As For Me And My House, We Will Serve The LORD!: 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