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