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

Dear Friends and Family,
This has been an awesome week! Ian was baptized!!! and not only that, but he truly showed his commitment to the gospel on Sunday when his fellowship and family was sick and couldn't make it to church (Most people would use this as an excuse to stay home) but he still drove himself to the ward and showed up to church alone. Fortunately we were still there and he wasn't completely alone at church. It was such an incredible experience to help him get baptized and I will not forget it ever.

After the baptism the ward did their Christmas party at the foreshore and we ate there for the lunch. It lasted quite a while so Elder Fatupaito and I decided that rather than wasting time, we would go proselyte for a while on the sidewalk along the beach. We had little success but then we offered a card that had a picture of Jesus Christ on it to a guy who was smoking and his girlfriend. He then started asking us all kinds of crazy questions about Jesus Christ and the end of the world. When we would start answering his questions he would interrupt with more questions and we felt like we were getting nowhere. We decided to ask him if we could say a prayer with him. I started praying and he interrupted during the prayer by talking as if he was continuing the prayer for me (which I figured was good because he was making an effort) but as he was talking, his words all the sudden became directed at us so we didn't get to finish right off. He talked about how his life was so bad and we asked if he believed if he had ever followed Jesus Christ. He replied with a definite NO. I told him how he had already chosen to follow Jesus Christ in the spirit world and that is why he was on this earth. He started crying heaps and we didn't know exactly how to react. He all the sudden said thanks for the chat and left. It was quite an interesting experience so Elder Fatupaito and myself said a prayer together to thank Heavenly Father for the experience and to finish the prayer we had started saying while we were talking to the young man.
Another quite spiritual experience I had with Elder Fatupaito was when we were at the same foreshore but this time we were doing some creative finding. I had gotten a large sheet of paper and some pictures of Jesus Christ and we sat in the middle of the sidewalk while I would draw pictures of Jesus while people would walk by and some of them would ask questions. Nobody was really stopping by much and the flies were getting so bad that I was afraid that if I blinked, a fly would get stuck in my eye. I asked Elder Fatupaito if we could say a prayer that I could draw with the convince of not having flies buzzing all around my face. Almost instantly after we prayed, the flied left(with the exception of 2or3 here and there. It was such a tender mercy from the lord.
We also had the mission Christmas activity by the temple last Friday and there was a really good turn out. Over 1000 people showed up to it and we even were able to receive some referrals and get some non-members interested in investigating. It was a great night full of fun and the spirit was felt greatly, Even though we did get home a little late.
I am very excited for Christmas this next Sunday! I hope you are all doing your best to gave the Christ spirit in your lives and doing everything you can to think about how you can give to others.
I love you all.
ELDER BUTTS

Dear Friends and Family,
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Well probably more-so in Utah considering that there is no snow here but there are a few people here and there who have been putting up Christmas lights. In fact we helped out putting some up for Ian, Our investigator we will be baptising this week! I am so excited. We asked him all the questions in our last interview and he answered them so well and bore an incredible and sincere testimony.
This past week has been pretty darn slow. My companion has been having back problems for a good while and one of the zone leader elders had gastro so I exchanged with his companion most of the week while our sick companions stayed at the flat. We did a lot of work though. We taught a couple of their investigators about the plan of salvation and people like me to draw it for them, So while he was talking about it, I would draw each level of it and people seem to like looking at all the steps and the pictures that represent each one. They probably liked it because it was a little more elaborate that a bunch of circles.
We did so well together that we even got 8 lessons in one day. It was a very productive day. We also sang at a retirement home on Saturday and it was hilarious. Fortunately they were all old people and most of them probably couldn't hear to well because we were terrible. Well... not in gods eyes because we were doing service but I would probably never willingly go to a concert with singing like what we did. One song we sang was "Once in Royal Davids City" but when we started, apparently nobody knew the tune of it so they started singing it to the tune of "Hark the Harold Angels Sing" and eventually we got to the end of the page and ran out of words but there was still tune left. Our choir director freaked out and stopped us immediately and had someone from the choir give a sample of how it was supposed to sound and we resumed by starting over. During another song, one of the pages was missing and nobody knew the words so we sang quite nicely during the first half of the song and then all the sudden you could hear everyone mumbling their own version of what they thought the words might sound like if there was a page adjacent to the first. At least this time they were doing something to the tune. It was quite an eventful service project that I will probably never forget and will always enjoy the memory of it.
I hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas season full of joy and giving!
Elder Joshua Butts

Dear friends and family,
It has been a good week but a little slow. My companion has been having some health problems and we were at the doctors for a bit while he had to get an X-ray and we found out that he has spinal problems but nothing too serious. The aboriginal lady we ran into last week that said she wanted to get closer to god wasn't at the appointment that we had made for her. We ended up feeling a little suspicious because of her requests but we are still going to go back this next week and try to help her out.
Ian, our investigator who we are baptising soon is the man aye. He has been keeping all the commitments that we have given him and doing everything in preparation for his baptism. Yesterday at church, we taught him about baptism in the Gospel Principals manual and the importance. We asked him what baptism meant to him and how it would be a new start. I am SOO excited for it and it is going to be a mean baptism.
The other day we were on exchanges with the missionaries in Rockingham and I was with elder Fatopaito. It was way fun, but super hot aye!! we biked out into this country area and tracted for a little while with flies buzzing all around us. It was fun but nobody was interested so we went to our next appointment in our zone leaders area. We did service for a lady in the ward by helping her weed her entire backyard for her house inspection the next week. It was super hot then because it was the middle of the day. It ended up being 98degrees outside. We later went to the ward mission leaders house for a BBQ because one of the YSA is leaving on a mission soon and he had some non-member friends we were going to teach. When we got there, we sat around the pool (sadly we weren't allowed to get in) and we talked with the other guys who were swimming. We ate and afterward chatted a little while one of the other young men was playing the guitar. After a little while the non-member friends started asking us why we weren't allowed to get into the pool and we told them about some of the many mission rules we adhere to. They were quite interested and we started talking heaps about standards of church member. I am so grateful that I had a 'For strength of Youth' pamphlet in my bag because I was able to read segments in it to tell them why we do the many things we do. We talked about the word of wisdom, tithing, law of chastity, and especially about the book of Mormon right at the end. I told them that there is no way in heaven or on earth that they would find out if what we had been talking about was true unless they read it and prayed about it. The spirit was felt so much that night and they committed to start reading it.
It is so amazing to see what Heavenly Father does for us when we work hard.
Elder Butts

Dear friends and family,
What a crazy week it has been. It has been getting very hot here. It was 90 the other day and it is only going to get hotter. One of the days, we were out biking and my companion skidded down a road with his brakes on and since it was quite a hot day, his rims were soft and his weight on the back tire bent it and so we had to walk the 4 miles back to our flat, one of which included carrying the messed up bicycle till we could leave it at a members house. It was quite an adventure. Since his bike was unusable, the next day required us to walk all around our area to our appointments. My feet were quite sore by the end of the day. We even got to the point of laying down in the middle of the sidewalk because Elder Sualevai has back problems. It was quite an adventure. We had a good amount of lessons and were very productive though which showed how much Heavenly Father will help us as long as we are willing to go out and work.
Thanksgiving was such an incredible day. I had an enormous feast, but it was feasting on the spirit and love of Christ in the temple. I can't think of a better activity to do on thanksgiving that spend it in the temple, learning about covenants and receiving personal revelation. As for an actual feast, well. . . . A peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a pretty decent meal considering there are so many other people in the world who have so much less and I was very grateful for it.
Another interesting experience that we had this week was while we were biking. We passed a house and this aboriginal lady came shuffling out of the house with a sad look on her face and she was calling out to us. We stopped to see what was the matter and she told us this long story about how her brother had committed suicide and her aunt was dieing in a hospital ages away and her son was apparently contemplating suicide. She asked us to pray for her and we did so. We gave her a book of Mormon and invited her to church and she said she would probably make it sometime. Later she asked us for money so she could get petrol(gas) so she could get home from the hospital which her aunt was at. While talking she also asked us to come in her house and cast out some evil spirits that were making her house a place that she couldn't stand to live in. We walked into her house and felt nothing different so we said a simple prayer that she would be able feel the spirit and be able to discern right from wrong. She told us about how much better she felt and we talked with her a little more about coming to church and reading the Book of Mormon. It was a very unique experience and hopefully it sparked her interest to learn more.
I have been having heaps of good experiences here and I have been learning so much more than I have ever learned. I hope for the best for all you reading this.
Elder Joshua Butts

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.