November 25

Dear Family, It has been yet another week in Karratha. There is some new news with this email though. I will be transferred to Rockingham this week and I have been assigned to be a trainer. I have already served a few weeks in the area, but they have decided to send me back there. Maybe there is some unfinished work I have to do. This past week I finished a charcoal drawing that is going to be put up at the library. The librarians seemed to like it so hopefully it will be the source of bringing in new people into the church. We have not had too much else going on this week other than one lesson with Emma. It has been such a blessing to have been able to be part of teaching her. She went through almost the entire "true to the faith" pamphlet and had so many quiestions. She is now at the point where she likes a lot of what we have been saying but she wants to find out whether or not there was actually an apostacy. We gave her a "Jesus the Christ" book and now its up to her to read it and find her answers. I hope you all had a great thanksgiving! I will keep you all in my prayers in the comming week as I hope you will keep me in yours. Elder Joshua Butts

November 11

Dear Friends and Family, It has been such an amazing week! We had a bit of a miracle happen on Thursday. Kelvin contacted us and said he wanted to be baptized on Saturday...(LAST WEEK). That meant we had three days to plan it. I was so surprised but happy that he made the decision to change his date to the original date. It was incredible. We were able to get everything set up in time and the spirit was felt so much. When he went in the water, I felt the spirit more than at any other baptism since I've been in Karratha. We had 4 investigators show up too. Zakir and Reza, the two men from Afghanistan came, which was really surprising and Emma came for about 5 minutes during the video so she didn't get to watch the baptism but we were so glad that she came. We met Emma about a month ago and it was from contacting. She didn't have time to talk to us but an hour after contacting we went to a teaching appointment. As we were walking in, we saw her walking out so we talked to her for a minute. She said she was actually a bit interested in finding out more about the purpose of life and she likes learning about what others believe. We told the member to set up a teaching appointment for us but that never happened. About a week or so later, we were tracting and remembered that the past missionaries told us about a woman they tracted into a few months before. We went to the house to follow up and when we knocked, who could have answered but her. She didn't have time to talk but we were able to arrange an appointment and get her number. While talking at the doorstep, we didn't quite know what to expect at the appointment because she seemed a bit timid and we were unsure about how committed she was but with all the experiences before, we felt that there was a reason that we have been led to her. Our appointment was Friday and we were in for quite a surprise. She had all kinds of notes she had written about the bible and what she believes. She asked us questions about verses in the bible and we had no idea how to answer them. We taught her about the plan of salvation which she found quite interesting but still had a bunch of things she had questions with the bible. We are pretty excited for our next visit and are hoping she has read some of the book of Mormon. We have also been blessed to teach Peter and Julie. We actually met Tia about a month ago from street contacting. Tia is their daughter who just graduated from high school. She didn't seem very interested but told us that her parents like talking about religion. We made our first stop with president Lindsay and Julie answered. She didn't seem too interested at first but after a bit of persuasion, we were able to convince her to allow us to come back. The next week she told us she was going to talk about it with her husband, Peter and for us to come back in 2 weeks. Well we were finally about to get an appointment with them for Saturday, just before the baptism. It was great and Julie has so many questions. We ended up teaching them the Plan of Salvation AND the restoration. They just kept giving us plenty of questions, most of which we couldn't really give answers to(such as if someone is talking to spirits for people as a business and giving those people a sense of peace, is that from god or the devil). We were able to get them to understand that they can know if it is true by reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. Julie told us that she was a bit skeptical because she grew up in an environment where her father was constantly saying negative things about Mormons and she has gained a bit of a bias because of that. They didn't want to obey all the rules such as the word of wisdom and tithing, but I believe that they will receive an answer and eventually know the truth. I am so thankful that heavenly father has given us the opportunity to meet them and I really hope we can change their lives. Things are going very well with our investigator Ardi. He is Indonesian and we were able to have our first Real lesson with him when President Lindsay was here too. We retaught him about the restoration and it was like a light bulb lit up in his head. He understood why there was a need for the Priesthood to be restored and he said he would be reading the Book of Mormon more intently now. He also said he wants to come to church next week to see what it is like. That was a bit surprising because he has been going to the baptist church and we didn't expect that he was so willing to find out if this is true that he wants to see what our church worship is like. I am going to be praying a lot this week that he will follow through with his commitment. I know that he is very special to heavenly father and there is something planned for him. We had a lesson with Caitlin at Albertos house which went really good. She even came to the baptism on Saturday which I believe she got a lot out of. She completed her reading assignment from the Plan of Salvation lesson but didn't get too much out of it so we are probably going to teach it to her again sometime. She is moving to Perth in 5 or 6 weeks though so we hope she will gain a witness that our message is true. We taught her the restoration on Friday and showed her the movie. It seemed like she got a lot out of it and she told us about her friend Anita(who we exterminated her birds last Saturday). Anita has been thinking about what we said a bit and we stopped by to see her yesterday after church. We told her that the reason she hasn't been very happy lately is because she has distanced herself from god. We taught her about the Restoration and told her about some experiences that helped us know if the church was true and strengthened our faith. She said she really doesn't even know if god exists sometimes and she doesn't feel like she gets answers to prayers. We hit her with the comment that "Maybe god IS answering your prayers by sending two young men to teach you about his true church. We are really praying for Anita to have some kind of spiritual experience to help her gain answers to her prayers and know the truth. Well that's a bit about our week. I know.. kinda crazy. I have so thankful that heavenly father has been blessing us with so much work here in karratha. I hope you are all finding people that are willing to let god bless their lives through you! Love Elder Joshua Butts

November 4

Dear Family, We had a great baptism this week for Ti Whenua and JJ Erickson. They were Baptised and confirmed by their dad on thursday the 1st of september and Kelvin is scheduled to be baptised on the 15th. We did a lot of tracting this week. We met Emma and we are very excited to teach her. We had actually tracted into her a few months ago but she was busy and said to come back some other time. This time must have been the charm because she seemed to have a desire to learn about the plan of salvation and other things about Jesus Christ. We are going to teach her this week! The rest of things have been going a bit slow but I still think we can get another baptism aside from Kelvin before the end of the year. We taught Rachel the Plan of Salvation this last week too which went amazing. She is very receptive to the gospel. We have also set a goal to activate her before the end of the year because she is already a member. She told us that we answered questions that she didn't even know she had. We had a great experience while we were at Volleyball. Since the branch did the youth trip this year, there was nobody who showed up except for the 2 men from Afghanistan. Zakir hasn't been able to read much more about the book of Mormon but while I was sitting on the chairs, Reza came up to me and asked what we did all the time. I told his about our schedule and the plan of salvation. Fortunately I had some pictures that I was able to put out and I went through the plan of salvation with him. it caused him to ask questions about why there are so many churches in the world. I was able to share the restoration and Joseph smith with him which made him really quite interested. He said he wanted to look at the website and learn about it. we are really hoping that we can teach him. I hope you are all having a wonderful week! Love Elder Joshua Butts

October 28

Dear Family, It has been such a great week! President Lindsay came up and we took him out to do some visits with us on Wednesday. I don't think it could have gone better. He loves the work we are doing and we taught two incredible lessons(one of which wasn't even remotely planned). We went to visit Rachel, who we found out is a member but doesn't know really anything about the church. She ended up being busy so we set up an appointment to visit tomorrow. We didn't really know who we might be able to catch home at that time but I remembered Ardi, an Indonesian man whom we tracted into and gave a book of mormon to two weeks ago. When we visited with president Lindsay, he was miraculously home and invited us in with a friendly smile. He is a christian and goes to the baptist church but is open to new ideas and was curious about the Book of Mormon when we told him about it last time. We showed him some Scriptures in the bible which talk about the book of mormon such as Ezekial 37, and John 10. He had some questions about baptism and we helped him understand that the gospel has been restored by Joseph smith. This week we are going to teach him about the Apostasy. Our mission president was quite pleased with the visit. We next had an appointment with a woman named Jen who we had also recently tracted into and given a book of mormon. She was so inviting to us and President Lindsay. After some conversation we taught the lesson of the restoration with the movie. It was so amazing the spirit we were able to feel and I could tell that she was thinking. She lit up after the movie and told us that Now she understood what the book of mormon is. It is not our mormon bible, but it is additional scripture. Later in the week she told us she had been reading and was looking forward to our visit this coming week! We have also had many other great experiences including exterminating some pests from a woman's yard to teaching Jayjay and Ti Whenua. They are going to be baptised this Thursday. It is simply so amazing that Heavenly father has seen fit so bless us with so many of these baptisms. We were able to teach them and Kelvin(who will be baptised in the next two weeks) about the baptismal interview questions which they answered the questions with flying colors. I feel so blessed. They also did the primary program in this branch yesterday. I must say, it was quite a comical event. I always love watching the children sing and talk about how the church has blessed their lives. There are going to be many more blessings seen in karratha in the near future. Have a great week! Love Elder Joshua Butts

October 21

Dear Family, It has been such a great week! Prestons baptism was friday and it was such an amazing experience. There were even a few non-members who showed up and we were able to give one of them a book of mormon. I was given the privilege of confirming Preston on sunday. It was a very spiritual experience. I believe that he will be such a great member of the church. We have had lots of success this week with investigators and lessons. Alberto has a neighbor that works in the school system with him. She is in her mid 20's and her name is Caitlin. We were finally able to teach her at his house on Wednesday. We taught her the plan of salvation and she was really intrigued by it. She said she'd read the book of mormon, so we are going to follow up with her the next time we are able to meet with her. We have gotten 3 more baptismal dates with other investigators this week too which has been so rewarding. We are teaching Te-Whenua and Jay-Jay. They are both children of Regan. He is an active member and is getting married to another member in November. He told us that he wanted us to start teaching his kids a while back and we finally got to teach them on wednesday. Since they already come to church, they are pretty clued on and know a lot. The lesson was a breeze and we asked about them being baptised. We were able to set it up for November 1st. I am very excited. We are going to have to compact the lessons a bit, but I'm sure they will be able to handle them. Kelvin is also doing really well. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and he loved it. He has a brother who died a few months ago because of bad decisions but Kelvin was very comforted to know he will see his brother again. He even called us yesterday and told us that he was telling his mom about the plan of salvation and she had a lot of questions. He had no idea how to answer them and asked for help. We are going to try to find a way to get missionaries in Busselton(where she lives) to be able to visit her. I am very excited about the progress. Kelvin is scheduled to be baptised on November 10th. All our hard work is starting to pay off. I will have been blessed to participate in 5 baptisms since being in Karratha. I know the Lord has really been in the work here. We also have a lot of other potential investigators who are coming to church and schedules appointments with us. A month ago we were tracting and met a family who had been to church before. The mothers name is Joanne. they are aboriginal. They are all non-members but used to go to church quite regularly about 2 years ago, but just stopped. We invited them to church a few weeks ago but they never showed up and when we went over to their house, they didn't seem too excited to see us. Surprisingly, when we were in sacrament meeting yesterday, they just showed up. It was quite a shocker for me. When I was talking to her after church, she said her little boy had to go to the hospital during the week and it must have caused her to start thinking. She said she did want to start meeting with us again. I am so excited for our appointment this week. It will be good if we can teach them and eventually help them to get baptised. It is hard with aboriginals because of their culture but hopefully that won't stop this family and hopefully they will be active. That's a little bit about whats in Karratha right now. have a wonderful week everyone! Elder Joshua Butts

October 14

Dear Family, it has been such an eventful week. I don't even know where to start. We have a baptism this coming Friday with Preston. He is so prepared. He begged his mother to allow him to go to general conference on Sunday even though she was sick. His brother dropped him off and we kept an eye on him during the session so his brother could pick him up afterward. He is pretty excited. We are having his interview with the branch president tomorrow. Volleyball went so great on friday. The two men from Pakistan (Zakir and Reza) came and brought their volleyball because ours is flat. The week before, I gave a Farsi book of Mormon to Zakir. I asked him about it last friday and he had read 20 pages (about to 2 nephi). I was astonished and I think he will start having some questions soon. They are both Christian. One last cool fact is that a week ago, we built a sand sculpture of the Brigham city temple at the community gardens. well, I guess that people liked it so much, they left it and it's been up over a week. I wonder if we will be able to get anyone to investigate because of it. People seem it like it though. We have been making a big influence on the library as well. They have commissioned me to do a poster sized charcoal drawing of the SLC temple to put up and they have changed all the backgrounds on the computers to temples. How is that for making an influence. We had such an incredible experience yesterday. We got a call from a woman who we hadn't even heard of (It turned out that it was because she was on the branch list but the name said "DO NOT VISIT" on it so we never bothered). Well the call was to ask us to teach her husband who isn't a member and consequently is the reason that we weren't allowed to visit. Apparently 10 years ago he told his wife that in 10 years he would take the discussions. Yesterday was our first discussion and we taught the restoration. It was so incredible the spirit we were able to feel during the lesson. He works a lot, but hopefully we will be able to see him progress in Book of Mormon reading and in the gospel. General Conference was so amazing this past weekend. I hope you were all able to get a lot out of it last week. Love you all, Elder Joshua Butts

October 7

Dear Family, It has been a very good week full of great spiritual experiences. We are SO super excited. We got a baptismal date with Preston(Toni's son). He has been thinking about baptism for a while and now he is finally making the decision. He wants Bro Otto to baptize him on the 19th of October. We were also able to get Kelvin to start coming back to church. He wants us to start teaching him the lessons again and get a baptismal date at our appointment this week! I am so excited for Preston. It was amazing to see him and his mother start coming to church 3 months ago and now he has made the decision to be baptized. Miracles truly have not ceased and god has not ceased to be a god of miracles. We had another really cool experience with talking with everyone last weekend. We went to the community gardens as usual to do service and we met Deklin(a 14 year old boy who was there last week also). It is hard to find a way to slip gospel conversation in with the other people who help there because bro Otto has pretty much told everyone about it and they aren't really interested. We have never talked about it to deklin though. While helping I decided that we didn't need to wait for him to ask who we were so I asked what he was doing on Sunday. He said just sitting at home doing nothing. I asked why he didn't go to church and he explained that he does bible study classes during the week and occasionally attends the Anglican church on some Sundays. I started talking to him about some of the passages in the bible and then started getting into the book of Mormon (which he had never heard about). I asked what he would think if god called another prophet right now like Moses. He said that it's possible and that he wants to follow the bible as closely as he can. We then invited him to church but the problem is that we didn't talk to his parents yet so we told him to see if it was OK with them and that we would love to explain more. It was so amazing how Heavenly Father was able to give us that teaching opportunity. I am very grateful for the work in this area. Have a great week everyone! Love Elder Butts

September 30

Dear Friends and Family, It was such a great week! We had two investigator as Sacrament meeting. We still have Preston coming and his mother (His brother Jamella who is 9 has decided that the world is more important that church right now but I believe that he will follow his mother and brother eventually). We are VERY excited for Preston because he finally decided that he wants to be baptized. He said originally that he wanted to wait a few months but yesterday at church, he decided that he is ready and wants to be baptized in a few weeks. He is going to talk to his mother about it and they will tell us the date he would like to be baptized on Thursday. I am SO excited. It has been amazing to see Toni(his mother) and her family go from complete estrangement to the church to coming every week and striving to be worthy for every blessing the lord has for them. It is incredible. Hopefully their influence will affect everyone in the family. We had another cool tracting experience this week. We chose a street to knock a street and had no success during the first 10-15 minutes. We suddenly came to a large house to which we had no thought of the resident being even remotely interested in Heavenly Father when they must have had such vast wealth. We had a particularly surprising experience upon actually knocking though. An unusually inviting catholic man opened the door and excitedly invites us in for some dessert and a drink. How is that for a surprise? He took us out back where we saw his wife and the puzzle was put together. We knew her because we do service at St. Vincents thrift shop once a week. He sat with is and started talking about the history of the catholic church. He is a historian of some kind. We mentioned that he should become acquainted with the history of Our church. He was surprisingly interested, especially when we told him about the third book that would come forth before Christ comes again, but He still spent pretty much the rest of the time talking about more of the history of the catholic church. Before leaving we asked if he would like to read the Book of Mormon. We got the expected response that if he was inclined to read any religious book, we would likely only choose the Bible which he specified to be the King James version. Now this I can testify is how I know that the Holy Ghost Can guide conversations because we told him that we read that same bible. It was ONLY after that comment that he chose (of his own free will) to ask us for a Book of Mormon. I don't know why he suddenly changed his mind but I am sure it's because of the spirit. Karratha is a great place! Hopefully you are all enjoying the new temple! Love Elder Butts

September 23

Dear Friends and Family, It has been a pretty busy week as usual, although it just wasn't as packed with teaching people. We have been doing extra knocking on doors. I gave a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday too. I'm pretty sure it's the longest talk i've ever given. I talked for almost 20 minutes. I'm so glad I prepared during the week and prayed that the spirit would guide me. I think it was amazing to see how much the spirit does for people who pray for it. We had another cool tracting experience this past week. We went to an area that probably hadn't been tracted for about a year (because I'm pretty sure all of karratha has been tracted 10times over) and we prayed to be able to meet someone who needed us. We met some teenagers because a lot of parents work all the time in karratha. We were able to give away 2 book of Mormons, a finding faith in Christ DVD and a CD with Mormon messages on it. We were getting close to the end of the street and we tracted into a house with an aboriginal family. It was the mothers birthday so we told her happy birthday and that we had a present for her. Her name is Joanne. We told her we were going to give her the gospel and she agreed that she needed to come back to church. "WHAT?, come back?" she told us she used to go quite regularly 2 or 3 years ago but her family was going through some financial struggles and stopped going (That happens to people a lot here is seems). Well her family is actually all non-members and they told us we could come teach them. That was a bit of a miracle. Nothing is set in stone yet, but we have lots of faith so hopefully we can help this family come back to the church and get some baptisms out of it! It is good because since she has been to church before, she already knows some of the members. On Saturday we went to an art competition at the visitors center. So the story is that about a month ago, we stopped in just to check out the visitors center and saw a flyier for a recycled art competition. I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to get into the public and share some of our beliefs. I got some pizza and cereal boxes and glued them together to make a board. To make the image, I got newspapers and magazines we found (Don't worry, I didn't cut up a single church magazine) and used the clippings of color to make an image of the Pilbarra and I placed Jesus Christ in it. When I was finished I felt that it looked like a 12year old did it but at least it will get the message across. On Saturday we went to the opening night and were able to meet some of the other people who had done artwork. It was a great way to talk about Jesus Christ and hopefully we will be able to get some people to ask some questions in the future. I love being out here serving! I hope you are all finding opportunities to serve those around you! Love Elder Butts

September 16

Dear Friends and Family, It has been a crazy week because it's getting so HOT! Just a few days ago it got up to 102 degrees. We have been drinking Tons of water but sometimes I still get headaches from either dehydration or heat exhaustion, so we have had to be pretty careful. We went tracting one day this week and had another cool experience. We have ben telling Alberto that we were gonna tract his street one of these days but never got around to it but one morning we just decided to do it. We didn't have any one who was super interested but when we got to the last house, we met Caitlin, his neighbor. She said she had talked to Alberto a lot and seen us go over there pretty often. We asked her what kinda questions she had about god and stuff and she told us that she liked finding out new things about him because she just wasn't sure. We told her about the Book of Mormon and she was interested in obtaining one so we offered to have a lesson with her and Alberto. We are going to set it up this week so it is pretty exciting! Not much else has happened. Hopefully we can get heaps of stuff going on this week though! Have a wonderful week everyone! Love, Elder Joshua Butts

September 9

Dear Friends and Family, It has been such an incredible week! We have been finding so many new investigators and helping people so much. One of the best pieces of news is that Kelvin came back up here from Perth. He came to church yesterday and he had an incredible Gospel Principals lesson on Charity. We had a really cool experience tracting yesterday after church. We went to a street we had tracted earlier in the week but nobody was home at the time so we decided to retract it. As we were knocking a few doors, it seemed that most people were just drinking and partying so it wasn't the best situation to be in for tracting but we still knew that no effort is ever wasted. We went to the next house only to find a very nice christian lady named Belinda, who opened the door and listened to us share for a minute about how god has called a prophet and how we can be with our families forever by being sealed in the temple. She didn't seem too convinced at first so I decided to just tell it to her straight that "Our church is the only true church on the earth". She replied saying that she felt the same way about her church to which we told her that she was only going to be able to find out which of us was right if she read the book of Mormon and prayed to know whether or not we were telling the truth. She seemed quite hesitant to accept the book of Mormon but the second she took it she said "You know. I'm gonna pray about this OK. And I'm gonna ask if what you're telling me is true". She said we could come back next week and find out how everything went. It was a really cool experience. We also sometimes spend some time at the library for a drink/bathroom break when we are biking out in the farther part of our area. Well this time while we were sitting, the woman at the desk at the library was talking to us about books. We asked her if she had ever heard of the book of Mormon. She told us that she hadn't but we could donate one to her if we had an extra one. That would be a really good way to get people exposed to it (but we mostly wanted the librarian chaz to read it). We gave her the book and she started reading right away. She even asked some questions about the Gold Plates and Joseph smith. A few days later we went back for another short break and showed her some pictures of the temples which she showed great interest in. She was especially interested in the Rome temple which is under construction and also told us we could bring the Book of Mormon Ensign to donate it to the library as well. It is so incredible how much missionary work has been going on in Karratha and we will be expecting some great miracles in the near future. Thanks for all the support again. Keep doing your best everyone! Love ya Elder Joshua Butts

September 2

Dear Friends and Family, It has been such an incredible week. We baptized Priscilla on Saturday! It went so great and she even bore her testimony during fast and testimony meeting at church yesterday. Elder Case baptized her on saturday and I confirmed her on Sunday. I hope you all had fun at the Brigham City Temple open house. I will be getting my new companion in a few hours. His name is Elder Pasina. He is from Tonga. I am pretty excited to keep the missionary work rolling with him. We have also still been meeting with Toni this week. Her and Preston(her son) came to the baptism of Priscilla and they seemed to really like it and they also came to church. Jamella is the one who wants to be baptised but he decided to stay at his friends house instead of going to church so we will have to keep working on his keeping the sabbath day holy so he and Preston can be baptised soon. I had a kinda cool experience with a member yesterday. We were talking with him at the chapel and he was telling us about a YSA activity they were doing that night. He said they were all going to get fast food for the activity because he didn't have that much food and he had done other things that were much worse anyway so it wouldn't matter this once. It reminded me of when we were teaching Preston and Jamella about keeping the sabbath day holy and we read a story from the friend to them called "Drive-Through Decision". I really felt like sharing the same story with the member we were talking to so I had him pull it up on his phone and I read it to him. Before I finished the story he said "OKAY I wont go anymore ok!" but a minute later he said it reminded him of when he was going to go to the store on a sunday but he stubbed his foot on the way in so he decided to leave. Later in the day he called us and told us thanks for helping him keep the sabbath day holy. I am so glad that we were able to help him with that and I felt like it was much inspired to read the story. I hope you all have a wonderful week!! Love, Elder Joshua Butts

Priscilla Baptism

August 26

Dear Friends and Family, It has been such a spirit filled week! We got 13 lessons which is pretty much a record for this area. We also have some amazing and exciting news. We will be having a baptism this Saturday! It is for Pracilla. We have been teaching her and she finally got an interview with the branch president at church yesterday and she passed it with flying colours so he suggested that we get in contact with the mission president and set up a time for the next interview. We called up President Lindsay and he said it was so great that she is going so well and that after he Skype's her on Tuesday that she is ready for baptism. Since Elder Case is going home next week, president suggested that we set up the baptism for this Saturday. there are many members of the branch who are leaving town but he said that if we felt good about it, that we should set it up for this Saturday. We both felt pretty good about it and after making some calls, we decided to go with it. I am super excited. We also are teaching Pracillas uncle as of this week too. We got a random call from Noretta (Pracillas sister who was baptised last November) and she said she had been talking to her Uncle Victor and he had some great questions about how our body is a temple and about other Mormon temples. It was an incredible lesson that we got to teach. He apparently went to a YSA activity the other day with one of the other YSA. The next step is to just get him to church and keep teaching him. On Saturdays we usually help out with some community gardens. While we were helping, we met Kurt. He is from Queensland and has been traveling through Australia. He is really big into Tai Chi so he likes meditating a lot. Sometimes he just stops whatever he is doing and stars doing hand and leg movements like he's dancing, or he'll sit on the ground with his legs crossed and his eyes closed. I didn't really mind, but sometimes it was a little strange to be mixing cement for a flower bed container and he would randomly disappear. He told us he liked reading the bible a bit and we shared with him about the book of Mormon. He seemed a little interested so we offered to give him one. The next day, bro Otto had talked him to church. That was a bit surprising. We found out that as bro Otto was driving to church, he saw Kurt at the side of the road. He asked what Kurt was doing and Kurt told him that he wasn't really doing much. Bro Otto just decided to bring him to church. He really seemed to enjoy it and I was glad that he came. Hopefully he will contact other missionaries on his travels. I am so thankful to be out here witnessing all these miracles and I really hope you are all finding people to share the gospel with also. Thanks so much for all your love and support. I love you all, Elder Joshua Butts

August 19

Dear Family, We got to do some pretty awesome activities this week. Jamella who does BMX got in a bad bike crash on thursday. He actually ended up in crutches but they decided because so many people are crashing their bikes they need to pave the BMX course. We offered to help so the majority of the morning on saturday they trucked in about 20 tons of hot blacktop and since you cant use a steam roller on the BMX tract, we had these poles with a roller on the end of them which we would roll back and forth on top of the pavement to set it. We would have to spray the roller with diesel fuel every now and then so it didn't stick to the rocks and tar. It was probably the most fun service project I have done since being in Karratha. We also got to meet a few new people there and Toni and her family were there. On one day this week we were getting back to our apartment for lunch and saw our neighbors relative outside putting together a trampoline. Colleen lives out on the other side of our area and we had never met her before but we started helping her put it together anyway. She told us that she knew Noretta, one of our Torres Strait recent converts. Colleen said she goes to the JW church sometimes because they tracted into her but she actually was baptised as a mormon ages ago. We told her about the church while we were helping and she became interested in the book of mormon again. We ran in and got one for her so hopefully she is reading it now and will come to church sometime. Those were the fun stories for this week. I hope you are all having a wonderful time! Love Elder Joshua Butts

PICTURE: Norettas kids. We baptised Keddie-Bunna a month ago.

August 12

Dear friends and family, It has been a pretty eventful week! I got in a pretty bad bike crash on Wednesday. My hands got pretty messed up but nothing else too serious happened. I am healing up pretty good by now. We have been teaching heaps of people. On Thursday, we went over to Dilia(Less active member) and Clint's house. They are both aboriginals and he took us out Kangaroo hunting. He had never been very receptive but they both allowed us to teach Dilia's children. We planned to teach them the plan of salvation by having elder case teach while I drew it out on a piece of paper like a pathway through life. They loved being able to picture it and Clint was very attentive. During part of it he said that what we taught is how it should be and he agrees with it. We told them to read Alma 40 about the spirit would and that we would ask them questions about it next time to make sure they read. The whole family seemed to like the idea and we really felt the spirit. We are going to see them again this week, so hopefully they kept their commitments. We also have great news about Toni and her kids. We finally got Toni's records in the branch yesterday so she officially was sustained as a member of the branch. Preston and Jamella were pretty excited about going to church yesterday. They even got new suits just to wear at church and it is pretty cool watching them participate so much. The primary teachers have even told us that they participate more than some of the other kids who are members. I am so glad they fit in so well. We were able to teach their family about temples this past week and we retaught "Gospel of Jesus Christ" to them on Saturday after helping them move a giant trailer from their backyard to the street. It was quite a task, especially because it was too big to fit through the car port so they had to drain most of the air out of the tires. I bet it was at less than 15psi because the rims were almost touching the ground. Their friend DJ also came to church the first time yesterday. He is so cool. He always was alright for a quick chat when we went around to see Toni and her kids but yesterday he actually came to church. I think it's because he finally has a week off work due to having had a BMX bike handlebar put through his stomach. While in priesthood meeting he really expressed interest in learning more and excited accepted a book of Mormon when we gave him one. I hope we can start teaching him soon. We haven't seen Rawand lately. He is still following Ramadan so it is pretty much useless until it's over because he can't read any other books aside from the Qua'ran. We will be teaching him next Sunday though because I think he finishes Ramadan this week sometime. Kelvin has been doing well in Perth I think. We haven't been able to get a hold of him this past week and he still hasn't gone to church since he's been down there but the First Counselor in our branch took him to see the temple grounds while he was down in perth for work this past weekend. It was such a relief to hear that yesterday. I am excited for all the blessing that the lord is giving us here in Karratha. It is a place full of great people who have great potential. I love you all so much! Elder Joshua Butts

August 5

Dear Friends and Family, The week has been pretty good even though we have gotten fewer lessons that usual. Kelvin(who is currently down in Perth) decided that he wasn't super excited about visiting with the missionaries there. He said he just likes us better. I am glad that he likes us so much but at the same time, I am disappointed because we are trying to get him to know and trust in the savior, not us. We have been working with the missionaries by phone to try to help him out but we feel that it might just end up waiting till he comes back up here to Karratha and we will likely have to push his baptismal date back. We aren't too worried about it though. I know kelvin still has a super strong testimony and it will not likely be pushed back very much. Preston and Jamella and also progressing still. We weren't able to talk to them the past week because Jamella was in Perth getting an operation. We gave him a blessing before he left and we called them over the weekend and he was fine. They didn't come to church though because Toni, their mom, was sick. We will be seeing them this week to continue teaching them. There is also Great news about Pracilla, our investigator who is half aboriginal and half Torres Strait. Since her baptismal date had to be dropped because of various reasons, we got a call from President Lindsay and he said he can interview her on skype after we have taught her everything. We have been having a lesson a week with her and everything is going awesome. I am so excited for these people. We are still on schedule to have these 4 baptisms before the end of the year(and likely even within the next month or two) I am so thankful for all of you and your prayers for me and the people in this area. Please keep doing whats right and you will never go wrong. Love you all! Elder Joshua Butts

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