July 29

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

July 22

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

July 15

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

July 9

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

July 1

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

June 24

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

June 17

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

June 10

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

June 4

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

May 27

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

May 20

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

May 13

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

May 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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