Dear friends and family,
It has been a bit of a slow week this past week but we have still had great progression from our investigators. Ian, our 50year old investigator with the baptismal date has come to church the last 5 weeks in a row which is awesome! We taught them last week about the law of tithing which his wife didn't really understand and she became really upset because she thought she couldn't afford it. We helped them understand that it is only 10% of what they earn. We also talked to them about fast offerings and keeping the sabbath day holy.
I am so grateful for the gospel principals manual. It makes teaching so many things so much easier when you are teaching classes for Sunday school. He is so solid and it is going to be an awesome baptism. We have been working hard to find some new investigators but it has been pretty tough. We go through our former and potential investigator list and almost everyone we visit tells us they don't want to talk to the missionaries any more so we end up having to cross them off the list.
We did talk to a Chinese family yesterday though and it was really good. We talked for a while just to get to know him and see how he liked Australia compared to China. He can't read at all and his English is pretty rough. He doesn't know much of anything about god or Jesus Christ, but he said we could come back and chat again and hopefully next time, we will get to talk about Heavenly Father and the purpose of life.
Everything else is going quite well. I got my new companion on Wednesday. He is from Samoa, but he lived in Roy, UT for the last 10 years, and he grew up originally in Samoa. He is way cool and it is pretty fun having a Polynesian companion. He went to Weber State for a year playing Grid-Iron and he also went to the U for a year. He is super fun to talk to and it is nice to have a companion who is clean and organized. I am getting so much done here and progress is happening.
Thanks everyone for the letters and love!

Elder Joshua Butts

This past week has been great. We got a baptismal date from one of our investigators and it was so scary at first becasuse his less active wife freaked when we asked him to be baptised. It was kinda funny but I was like "OH NO". He was still cool with it and we are going to baptise him on the 17th of December. His wife said, "No, he isn't ready for baptism. He still likes to have a drink now and then with buddies and have a tea occassionally".
It didn't even seem to fase him though. He said "Oh that isn't really much to give up. I can just go for Fizzy drinks instead" He is so solid and I am excited to baptise him next month.
Our single mother , Anna, Investigator finally got some fellowship this last week. We had some members(the preedy's) offer to have her over for a BBQ and we were super excited. Sister Preedy and Anna got on super well and I am so glad that now she has some friends in the ward because she will be more motivated to come to church. We were going to get her to come yesterday but she ended up being really sick and couldn't and we got a call from her this morning telling us that she had miscarried her child so we went over this morning and told her about how children who die will go straight to the celestiel kingdom and she will get to see them again if she gets baptised. We are so excited for when that happens and hopefully we are going to get her to commit to a date sometime this week.
last P-Day was pretty fun. We went to the Perth Zoo. It was HEAPS better than the hogle zoo but I still had a taste of dissappointment in it. We all had lots of fun there though. We took the train to Perth. It was a long train ride but it was still pretty fun.
The work is increasing and I am so excited to get some more baptisms soon. Our goal is to get 6 baptisms next transfer! I really hope that we can do it and I think that it will probably happen!!
Love you all!

Elder Joshua Butts

What a fun week it has been. We have been teaching heaps of people and have some golden progressing investigators. There is a couple who we were teaching the other night and the wife hadn't gone to church in 30 years. She had heaps of questions and as we were teaching her we all felt the spirit and she told us that she knew it was true and she wanted to start coming back to church. She told us about an experience she had with cancer and a priesthood holder gave her a blessing and as soon as he ended the blessing she knew the cancer was completely gone. They did another scan and couldn't find any traces of cancer in her and thought it was a miracle. Her husband in a non-member and we have been talking to them a lot about the temple. It is so great that they are both really excited about being sealed in the temple one day and he is keen to get baptised soon so that will be able to happen one day.
The work in our area is really progressing. We also have another family who we are trying to get to do the "quit smoking" program. When we told them about it they were really excited and have already pretty much quit. I don't really think they will be able to completely quit unless they go through the program though so we got an appointment with them to do it this week and they are super excited!
It is great being here and I hope for the best for everyone back home!

This week has been pretty crazy. The relaters sold our flat so we spent 2 days moving everything out and into the new flat(australian term for house). It was a little discouraging for us because it took heaps of time away from proselyting and we didn't get to help as many people as we had hoped but it is a new week and we are ready to change extra people's lives to make up for it. Our new flat is pretty big and has heaps of spiders around it. There is one in particular that is about 1.5 inches long. We call him Henry and we sometimes watch him eat bugs he catches in his web. The rest we are trying to exterminate.
It was so exciting!!! at the beginning of last week we got a Baptismal Date. it is for the 29th of October so I am way stoked to take part in a baptism. Is is for a boy named Morona. He is 9 years old and his family are all active members except for his mom. She is a non-member and she smokes so we are trying to get her to start the quit-smoking program soon so we can get her to want to be baptised. Hopefully she will want to come to church soon too. They are such an awesome family.
The other family we have been teaching was really busy last week and we didn't get a chance to start them on the quit smoking program so hopefully we will get an appointment with them this week to do that. I really want to see them quit smoking so we can get them baptised. We are praying for them all the time and working hard with fellowship. We are trying to fellowship them with Morona's family but they are really busy with their lives and it is hard to get members help sometimes. We are doing our best though.
It is also pretty exciting about a less active family we recently reactivated. They are going to the temple this Saturday to get their endowments and sealed together. It is amazing that we can be with our families together forever and I am so grateful for that.
I hope you are all doing well and that the church is strong in your lives continually.

my address:
elder josh butts
Perth Mission, PO Box 185
Tuart Hill, WA 6929, AUSTRALIA

Dear family, friends, and neighbors,
This week has been a little slow. My companion got mono(he got it from mosquitoes before his mission and it came back) so we didn't get to do a whole lot. I got to go to a baptism for someone in another missionaries area yesterday though. It was so incredible seeing a person who wanted to change their life around and be baptised as Jesus Christ was.
I am super excited for our investigators. This month we are going to get some solid baptisms. I know it! My companion is leaving tomorrow so I will be assigned a new one. I will miss elder Gilkes but I know that whoever I get will be a benefit to the area and that the work will thrive here. Even though the week has been a little slow, we had a really good lesson with a family of former investigators. They had a baptismal date 4 months ago but dropped the missionaries. We stopped by a week ago and they allowed us to come again and share messages with them. We committed them to pray together as a family each night till then. A few days ago we went back for our appointment and they had prayed and kept their commitment. They said they felt like something was missing since they stopped coming to church and we asked them to start reading the Book of Mormon again and that they would be blessed for it.
I am really praying for them to want to be baptised and we are going to do our best and with the help of Heavenly Father, I know that we can baptise them this month!
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear Blog,
This week has been a smash. My companion and I were a little sick the first couple days of the week so it was off to a tough start but we had heaps of fun working. We have our investigator Steven, who we saw and was super excited to learn more and told us he wanted to be baptised. All he had to do was get married and he told us he would pray about what day he should get baptised so we were pretty excited for him to commit to a day. Sadley he told us yesterday randomly that he was no longer interested, but we think that there is more to it than what meets the eye so we are going to see if we can get him a desire to be baptised again. I believe it can't be to hard as long as we are persistant.
We are also teaching a part member family where the father smokes and drinks but we finally got a decent lesson with the father on saturday so we are going to commit him to stop smoking when he gets the desire which should be soon. He wants his children to grow up in the gospel, so we are also trying to get him to understand that he needs to be an example by following gods commandments and being baptised.
The mission is going great! Feel free to send me letters too ;)
Elder Butts
(photo caption: this is a guy in the ward who is nice to the elder and we help him sometimes)

Dear Blog,
It has been great this week. Apparently the area I am in has been rough the last year because slacking missionaries have been in it for a long time but since I have been here my companion says the area is really picking up because we work together so well. He is from Queensland in Australia. He also said he has met Steve Erwin a couple times and apparently Steve Erwin is a heap more popular in America than Australia.
We have been getting a few new investigators and most people we work with are less actives. We went to the store the other day and a lady was sitting outside the store smoking and stopped us. She said she was baptised about 11 years ago and hadn't really wanted anything to do with the church. She invited us to come over and talk to her though. We stopped by the other day and she told us about how 3 weeks prior to seeing us at the grocery store, she had gotten on a train and a met a woman on the train who professed to be an angel.
The woman on the train told her that she didn't want her to keep committing suicide and doing many other bad things that she was doing because there were people waiting for her on the other side who weren't ready for her to come yet. The lady also told us that everyone else on the train seemed to be oblivious to the woman as if she was the only one who could see her. She also told us that the woman on the train told her that she needed to get back to church. It seemed a little far fetched for us to believe, but I guess god works in mysterious ways so whatever the case, she is letting us talk to her about church and we are going to do our best to get her reactivated.
I am having heaps of experiences here!
Elder Butts
[PHOTOS:

Dear Blog,
This past week we got the best investigator in the world. His name is Steven. He had been taught by the missionaries about 10 years ago and started getting off the alcohol but then went back onto drugs. Apparently he decided to start drinking moderately because he realized that it was bad. A week ago he emailed the missionaries on Mormon.org and we called him. He told us his story and told us he wanted to meet us somewhere and asked us to bring a book of mormon.
He told us that he has studied Aramaic and Hebrew and he knows all kinds of stuff about the bible. He has been researching and studying all kinds of stuff about the LDS religion and really wants to be baptised. I am so excited about this and we are going to try to get him baptised this month! His wife(partner) is not interested but he leaves church stuff around the house because he wants her to get into it soon too.
The last couple days have been a little tough because my companion has been sick, so I have been doing my best to help him out and I have given him a couple blessings. Today he has actually been getting better so I am excited to get out there and start working crazy hard again.
The picture is of our neighbors backyard that I am paving for him as service. While my companion was sick, I got so bored and the neighbor wanted us to pave an area in his backyard but didn't know how. It looked like heaps of fun to me and I love building stuff. I figured it couldn't be too hard to figure it out so I got some bricks and smoothed out the sand and started paving. I was pretty happy with it and I'm gonna finish the rest tomorrow.
ELDER BUTTS

sorry about the blog josh's new address is
Australia Perth Mission
p.o. box 185
Tuart Hill, WA 6939
Australia

Dear Blog:
Everything is great since I have gotten to Australia. The plane flight was kinda crazy. I took the first 2 connecting flights to Los Angeles and when I arrived, I found out that my flight got cancelled. I went over to the desk to figure things out and they told me I could either take a flight to Oakland, CA and connect the flight to Melbourne and then to Perth, or wait till the next night and there would be a direct flight to Sydney. I decided to take their offer to stay in a hotel and wait till the next night. I went to the desk in the second terminal to get my arrangements and be taken to the hotel and after making the arrangements, the agent told me that there was a flight leaving right then if I wanted to get on it. I didn't really want to wait an extra day, so I had him book me on that flight and I ran to the terminal to get there just in time. After the flights I arrived in Perth not knowing what to expect. I got off the plane and felt like the missionary in Other Side of Heaven when I found that nobody knew I was coming. I was sitting there in the airport alone and with no money(it was only american so they wouldn't take it) and all I had was a desire to figure out what to do. After about an hour or two of wandering back and forth in the airport hoping that maybe someone would show up, I decided to sit at a coffee table and say a little prayer. Not a minute after I prayed, I had the idea pop into my head that I had a paper that the mission president had previously sent me and I pulled it out to find the phone number to the mission office on it. I was so relieved and immediately called the number and the mission presidents picked me up telling me they were expecting me the next night. It was such a builder of my belief in the power of prayer and the tender mercies of the lord. The next week at transfers, I felt famous because everyone who talked to me knew me as "the missionary who made his own flight plans"

Since then I have been serving in Kwinana which is about an hour south of Perth. It is so beautiful here. Contrary to popular belief, there are very few kangaroos here. In fact, I hadn't seen any. But missionaries have told me that there are a few in the more outlying outskirt areas so I will probably see them eventually. I am still working hard and it is great seeing the lords hand in the progress of people we meet. It is sad when so many people reject the message though because it would make their lives so much better.

Elder Butts

p.s. I had octopus for the first time today

This week has been very fun. The best part was on Friday night. It was about 10:29 when we got a call from the mission president telling me that I recieved my Visa! I was told I would be leaving on Monday, August 18th to Australia. I will be on a plane for a duration of 27 hours traveling across the entire world. My experiences here in Tuskegee were great and I am very anxious to find out what it will be like in Australia. It will also be pretty nice to get away from the humidity. The kingdom is growing quickly in Alabama and I hope to also help it grow quickly in Perth.

josh leaves for australia on monday the 15 of august and is very excited!

sorry about the blog josh's new address is
Australia Perth Mission
p.o. box 185
Tuart Hill, WA 6939
Australia

district: this is the district I am serving in currently(Montgomery)

this is Cameron Mills brother-in-law aka my companion

I am filling up.

This week has went by so fast. We have been working with less actives a lot and been trying to get them to understand the importance of coming to church. It is so fulfilling when you commit someone to do something and they actually keep the commitment. Earlier this week we did splits with the young men in the branch so I went with my companion, and my other companion split with the priest. Elder Cullimore and I biked a few miles out of town where there are few houses. We started tracting out a few and ran into a preacher. We chatted for a minute and got the same "the church is in our hearts" story. We decided that he wasn't going to listen but offered him a card. He told us that he didn't believe in the Internet or computers so the card was probably useless but we decided to ask if we could have a closing prayer just to leave on good terms. He stood up and grabbed our hands which took me off guard. I went with it understanding that in some religions, this is common. My companion said the prayer and the preacher would say "yes" after every phrase added into the prayer. Though something like this was not unheard of to me, it was the first time I did it on my mission and I just laughed. It sounded like my companion was praying to the preacher almost because the preacher would almost accept everything my companion said. I wondered if the preacher would say "NO" if my companion said something the preacher didn't want prayed for. I just laughed especially after the same thing happened with the next house(but that was the last time it happened for that day).

We had something happen that was pretty cool earlier this week. We were finishing up companion study in the morning and someone called who lived in the area. We didn't recognize the number but he gave this huge story about how he was on his death bed and prayed to be healed and know what to do. Apparently he had gotten the answer that he needed to join the church. He called us and wanted to be baptised. In the past the missionaries in the area had taught him but he dropped the discussions and never contacted them again until just recently. I hope that we can get him baptised before I leave to Australia.

These are my two companions currently. The one on the left is Elder Cullimore(he is realted to aunt Karen through Cameron Mills or something like that(he is adopted)) the one on the right is Elder Miller.

We were out tracting and this sickly kitten followed us for about 1/2 a mile.