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