Snowy present on Christmas Day

We were able to Skype with Rob on December 25th for Christmas. It was great to see his face and hear his voice. The Connection was a bit poor toward the end but it was still great to see him. He is doing great and wishes to send you all his love this Christmas season. Here is the letter he sent us on his PDay.

Dear Family and Friends,

So this week has been crazy! Good crazy! I feel a lot has changed this
past week that will help me throughout my whole mission. First of all
I loved hearing from you too this Christmas, Sorry for the bad
connection but that was probably the Lord telling me I had enough.
haha and yes this snow we've gotten has been the worst for everyone
here, they're all complaining, but I love it! I know it was part of my
Christmas gift from Heavenly Father. Thank you so much for all the
many gifts you gave! I really appreciate it. So
transfers are this Tuesday and looks like Elder Cook and I are staying
in the same area still! That is a blessing because we had so much work
to do. We have two weddings we are planning, two baptisms and a
crap-ton of other things. We made thank you card with candies in them
to all the people we teach and serve with here and boy is that a lot
of people!

Lets see, Christmas here was the best! All day Pday! I woke up and
looked out the window, and what did I see? Popcorn popping on the
apricot tree! No It SNOWED!!! We got like a whole inch of snow!!! I
was so happy to have a white Christmas this year because it had not
snowed yet. So after we studied in the morning I ran outside in my
shorts and bare feet and ran through the snow and threw some snowballs
at the Spanish sister's apartment next door. We then had a snowball
fight as soon as they came out.The sisters didn't get very many presents to
open so we invited them over, we opened our door, they sat outside and
we gave them blankets and they helped us open our gifts. We Skyped with our families,
then after I then cleaned up the apartment and we went over to our
dinner appointment with the Taggarts. Mike and Mckenzie, their 5 year
old son and 2 year old daughter are awesome! He's a going to school to
be a doctor and she is a photographer. I was so excited about the snow
that I asked the two kids if they wanted to play in the snow after
dinner. So we did! haha They were so cute! But silly me, I forgot my
gloves so yes my hands froze too! We then got a ride home, and the
sisters were there again, so BAM another snowball fight ensued! We
made a snowman then destroyed him sadly, and we went inside. Whew!
What a day!

This week has been a great spiritually growing week due to rough
circumstances here, but through my studies and through the spirit that
has been felt all week I've felt a change in me and others have even
pointed that out. I've been able to focus more on the work and teach
through the Spirit. I love it here and am not too sad about calling
home. I was scared that I would think about it for too long but i'm
doing fine.  I am blessed to have such a wonderful family and to have seen you this
Christmas! It is already almost 2015!!! What the Hay!? Just think, in
the blink of an eye BAM! it will be mothers day! :) I hope you have a
wonderful week and don't worry about me too much. I love you very much
and wish I could've told you that in person but alas it was not so, so
I LOVE YOU!

Love Elder Patterson

The Spanish Sisters that live in the building across from them. This is a picture of them during their snowball fight on Christmas Day.

What I learned in Seminary.

Hello! Family and Friends,

Well this week was eventful in many different ways. I feel kind of at
a loss at what to do. Theres a point when so many things go wrong i
tend to question if i need to keep moving forward with faith or if
there is something I am lacking that i need to change. Well I'll just
let you know what happened this week, and it may not be in perfect
order but hey whatever.  I feel like I am turning into Mom out here. I'll explain. So to
capture our attention in seminary Mom would show us videos from all
over the place, Mormon messages, seminary resources, general
conference clips, just everything. She would then beautifully bear her
testimony about the video and the spirit that it brings and i was just
to tired in the morning to realize the importance of them. Some of
them were pretty cheesy, some of them boring, some of them thought
provoking and such but now im the one watching and sharing these
cheesy videos and crying my face off while I try to bear my testimony
which has been hidden for so long. I don't think they are all cheesy
anymore. This new "He is the Gift" video i've memorized and don't even
have to watch it anymore to know what happens, but its given me the
opportunity to think about what each word and phrase means and how I
really wouldnt be here if it werent for Jesus Christ. I don't even
think I can express myself as to how i am growing to know who He
really is and how insignificant I am but how incomprehensible His love
is for me, to care enough to die for me. I am trying to emulate Him
and work on attaining more Christ-like attributes. It is really tough
though. And I am just coming to a realization right now as I write
this. Hear me out. So our Mission President asked us for our upcoming
interviews to pick on attribute to work on and to discuss. I chose
Hope. Mostly because I am so easily disheartened when so
many crappy things pile up here on a mission. I sacrifice my time and
life to have people slam their doors in my face, figuratively and
literally. Well I have a feeling as I have searched and prayed to have
hope that the events of this week which I will tell you will probably
make sense, in that Heavenly Father is giving me more opportunities to
hope. We have had a hard time finding investigators and we finally had
four. All four of them were dropped this week. We have barely anyone
to teach. One we haven't taught him in months. One of them got
evicted and didn't tell us where they were going. One of them who had a date to be
baptized this week dropped us and told us she wasn't ready, even
though she said that she believed what we taught her. All our other
lessons with returning members and others keep getting rescheduled and
moved and cancelled and AHHHHH! We had a Christmas party this week
which didn't go as well as I thought. First mistake was for the center
piece of each table they piled glitter on the tables... yeah and this
is a mormon family event... with crazy kids. I spent more time picking
glitter out of my food and off my body than I did eating. I met a few
of the people who I didn't recognize but they all left as soon as the
food was done and the program started. We went that night to visit our
scheduled appointments who were not home. none of them. The people we
invited to come to the party didn't come. I stayed afterward and
cleaned up all the glitter and tons of food on the floor. it was
gross. But I've seen little things at each point where I didn't want
to carry on anymore that sustained me and my hope throughout this
week. After the Christmas party and cancelled appointments, we met a
single sister and her daughter who want to meet twice a week and learn
about the book of mormon. Cha-Ching! Thats our job! then earlier this
week I got a postcard from an old friend in high school, which made me
smile. I watched a man I taught from the first day I got here be
baptized this weekend and participated in his confirmation. He bore
his testimony afterwards but can't pronounce my name so yeah that was
funny and just great to hear. Yeah and now I am reading emails from those
whom I love so dearly and it warms my heart to hear how you are all
doing back home. I miss you very much but look how time has flown by.
Soon it will be Christmas then BAM mothers day, then BAM Christmas
again, then BAM mothers day, then BAM im home! haha I can't wait but I
do love it here. I've really come to love this quote by President
James E. Faust... "Hope is the anchor of our souls... Hope is trust in
Gods' promises, faith that if we act now, the desired blessings will
be fulfilled in the future." I've put that on my little white board in
our apartment and memorized it and it has been a strength to me. I've
pray for you all every night and can feel your prayers for me being
answered here. I love you and can't wait to see you soon!

Love Elder Patterson

American Thanksgiving.

Dear Friends and Family,

Now this week was Thanksgiving, and first of all, Its way to close to Christmas down here. I much rather have it when us good ol' Canadians have it. Second, I definitely made up for not having any food last year with my surgery. We ate four meals! Wait let me back up a bit. So Elder Cook has been sick for the last week and a half, throwing up and not having enough energy to do anything. I've been doing fine which, and this experience is really letting me work on patience and charity. I have had to stay in with him a lot, but have been throughout the week able to schedule times for someone to be here with him while I go out with another to teach as many visits as possible. So I've been doing all the teaching this week, I've been taking the lead and learning more that way. I've been doing my best to serve my companion and others more which has been a great blessing to me. We had the whole Thursday (Thanksgiving) off and so we relaxed and then went to a lunch at noon at the stake center with one of the senior couple's family, turkey dinner #1, then went across to the other side of the stake center to another family dinner with another senior couple, turkey dinner #2, by this time I had gotten a referral and met a lot of new people. Then we got a ride to our dinner appointment which was at a members house, who is currently going through a divorce, which is sad but it was very awkward there with them yelling and stuff, but the food was amazing, turkey dinner #3. Then we got a ride to our service missionary's home, Elder and Sister Smith, who are awesome! We then ate again and played guitar and hung out till 9:00. Turkey dinner #4. I couldn't move. It hurt to breathe. But it was so good! haha lets see. okay mom I made some cookies this week for our families but had to throw the batter and all the cookies away because they were crap. I do not know what happened. I followed grandpa's cookie recipe to the T and did all it said, i put them in the oven and took them out and they had expanded to fluffy pancakes. seriously I was so mad I had wasted all my ingredients. Was it the non convection stove? Was I supposed to cook them for longer? Was I supposed to mix the eggs in a separate container then put them in? Is that recipe right? I don't know but i'm not making cookies anytime soon in the future without you. Anyways. Let's see, elder Cook is from Mantika California. He's always cold. He's bundled up all the time. It's funny but he's a wonderful companion who helps me a lot. He's taught me many things and we work fairly well together. This area is cool. Ummm we are working with a lot of returning members, or less active members. We have a baptism this week in the branch. His name is Pheach Phin. He's a wonderful man who wants to do everything possible to be baptized and become better than he is. We've had to have a translator to all our lessons because his English isn't very good. But it's getting better. This week is also the ward Christmas party. We have also started is new Christmas initiative called "He is the Gift" which is awesome! There is a magical video and website (Christmas.mormon.org) and we have pass along cards and the church has bought out YouTube on the 7th of dec. and they're advertising on time square and much more. It's exciting that the first presidency and the quorum of the twelve released this and I love sharing the video and everything with everybody. Please share the video though the Internet to family and friends so they to can be reminded of he true meaning of Christmas. I've watched the video like a hundred times And I still love it and won't ever get sick of it. Our mission choir director is the one who wrote he music for it. It's super good! I didn't know the all blacks jersey was for Christmas so I opened it. Can you believe it's December already?! Time has been flying by! I hope and pray that it fly's by but I am, enjoying it here. I know this is where I need to be. I thank you all for your prayers and emails and letters and stuff. It means a lot!  :) I love ya'll!

Love Elder Patterson