"Miracles are Happening"...Presidente Lundgren

Hey Family!!!

So love you all. Thanks for the emails and updates this week. I hope my update is worth while. I am typing from Jardim Inga. We played soccer this morning with the other elders from our ward and some of the youngmen and decided to save time and write from here. I don´t have my planner or anything to remind me what I did this week. So I am flying solely on my memory and all the days blend together here so I will try my best to share a few experiences from this week.

First off, our seminary this week we taught about Finding Faith in Christ and we showed that 30 minute movie that shows Christs life and how we need to have faith in him. It was pretty good. Faith is something so basic but so important. It is really awesome how I have seen my own faith grow here on the mission every day as well as those we teach, members, and recent converts. 

This week E. Fernandes and I decided to fast because this area is having lots of difficulties with baptisms and people that are truly interested. So we fasted for our 13 year old investigator because she has a baptismal date for this sunday and hasn´t prayed for us outloud yet. She is our JW´s. It has been amazing to see how she has developed and found a testimony for herself. But she is real nervous about baptism and unsure. We are going to spend lots of time this week helping her feel ready. We visited her friday, the day of our fast, and finally after about 4 months of teaching her she prayed! She said a prayer! It was amazing. I knew in that moment that God had heard our prayers and cries for help. One thing I know for sure, is that the power of fasting is truly powerful. The other two missionaries in our house fasted this week as well and everything they were needing, was given to them. It has been wonderful to see the miracles all of us are experiencing here. 

We also fasted that we could find some new people to teach that will progress and listen to our message. Sure enough, we have been led by the Spírit to knock on the right doors and walk down the right roads. We have a few new investigators that are really cool! Two older couples, a woman, a man, and another family. Something that I have been trying super hard to do is listen to the Spirit and feel which gate we should knock or which road we should walk down. It has really increased my own work as I am relying more on the Spirit and working everyday with faith. 

Yesterday was full of spiritual experiences. During our doctrine principles class the teacher asked a few of us to bear testimony on the first vision and it was awesome! When I got up there to bear my testimony I felt the spirit so strongly and bore simple testimony that was from the heart. As I was speaking I could feel that my words were true as the Spirit confirmed it to me. I also told the story about how I gained a testimony of Joseph Smith and the First vision. It happened in 9th grade seminary when we learned about the First Vision. I don´t remember everything that happened that day but I remember when I read Josephs story for the first time the Spirit filled my soul and I knew that Joseph saw God and Jesus Christ. The words ``This is my beloved son, hear him´´ are so powerful and it always touches my heart. But also, we were teaching Priscila yesterday night and she had questions about baptisms for the dead. As we taught her about baptisms for the dead and I as I bore my own testimony of it, I knew that what we were teaching was true. I was able to tell her a little about my experiences before the mission as I spent lots of time in the temple. She loved it as well. Super cool to teach her.

Another thing that is really special that we are doing is that every sunday night us 4 elders here in Luziania are visiting an old women of the ward. She is going through cancer treatment and can´t leave the house. She loves the missionaries and we always sing to her. She loves it, even though we don´t sing that good. I love visiting her because I can truly feel Gods love being expressed to her through us. Its a wonderful experience. 

The only other cool thing that I have to say this week is that I made pasteis. Brasileiro food that is super good. I almost made omelets for E. Fernandes and they turned out super good. I am like a master cook here. I hope you all know I am eating way good. I shop smart, eat healthy, and eat different things everyday. I payed lots of attention mother growing up! haha :) 

Last little spiritual note before I sign off. As I have said before President Lundgren´s best friend just happens to be Elder Bednar, the apostle, and he was chatting with him a few weeks ago and E. Bednar is really aware of our mission. He told P. Lundgren that every single missionary in this mission promised Heavenly Father that we would be here in this mission in the pre-existence. I thought it was soooo cool! I don´t remember me promising that, but I know for sure I am in the right place. I love you all! Stay strong always! Have a good week.

com amor, Elder Patterson :)

Newsie letter

COMING HOME SOAKING WET.

His Kitchen area.

The Bathroom.  Look how clean. :)

His bed on the left. 

So first thing is first, my little package arrived this week as well as some letters from Sister Doughman. Send her my love, she is too great. But that package was awesome. I have already eaten almost all the candy and stuff that was in it. I have had a American sweet tooth lately. Usually I save some of the candy to last a while, but not this time. :) So thanks a ton for the package, I loved it a lot. Its always great to get something from home.

This week was really great. Last Monday I taught a family night to Liley and her 3 daughters and it was super good for me. I myself learned so much and am grateful that I have the opportunity to teach people the doctrines of Christ. I taught on how our personal problems and challenges of this life can be made easier through 4 things that Elder Scott taught 2 conferences ago. I used the talk ``make the exercise of your faith a priority.´´ In his talk he talks about prayer, scripture study, family home evening, and the temple. It was a very spiritual night with them and I know the importance of these things in our lives. 

Something funny this week that I just remembered is that I taught Elder Fernandes how to throw rocks... No one, and I mean no one from south american knows how to use their hands, throw a ball, or catch. haha! They are good with their feet, but when it comes to hands, its so sad. I felt like dad in the backyard as I was teaching him how to throw ``throw from the top! Extend your elbow, throw, and step through it!!!!´´ hahaha. It was good fun :)

And mom, you asked about seminary. I only didn´t teach last week because of the family night we had, but this week we taught on obedience. It was way awesome and I love teaching people. I taught about what the word Obedience means. It was super humbling to learn before hand during my preparations that obedience means doing the will of our Heavenly Father. I remembered as well that Christ was literally the perfect example in all things and remembered that he said 3 times during the Atonement ``if thou be willing, let this cup pass. But not my will, but thine be done.´´ It really made me think about how I can be doing the ``will of the Father´´ better in my life. And I super love the scripture in Mosiah 2:41 that says we are happy when we keep the commandments of God and are blessed spiritually as well as temporally when we do those things. Sooo cool. 

Saturday we did a service project that was exhausting. At a members house we cleaned out their backyard, if you can even call it that. It was just a jungle and we had a machette and a sickle to chop everything down. It was so hard and everyone was sore after. The backyard was like a jungle and the weeds were about 12-14 feet tall. We didn´t even finish, but just took a dent out of it. We will have to finish sometime this transfer. I will try and send pictures for you all! ha :)

Sunday was awesome because I helped prepare the sacrament and we had some investigators in church! One of which is our little 13 year old JW. She is practically mormon now and the young women of the ward really accepted her and she has tons of friends in the church now. It made me so happy to see. We are still working on baptism with her and her mom was baptized 5 months ago and is helping her as well. Its probably the best situation we have as far as baptisms go.

So something else that I have been thinking about a lot this week is about what Bishop Parker, Bro. Beottcher, and Bro. Day always emphasize. The 4 T´s:  Time, Talent, Treasure, and Temple. They are such inspired men and I know that they are teaching 4 things that will make us all happier in life and make our testimonies grow. These 4 T´s are so important and as I have seen members here in Brasil that spend their time in a worthy cause and give all their talents and treasure to Lord, they are truly happy. They know God and love him. They have strong family relationships and strong testimonies of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. They don´t retreat when life throws in a challenge or two, but press onward with faith. It is truly inspiring. But I have also seen the other side of it. The families that don´t implement these 4 T´s. Those families (of the church even) have a lack of trust, faith, love of Christ, and are weak in their own testimonies. I truly hope that everyone back home takes the advice of our priesthood leaders and tries better to do these 4 T´s that are so basic, but yet so powerful and important. 

I myself am forever grateful for these 2 short years that I have to serve my Father in Heaven and my Savior. I know that I am not the best missionary ever, but I am trying my best to do the things the Lord asks. I have really improved in my companionship as well this week. I have tried to really express Christlike love for him and the other missionaries I am with and now I am just happy as a clam here! I hope you all know that I have a testimony of this church. It is the only true church on the face of the earth. I KNOW it is true. I talk with people from all different types of churches everyday and we are the only church that has all the truths of the gospel! Love you all and I pray for you all always :) Until next week! 

com amor, Elder Patterson

Ew, this Lan House has purple walls...

Lan house is what these computer cafes are called... Its really weird in here but the interent is working just fine so that is really cool! Sounds like everything is going good back home with everyone. That makes me happy. This week was just another week in the life of a missionary. I don´t really have all that exciting news this week because it was just a normal week it seemed like. But I will try to make it interesting.

Today we woke up early and went to Valparaíso to play soccer with our zone. Need less to say I am already sore. We don´t run all that much here so my legs will be really sore. But it was super fun to play some soccer with everyone today.

As far as this week goes we spent a lot of time introducing our new companions to the area and all the members and less actives here. One cool thing that happened is that we get a reference from a member and its a family of 5. They aren´t married but super receptive and love our lessons. We are going to try and see what they think about getting married and baptized here in the next month ;) hehe. 

Something really cool is that the bishop invited us to attend a family night that he had this week and he invited over a family that aren´t members and a less active lady that brought her daughter and her daughters friends that aren´t members. The family night was super spiritual and nice. They all loved it. We visited the little family this week and taught the restoration and marked baptismal dates with them for this up coming month! We are pretty excited about that because markng baptismal dates here has been pretty hard these past few transfers. 

We also marked another baptismal date for our little 13 year old (mom is a recent convert). She gets super nervous talking about baptism but I feel like she will actually be baptized this time. So that would be really awesome.

The struggle here is getting people to go to church. Like I said before its like trying to get someone from santa clara to go to hurricane for church. Its hard enough trying to get someone to go, but once they say yeah I will go, they find out where our church is and are like ``maybe next week.´´ We can´t even pass by peoples houses to get them to go because then we would miss the bus and miss church ourselves! ha. So its definitely a challenge here but we are trying our best. We knock on a lot of houses that have cars :) hehe.

Saturday was very hard because of first 6 appointments couldn´t talk with us or weren´t home. We didn´t give up though and decided to visit our recent convert, Priscila. We ended up teaching her and her sister. Her sister listened to a few of our lessons but never really said much. Turns out, she is almost done reading the Book of Mormon! She doesn´t understand it much and she finally asked us lots of questions about it and some of the sotries it has. We invited her to baptism and accepted. She has a problem with the law of chastity and will have to be married first to be baptized, but her sister is really helping her out. Its so cool. 

Tonight I will be teaching Liley and her daughters a family night and I am super excited for it! I will teach about this earth life, our problems and challenges we have here, and how these things can become easier through the scriptures, prayer, temple, and family nights. I am really excited for it. :) Sorry this week wasn´t full of that much exciting news. It went by really fast. And sorry I haven´t sent many pictures lately, I have been lazy about that... But next week for sure! 

Love you all, have a good week!

com amor, Elder Patterson

Conference and Blessings

So I don´t even know where to start this week with this email... Things this week were super rushed and we had so much going on. Something every day. But first I will tell you about the transfers. I am still here in Luziânia with a new companion. His name is Elder Fernandes (brasileiro). He just finished his training and has 3 months on the mission. I am the senior comp. Which is the worst because I was trying to fly under the radar during my mission. I don´t like having the cell phone! haha. It was the best 8 months ever to give up a cell phone :) ha. But yeah, he is cool. This transfer only has 5 weeks in it so it will be another really quick transfer. Elder Medina and I are the ones that stayed in our house. His comp is an american, E. Nordfelt or something like that. Should be a good transfer!

So I will start out by talking about conference. Conference was super good as always. It wasn´t my favorite because we watched everyhing in portugues... All us americans and brasilians that speak english were upset about it. But such is life. Its not that we don´t understand, but the translators are just so monotone and have no emotion! Its the worst. No comparison to hearing the actual voices of the prophet and the apostles. But yeah, for sure my favorite talk was E. Hollands. He is the man and even through a translator I could feel the power of his words. The shout out he gave to snow canyon made cry of happiness! What a powerful man. My subject line this week is also a verse that I love a lot that I thought of during his talk. Thought you all would like it. 

We watched the conference in Gama. Its about an hour and a half away from here. It was super fun because there were a lot of missionaries there. I watched it in a conference room of the church because it was a lot more relaxed and we had a desk to take notes. It was a good two days of relaxed, spiritual enlightenment. ha.

So something else that happened this week that was super cool was a community lunch at our house! ha. When the president came a few weeks ago we got him to approve it because we have a backyard/patio thing that has a sink and a bathroom outside. We got it approved and had all the members of Luziania there. It was super fun but also super weird to have members at our house. Even if they didn´t actually go inside, it was weird to have them there. But it was awesome and we shared a spiritual message with all of them at the end of it. Super fun ´´family night´´ we had. 

A lesson that we had this week that I will tell real quick was super awesome. So last week we met this dude and taught him the restoration. We gave him a book of mormon and he was super receptive. When we went back this week he invited us into his man cave area that had a huge table and a kitchen area to make food. He was there with two other guys and we started teaching all of them. Turns out they are all super knowledgeable when it comes to the scriptures and we were truly teaching with the spirit. The guy we taught the first time was even teaching his two friends about the restoration and bearing testimony of the book of mormon! Super cool. At the end of the lesson we invited his friends had left but I invited him to baptism and he said ``that is a question I had. I want to receive the Holy Ghost and be baptized by someone that has this authority. Who in your church has this authority?`` We just smiled and told him that we were set apart as missionaries and that we have this power and authority of the priesthood. He just smiled happily :) He is probably the investigator that is progressing the most right now. He even marked up his book of mormon like crazy that we left him and is loving it. I just hope things go good next lesson :)

But yeah, this week was super cool. Loved it a lot. Gave lots of priesthood blessings as well. Such a humbling experience to give someone a blessing. I can feel the love Christ has for them during the blessing and I am so thankful that I can be an instrument in the hands of the Lord during this time. I hope you all are good and hope this week is great for all of you! Thanks for everything my family and friends! Until next week!

com amor, Elder Patterson

MARCH 30 2015

Heyoo! so another week has come and gone and it seemed like it went by super fast. As well as this transfer! This is the last week of the transfer and who knows what will happen next week... I don´t know if I´ll stay here or not. Most likely I will but there is also a few chances of a few other places I could go. To be honest I am fine with whatever because I know how inspired the transfers are. President Lundgren as dad would say ``is the man.´´ ha! :)

So first thing I want to do is explain about my area a little more and how awesome it is for missionaries. Luziânia is gigante and we spend each day of the week working in different areas of the city. We have lunch with the same 6 people every week because Luziânia only has 6 families that are members (and half of the families are part member families). We ride the bus almost everyday and let me just say that I don´t feel like I am lacking rollercoaster rides in my life! But yeah, we live in the very center of Luziânia called Centro. If you google pictures of Luziana Shopping you´ll probably see a big building and I live right next to it. 

The reason that this area is so great is that every missionary learns about the importance of the family. Satan is attacking the family more than ever in this world and it goes to show here. Almost everyone we talk with has family problems of some sort. I personally here, have grown to love you all, my own family, even more than ever. I am forever grateful that we are sealed in the temple and that we are all members of this wonderful church. Something that sticks in my mind is the saying mom has on the wall that says House: A home filled with love. I am glad our house is a home that is filled with love. Here we teach people that don´t know what love is and it is so sad, but it is amazing to see them change as they come to develop a relationship with their savior and recognize the love he has for every single one of us. 

For example, we are teaching a 22 year old girl that lives with her boyfriend and their son. He doesn´t treat her well at all and is a free loader. It is super sad to see. But as we are teaching her about Christlike love and repentance, she is improving in her life little by little. 

Some recent converts here also have lots of problems within there own home. The mom and dad were baptized but only one of them can go to church or leave the house at a time because they live with their son and his wife that are super into drugs.  That family has lots of problems but even in the short time I have been here I have seen how a simple lesson on Love can change everything. They told their son that they loved him and relations with him improved dramatically after 3 simple words ``we love you.´´ 

Even this week I was studying about Ammon in the Book of Mormon. He showed an immense amount of love for king lamoni(name in portugues, forgot if it is the same in english or not...) and defended his flocks. Because of that, king lamoni was converted as well as his household. Later on in the story Ammon and Lamoni were going to a different city and met the dad of Lamoni and the king of all the land. The dad of Lamoni was furious that his son was with a Nephite and tried to kill him, but Ammon out of the love for his friend, smote the arm Lamonis dad. This too resulted in him being converted with many other people. The power of love is real people.

I am so thankful that I am here in Luziânia because I get to help people every day and I get to strengthen broken families. I am so thankful for the family that I have. I am thankful that we have the gospel and that it is blessing us so much. A house filled with love is a house filled with Christ. When we have Christ with us in our homes we have love for everyone. I just want to say to all of you that I love each and everyone of you, Dad, Mother, Lauren, and Cody. Not to mention my grandmas, uncles, aunts, cousins, and everyone else that I consider my family. I hope you all enjoy conference this week and hope you watch every session because what the prophets have to say is very important for us. Have a good week to all of you! I am praying for you all every day and thanking my Heavenly Father I have the support of the best family in the world :)

com amor, Elder Patterson.