over
2 years.
We are going to start helping out with a volunteer group soon too.
They gave us the options to help with a special needs group by riding
bikes with them, work at a nursery sorting through plants, seeds, etc.
or we also have the option that we can work at a place called LAMP
(learning about mental problems) and I may either teach an art class
there or get to do something else creative. I am kinda hoping that it
works out with LAMP but I will love doing any kind of service.
There is one last story I wanted to tell you about too. We were called
by a member in the ward who asked us if we could help someone in
Dunsborough move. We said we could and showed up with this person’s
house who we had never met before. He said it was very unexpected and
we started helping. It was a good thing I have done lots of work with
moving back home because they didn't know how to use some certain
tools like the dolly. We all were able to get the 3ton truck loaded
and told the missionaries in Perth(where he was moving to) to help him
unpack. We got a call by the same ward member later in the week
telling us that he needed help with the cleaning of his house and
packing us the rest of the stuff. We gladly came up to help. After a
couple hours of work we were pretty tired. While working, he asked us
why we did such things as showing up to a total strangers house to
help move. We told him that god has blessed us with so much and this
is our way of giving back and it is what our church believes in. He
has been non-denominational but he is Christian. We talked to him a
little more and he said, "You know... you guys really inspire me. I
wish everyone in the world was like you". It really made us feel good
inside and we found out that now the missionaries have been getting
their family into some activities in Perth and they will probably
start being taught the gospel soon! It was such a great opportunity
and it was very fun.
That is about what has been going on this week! I hope you are all
keeping the spirit with you and having a good time!
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Friends and Family,
This has been a bit of a slow week but we have still had some fun
experiences. We went to the cromptons house earlier in the week and
had a lesson. It was a little strange at first because the daughters
didn't want to even listen or talk to us which was a little odd. We
taught the mother about Jesus Christ and Prophets but she kept telling
us that she didn't believe it and wouldn't pray. They told us not to
come back and teach them anymore which was a little bit of a blow. We
found out the next day that a few other investigators had only been
"just friends" with the previous missionaries and one of them(who we
met only once for about 5 minutes) called our mission president and
told him nasty things about us.
After some thought, my companion and I decided that the reason we both
were sent to this area was because past missionaries weren't teaching
the way they should so we got the entire area book(aside from a few
less active members and formers) and we threw out all the records of
those that had been dealt with in the past and we started over. It
felt so good!
We have already been seeing the success from it. We have been doing
much more finding and talked to many more people. On Tuesday we did
the art class which went super great! The first class had nobody show
up so I went out on the front lawn with the eisel and painted for that
time in hopes that some people would come talk to us. We had a few
people but we determined that it wasn't the right spot. Later in the
night, we did the second class which was heaps successful. We had 4
nonmembers show up and they loved the lesson I taught. The one
tomorrow is expecting a very decent turn out! I am very excited for
it.
On saturday, we went to bro Gericatanos house because he was in need
of some help with his house that he has been remodeling. Our job was
to paint the bricks outside. It was pretty fun and I didn't get any
paint on my nice white shirt!

We went later saturday night to the park to do some more painting on
the canvas and it went really well. I started out painting for about
15 or 20 mins but some teenagers walked over and started asking some
questions. They asked what I was painting and I told them it was a
temple for our church. They mentioned that they think it would be cool
but they would never be able to afford it. After telling them it was
free they became more interested! It was really fun to talk to them
because they were so open. It ended up leading to another group of
kids all between the ages of 14 to 17 and they were all asking
questions about life and we had answers! I didn't get much painted
which was great because I spent all the time teaching these kids the
plan of salvation and gaining their interest. Before they left I told
them briefly about Joseph Smith and told them to pray. We won't be
able to teach them again until they ask their parents permission so
hopefully they do. We will be doing much more contacting this way
though.

Thanks for all your support and prayers. Feel free to sent me paper letters too!
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Friends and Family,
This week past week, we have had so much going on. We had our first session of the art class on Tuesday and it went great. One of the kids brought one of their friends and she was a non-member. Her parents came into the chapel and we were able to chat with them for a minute. We have also been doing quite a bit of visiting with members. There is a less active whos name is Brian. He has been split up from his wife for 3 years but they aren't divorced. He is from South Africa and konws some of the Rudmans. That was pretty cool and we were able to teach him an awesome lesson. We told him about LDS.org and he had a lot of problems that we said he could find answers to there.
We went over to the Cromptons house this week and were going to teach them about prophets and Jesus Christ. They seems to have a lot of problems with the fact that prophets, god, and priesthood holders are men. It is Jane (the mother), and her two daughters and son. The mother and daughters are kinda feministic though. Last week we tried to help them understand who god was and stuff about the bible but they said, "The bible, book of mormon, and everything else is all run by men."
We explained the immense importance of women in the church but they didn't understand. We told them that the only way they were going to find out if the message we share is true, is by studying the book of mormon and praying about it. When we followed up this week, only Kate(a daughter) was home and we weren't able to teach them. She did say, however, that her mom and other sister prayed about knowing who god was. We were super glad to hear that and we are going to see what kind of answers they recieved when we see them next. I really hope this family gets baptised. They really need the church so bad and I can see all the blessing they would receive from it.
We went on Saturday to see a part-member family (the Farrils) and I was on exchanges so Elder Webley was my companion and he had served here before. We went over there expecting to teach a simple lesson but Sister Farril up and told us to follow her in the car right when we got there. We drove to a place almost to Cowaramup(about 20 miles away) and she showed us the new house they have been building for the last year. It was MASSIVE and the architecture of an airplane hanger. It was about the same size too. While We were walking around her kids (from baby to 12-yrs-old) were jumping around me and swinging on my arms. It was heaps fun and it reminded me of when we would look at our house while it was in construction. They also had some huge water tanks and about 30 acres of land. It was so cool to explore the place and the whole time she was talking about how blessed her and her family were. She only joined the church a year or two ago. We are hopefully going to teach her husband. They were such a nice family and we were able to see them at church for the first time in a while yesterday too!
Yesterday at church was way funny. In our branch the missionaries get to church early(so we did that) to prepare the sacrament and bless it. Nobody plays the piano so I have pretty much been called as the ward organist. Elder Scragg and I also had to do a musical # in church yesterday too so I was running back and forth all of the meeting. It was fun though.
I have really been loving it here while serving Heavenly Father and I hope everyone is doing the best they can to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. Find every oppurtunity to be a missionary!
Love Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Friends and Family,
This has been a very nice week with lots of work being done. Since we have gotten a new mission president recently, there have been some changes occurring in the mission field which are really getting missionaries to be more obedient. We have been helping one of the YSA in the ward to encourage him to want to serve a mission. He has even been going on splits with us a couple times. His name is Locklin and he is 21. Heis pretty cool but doesn't do much aside from stay at home, however, we are changing that now.
We went over to an investigators house on Saturday. Her name is Lila. She is about 60 and she is so great and has a strong testimony. She hasn't been taught many of the lessons but she knows quite a bit. The other day when we were over, we spent a couple hours doing service in her backyard. She was so appreciative that she even fed us lunch and while we were eating, I drew a big map of the plan of salvation. We taught her about it and she was quite quick to accept it and she really does believe it. We are going to teach her a few more times and then we think she will be ready to give us a baptismal date. We have been trying to keep in fairly good contact with most of our investigators and to contact her the other day, we called her and sang "Nearer my god to thee".
So last week for P-day, we went to a lighthouse over on Cape Nat'ralist. We werent allowed to go closer that 200 meters from it so it wasn't as exciting as we thought it would be. We did get to go on a small trail though that led to a whale watching point near the cliffs by the ocean. We got some way awesome pictures but the whales don't come till September so we missed them. It was still pretty fun. And the other day we went to a members house and for dinner and they had kangaroos that would come out when it got a little later and I got a picture with them. It was the first wild kangaroos I have seen!
I am excited to be in this area. It is really pretty and the art classes that we put up last week are going to be awesome. There are quite a few people who said they would probably go to them so I am hoping that we can get some new investigators out of it.
Hope you are all doing well.
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Friends and Family,

Thanks Everyone for all the love and support. I loved being able to talk to you all on christmas day.
I have just recently moved into a new area. It is called Busselton and it goes all the way down to Margaret River and Agusta. It is in the South-West australia region. The area is very beautiful even though it is quite far from many people and we have to travel pretty far to many areas where we teach people. There is an awesome branch here. We have church in an old Nunnery that has been kinda converted into a meetinghouse. It is funny because there is a sink in all the classrooms and the chapel isn't big enough so they have an overflow room with a TV in it that connects to a camera in the chapel so the people in the other room can see the speaker. It is a fun little meetinghouse and there are still some crosses on the pillars in front.
We have been comming up with some new teaching ideas and we have a couple that we think will be quite fun. Since we live about a half mile from the beach, our ward mission leader(who is a carpenter) offered to make an eisel for me and there are some ward members who would like paintings. The members are going to get me the materials and I will sit on the pathway near the beach and paint pictures of temples and such while people nearby see and ask questions about the picture.
The other thing we are going to do is I will be teaching Art classes and we have been advertising it around on public notice boards. I never really thought the stuff I learned in college would be things I could use for teaching in the mission field.
I hope you are all doing well and making the most out of every moment.
Elder Joshua Butts