Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Pictures

Here are some pictures of Rob throughout the first few months of his mission. He sent some of these photos home and I thought it would be good to share some of them on here. The sure show Rob's fun loving spirit and the hard work that he is doing on his mission. We are grateful for his example of service to the Lord.












 Rob showing off his muscles in his new All Blacks jersey from New Zealand





He was so happy to get snow. His companion thought he was crazy, but Rob was glad to have snow.





 Rob thought it was funny that people had their sprinklers on even though it was raining



















That's all for now. I will post more as I get them from Rob.

Monday, July 6, 2015

June 29, 2015



Dear Family and Friends,

Well this email will probably be composed very quickly so I apologize in advance for grammatical errors. I will try my best to let you know what is going on here. I often forget that I know what is going on and I seem to assume you do as well based off my limited correspondence we have each week. So Let me first say this, I really love it here, so much in fact I wouldn't mind coming to school here and living here for a bit. There are so many cool things to do here and I know a lot of people now to whom I have grown close to, having been so condensed in our areas these last few months. It will be a sad change to not be able to get to know people as well because we are moving from one set of missionaries covering each ward to one set covering a stake. So we sometimes still go over to sister Bennett’s home to get haircuts or to have lunch with their family. We have been biking all day now. We cannot afford to waste time walking. I am so glad to have Elder Dawson as a companion because physically he is able to keep up and do all this work still. It is a blessing to have bodies that work and function so that we can push God's work forward through our actions as well as our words. So today we actually went golfing in the morning! There is a course right at the top of the hill in our area and Elder Dawson and I, our landlord brother Baker, and the Spanish missionaries went and we had a blast! We did 9 holes and I actually didn't do too bad! I still have it in me Dad! I shot a 43 out of a 36 par course and got the lowest score out of all of us! That was enjoyable. We will have to go back here one day Dad and Greg! Yeah so moral of this first paragraph is that I will be coming back lots to this area! I love it here and the people here have a special place in my heart.

One family that I really love is the Locke family. Brother and Sister Locke are so cool and I love them so much! They love to do cool things and we are going over there today in a bit to play board games. Sister Locke is from Germany, and her and her mother are the only members in their family. Kind of reminded me of you mom! They are Primary workers and have struggled in the past with coming to church, which at one point they were considered to be less active. But Their middle daughter has such a strong, valiant spirit about her she pushed and pushed her father to be baptized, and so they all took the lessons from the missionaries and Brother Locke got to baptize his wife, and two of his daughters! They are strong in the gospel now but as we know, every family has their trials. We got to know them a little at church but Sister Locke wanted us to come by again because her mother was coming to visit from Germany for a few weeks, and they were stressed and frustrated with their oldest daughter who was getting married, graduating and having a birthday all in one week, which happened to be the same week Sister Locke's mother came to town. So they invited us to escape from their hectic life and feel the Spirit. We also helped their mother because she was struggling back in Germany with living the gospel. So we have gone over there weekly and taught lessons to their oldest daughter and their mother and have struck up a really awesome friendship. I have been given opportunities to play guitar and sing for them some of the gospel songs I wrote on my mission. They really appreciated that because it is a good way to bring the Spirit into the room. I've been learning more hymns now and playing those for some dinner messages and things. The guitar I bought here is really crappy though and sucks to play. I love the Locke family and they have become really good friends since the time I came into this area in February. I hope to stay here a lot longer. This is a really awesome stake and we have a lot of good things going here. We have started last week with our scripture study class about the Book of Mormon. It’s really fun and I hope to be an institute teacher of seminary teacher one day. I have really come to like teaching the gospel and find my joy in that! I have come to love and reverence the scripture and find excitement explaining and teaching others about its wonderful influence and possibility of power in their lives. We also got permission from our Stake President and our bishops to start a Missionary Mentor Program. This is where we have a priest age young man preparing or wavering from a mission to spend the weekend with us. We have Ethan Salazar from the 5th ward come with us this last weekend. We had him from Friday at 6 to Sunday at 4. It was the best thing ever! It is so cool to mentor and prepare these young men who just like me struggled before a mission with a lot of things. We had a lot of fun! He got to experience very many aspects of missionary life. He went to bed at the same time and woke up, studied, and left the apartment and biked all day with us in the hot sun! oh yeah by the way it has been over a 100 degrees here for like two weeks straight and still coming strong! It is so hot and I am so gross all of the time. My shirts and pants are just soaking wet all day and I have to carry a bottle of water everywhere I go. I am kind of getting used to it now though. I will be celebrating Canada Day and Independence Day this week! That will be fun!

Well I hope you have a great week! Talk to you next! 

Love Elder Patterson


Elder McRae (left)  leaving for his new area, and Elder Dawson and I


Franziska Pulga, Sister Locke's mother



The new mission map, (magna and hunter are our area now, and the new boundaries are what it will be later this week) 



June 1, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

 So this last week I have made some purchases and have also received those packages. It was a crazy week and felt like forever since we didn't really get a P-day. But I am very happy today because we are going over to the Turnbulls where the other two sets of missionaries live and we will have a free lunch and water fight because it is 87 degrees today which is about 31 degrees Celsius. It has gotten really hot here and is supposed to get into the 90's soon. Ugh it’s pretty dry and hot. Thank you for all the work you do for me, for your thoughts and prayers. I really need them and have been receiving the strength and help I need every day. There were a couple of very hard days this last week, I am still struggling with sleep and when I am tired, sick, hungry, frustrated, stressed, it makes it so much easier to falter and to give into weaknesses. I am being tested a lot here because I am always hungry, tired, stressed, and so on. haha I take that as a compliment. I am praying and hoping I get to stay here in this area for a long time. We are starting a scripture study class and I based the curriculum on the Book of Mormon stories. Here is the study I came up with: 

Scripture study class: Book of Mormon Stories (45 minutes @ Bennetts)

Lesson 1: introduction to the Book of Mormon (Introduction p, d'uh)

Lesson 2: Nephi obtains the brass plates, bound by brothers and is freed by faith (1 Nephi 3-4; 7:6-21)

Lesson 3: Lehi’s vision of the tree of life, Nephi interprets his father’s dream (1 Nephi 8; 15:21-36)

Lesson 4: the liahona, Nephi’s bow breaks, building the ship and traveling to the promised land (1 Nephi 16:10, 26-29; 16:17-32; 17-18)

Lesson 5: sherem demands a sign, Enos prays for forgiveness (Jacob 7-1-23; Enos 1:1-18)

Lesson 6: sermon of king Benjamin (Mosiah 2-5)

Lesson 7: abinadi preaches to king Noah, alma escapes and teaches in private, Gideon's pursuit and king Noah's death by fire (Mosiah 12-16; 17-18; 19)

Lesson 8: conversion of alma the younger, sons of Mosiah leave for missions (Mosiah 27; 28:1-9)

Lesson 9: Alma and amulek preach in amonihah (Alma 8-14)

Lesson 10: Ammon’s service and conversion of king Lamoni and his father (Alma 17-23)

Lesson 11: anti Nephi Lehi’s bury their weapons of war, Ammon glories in the lord (Alma 24,26)

Lesson 12: captain Moroni overcomes zerehemnah, title of Liberty, two thousand stripling warriors (Alma 44,46,53,56-57)

Lesson 13: Nephi and Lehi are freed from prison by the power of God, Nephi exposes the murder of the chief judge (Helaman 5,8-9)

Lesson 14: Samuel the lamanite, signs of Christ's birth and death, Christ's ministry (Helaman 13-16; 3 Nephi 1:15-21; 3 Nephi 8:5-23; 3 Nephi 11-28)

Lesson 15: jaredites, coriantumer see the destruction of his people (Ether 1-3,6)

Lesson 16: moronis teachings and exhortations, he bids farewell (Moroni 4,5,6,7,10)


So yeah naturally I am excited to start this! We will extend invitations to those not coming to church for various reasons, those preparing for missions, and those we feel could use help understanding the scriptures. We are going to use this as a finding activity where members and those we are working with may invite others to come join, hopefully. haha We have had much success when we started this transfer and now there is only few people left who are really going to hit the goals we set with them. L. Rodriguez has fallen off date because of him kind of dropping off the map. He came to church yesterday with his family and so many people also came! We had gone to go visit people on Saturday and had five lessons that night and all who we invited came to church! We had been having troubles getting people out to church so a while back we set a goal of 7 returning members to church and 5 lessons to less active members and we had 9 come to church and we had 9 lessons! This week was sweet! We just are lacking in our finding, so we are trying to find some people through this class we will be holding at the Bennett’s. So yeah I love the Bennett’s. Their home feels like home, it is so weird and they treat the missionaries like royalty, well sister Bennett does. haha she makes us food and goodies and helps us with all these things we try to do in their ward. She is the Relief Society President and her husband is our Ward Mission Leader. So we spend some time there correlating and stuff. Oh and mom, Swamp Coolers are good in dry climates, and is cheaper but there is a lot of upkeep and maintenance that goes into them. Ummm we have finally been able to help this guy who is living with M. Peterson (one of our investigators) with his back yard and his projects around the home. Before he wouldn't even be in the same room as us. He invited us to a BBQ this last Saturday and he made stuffed burgers! My burger had mac and cheese in it! It was so good! We shared a message and he kind of walked away while we did so, but he is coming slowly. It is a very difficult situation. He is a return missionary and had kind of went south since that happened, but his girlfriend is an investigator we work with every week and she makes great progress and wants to be baptized and married in the temple but she can't progress until they get married. And they won’t because He is not ready to be back in church. It sucks for her but we still won’t give up on them because we love them! One of his daughters taught me how to do a cartwheel. They are all very good at dancing and gymnastics and stuff.  That is all this week! Thank you for all that you do back home for me again. This music is great and I am listening to it right now! I love you all! 


Love Elder Patterson