As For Me And My House, We Will Serve The LORD!: August 12, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

Wow this week went by! It just goes faster and faster! It doesn't help that today is Wednesday and it is our Pday. I am so messed up because of our schedule. Next week Pday is on Tuesday because we are having a Mission Tour again which is basically a big Zone Conference but with general authorities. Elder Ringwood and Elder Keetch are coming this time. Last year was Elder Arnold. President Palmer, our new Mission President is a really great man! I love him so much. I had an opportunity to talk with him this week and he helped me immensely with some things I was struggling with. He took such a weight off my shoulders. He is an inspired man and the way he handles himself and the work he is asked to do inspires me greatly. He is a great example to me of a righteous Priesthood bearer, just like all the other amazing examples given to me throughout my life, such as my father and brother and brothers in law. You all have blessed me so much in everything that you've done. The thing with missionary work is that it is so easy to be average. But "average is the enemy of excellence" said Elder Pearson this last General Conference in his talk entitled, "Stay by the Tree." I would give that a read again if you don't remember it. It is a great talk. AHH I love Conference talks now! I listen to them more than I listen to my church music! I would be listening to one right now if I weren't using my iPad to email. But back to the main topic; I just had found myself becoming complacent and being a little to relaxed when it came to certain mission rules which led to a frightening reality of who I was becoming. It is so easy to cheat ourselves by not being fully consecrated to the Lord's work. By not giving all you have and placing our fears, worries, pride, future pursuits, laziness on the alter of sacrifice, we will never be the tools that God needs to further His work and perform miracles. Average is the enemy of excellence. I love that. I remember a quote in my grade 12 Social Studies teacher's room that said, "Once you lick the lollipop of mediocrity, you'll suck forever." That has stuck with me because he has also helped me reach above and beyond what I thought my capabilities were.

This week has been better though. I know where I am going in this stake, I know many more people and we are now teaching 2 new people who will be baptized on the 5th of September, and we are teaching a few new returning members. We have a lot of support in this Stake and I think they are beginning to realize that we are here to work, because our ward mission leaders are doing a lot more for us than before and our Stake mission leaders are helping us a lot with pushing this work forward by helping us get a member to every lesson so we can fellowship these wonderful people into these wards. This stake is pretty old though in a few ways. The buildings here are really funky looking and have a bunch of locked doors that require keys (in our last area we had little FOB keys that you just had to hold up to a little black box on the door and then it would open) and there are a lot of established families here that are a lot older in most cases. Our last area had a lot of youth and a ginormous primary that they couldn't fit onto the stage for primary presentations. A lot of our work comes from the apartments and condos in our area, which we have several. We have probably over 1000 apartments from different complexes in our areas. We also have a Walmart and many other stores which is great because then we don't have to get permission to go to places because they are all in our area. But yeah there is always work to do here.

Yesterday we did some service for a new returning member family named the Rasbands. They have a huge yard and we spent a good chunk of our afternoon helping them. From all the time and service I gave in the Copperhill 5th ward, I really know how to landscape, I trenched and laid pipe and glued sprinkler systems twice a week this whole summer. So when the Rasbands told us they need some sprinkler heads moved and some trenches dug for another zone they were going to put in my eyes lit up and I went straight to work. I should've been Ryan's apprentice at Classic because I have now come to learn how to do a lot with sprinklers. I am sore though. It takes it out of you working all day in the heat and then afterwards changing into church clothes and biking 20 miles. I can't wait to come back here and serve in a different capacity than I can right now, and I will be able to take my bike on some of the mountain trails over here. I also finally got around to getting some thorn proof inner tubes. Gosh this place is riddled with things to pop tires. There seems to never be enough broken bottles and glass on the roads and these thorns here suck so much! I got some crazy thick tubes that have been working great so far.

That is all I have for this week! I do love you guys so much and look forward in a few transfers to skype you again. There is some things I am studying here that i can share with you if i finish on my mission. So if anyone happens to need to drive down to conference or for any other reason please let me know because we could exchange some things again.

Thank you for all the pictures and the update on your lives! Have a great week! :)

Love Elder Patterson

Service us and the Spanish Sisters did for an elderly lady in our ward. We cleaned here entire huge yard of weeds.