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