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