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