As For Me And My House, We Will Serve The LORD!: November 3, 2015

Dear My Family and Friends,

It has been a long, long, long week. It has for some reason been an eternity for me. My companion however has said it has just flown by. It is weird how time can be perceived so differently even by two companions who spend every hour together. It is so difficult to travel back to the city from here. We had set up and prepared many to be baptized in my last area, in Taylorsville, and have gotten permission to attend the baptisms. We had a hard time finding someone to drive out 45 minutes each way to take us to events there. We made it to the Baptism of Sean McBride on Halloween night. That was awesome. We invited the Priest who helped us in our lessons with him to baptize him. Sean's foot kept popping up, so on the third time he had to step on his toes and dunk him. It was a great experience and I had the opportunity to bear my testimony of the restoration. It was a powerful event and the Spirit filled the church.

Someone from my last area gave a gift to the ward mission leader in that ward that Sean was in for me. They remained anonymous, and so our ward mission leader gave me the two brand white shirts these wonderful people had given to me. The gesture alone was very humbling as I have been wearing through my shirts and am in desperate need of new ones.

I went on exchanges this week. I went to Elder Hunt's area who has been out for about the same amount of time as me. We got to talk a lot and found out we both like all the same music. We also have found out that we have both struggled with similar things throughout our missions and even at the same time. We both had a lot of trials surface at our year mark and struggled with them. We talked about it and both were edified by our time we got to serve together. We had a couple of very powerful lessons that evening and went to a trunk or treat and got a lot of chocolate.

We have been doing a lot of family history work with some of the families we are working with. It is so awesome to see the light in their eyes as they discover and see their ancestors connect throughout the generations of time back to their current families. It is really cool to help them take these names to the temple.

I have connected with Elder Dawson's family here. We had dinner with his aunt, Dolly Soulè. They are absolutely wonderful! They made us some delicious Chicken Spaghetti from the south. Haha It felt cool to get to know them more. She has a wonderful family that we got to meet.

I want to invite you to do something. You should buy the album called: "The Work: A Nashville Tribute to Missionaries" and listen to is the whole way through. It is really good and caused me to great reflection. I love you all and thank you for your prayers. I can feel them working on me. Have a wonderful week!

Love Elder Patterson