Fresh Prince of Bel Air

Hello Fam.

Well, I hope this email makes sense after thinking about school and what not. lol. But here we go...

The title of this email is what came to my mind Thursday morning. Why? because we had the priviledge to have Dalva come to our house. Now you are all wondering, who is Dalva? She is the maid at the missions presidents house :) And this week they sent her to our apartment to clean for us! It was awesome. On our way to lunch, we gave her the keys and she went to work. She was there for about 5 hours deep cleaning everything! Our apartment is actually very neat and tiddy, but she reorganized everything, mopped, and cleaned everything and anything. We felt so special :) 

So this week was a pretty hectic week if you ask me. Wednesday we had to go to Valparaíso to do some baptismal interviews. Elder Ribeiro and myself interviewed 4 people of a family. Mom, dad, and two kids. I did the two kids 15 years and 12 years old. It was super awesome to interview them and we were happy that they all passed.

We stayed the night in Valparaiso, woke up early and we did a trade in Jardim Ingá. I stayed with an elder that is super new on the mission, I think he has 2 months and it was good. I wasn´t very excited about it because I just wanted to be in my own area working, but once we got going it was awesome. We taught lots of people and had some good spiritual experiences together. And of course, we ended the day eating some pizza. That is like a tradition on the mission. If you do a trade or stay at another missionaries house, you eat pizza :) lol

A cool story from this week is that we went out and did some visits with the President of the Stake here. He lives in our ward and is super cool. He is a super young guy. I think he is 26 or 27. So we decided to go visit our family, Marcos and Rute and their kids. At first I was really worried they would hate us because we went there with ´´our pastor´´ but it was very awesome. We read with them 1 nephi 8. Lehi´s dream. It was super super spiritual and after Pres. Kleber asked lots of really good questions and told them a lot of things we weren´t able to say. For example, he told them to just follow their feelings and not worry about their family members disowning them because the Lord with bless them. But it was an awesome day with him. Hopefully this family will be able to choose the right, hold on to the iron rod, and make it to the tree of life and taste the fruit that is more delicious than all fruits out there.

Sunday was a day even more hectic... During our lunch we got calls from Elder Seth (he is assistant now, don´t know if I told you all that) and he passed to us the transfers. We of course are staying and we have known that for a few weeks now, but more than half of our zone will change tomorrow. We have 22 missionaries and 13 of them are being transferred. So he told us that some of the areas are being changed completely and gave us the assignment to go to their areas and make sure that 1. the houses were clean and 2. the area book was up to date. So it was very fun to see the faces of the missionaries when we passed by there areas unexpectedly. But it was way cool because we went by the area of Valparaíso right when they were having the baptisms, so we got to be there to watch the baptisms of the family we interviewed. They for sure loved to see us there supporting them even though it was by chance :) Good stuff for sure.

But now that is about it... Just a few funny things from this week.

I convinced Elder Ribeiro to nair his armpits with nair creme he found in our house. He walked around two days not being able to put his arms down! haha. I couldn´t stop laughing :) He also borrowed some of my hair gel, that really sticky got 2b glued stuff you know? And his hair is thinning, so in short, he started passing it in his hair dryer than needed and it pulled some hairs out. He yelled ´´i´m going to be bald now!´´ Soooo funny. Also, Elder Ribeiro had to break a $50 so we could catch the bus and he walked into the store and bought one piece of gum! another funny moment in the lives of us missionaries here in Ocidental. 

But anywho, this week marks the start of the new transfer! I am excited to stay here again in Ocidental, I honestly know I have lots of things to do here still before I leave. This transfer will only be 5 weeks so it´s going to pass even faster. I love you all. Just want to end with a quick thought from my personal study this morning. Abinadi said something I liked a lot in mosias 13:11. He was teaching the people and told them that he realized the people of king noah hadn´t written the commandments of God in there hearts and for this reason they were wicked. Much like us today and the world, we know the commandments of God. We know what is right and what isn´t. But if the commandments of God aren´t written in our hearts, we will not be true children of Christ and we will fall into transgression. I hope we all can truly write the commandments of God in our hearts so that we can be a blessed people, instead of wicked and cursed people. I love you all and know that Christ loves us. His atonement is real and heals me everyday. have a great week family and friends!!!

com amor, Elder Patterson

ps, wanted to send this picture last week because watching the conference reminded me of the tour we took at the conference center that one time. Cody, do you remember too? hahahahaha

Things Elder Ribeiro does (part l)...

Hello Family!

These weeks just pass by as fast as the night passes for a missionary (#whereismynaptime?).  So this week was cool because I was able to do a trade with Elder Frias. My very first trade I did was with him in Taquaralto and he only had like 3 months of mission and now he has 1 year and 10 months. It was way fun to go on a trade again with him. We talked about the things we talked about that day and it was basically The Walking Dead and soccer. So funny to see where we were at and where we now are. Love that Elder Frias from Peru. But with him we were able to set 3 baptismal dates for some of our investigators. The sad thing is that one of our dates won´t be baptized because his mom. His name is Lucas and he is super elect. He accepted us and talked with us the very first day. He is 16. We taught him the restoration and invited him to pray about it. The next day he has read and prayed. He was super excited to go to church but his mom said no because they are going to another church. The thing that makes me mad is the church they are going to is just the worst... Full of apostasy. All of the things you read in the bible about false prophets and churches in the last days is basically what this church has. But we aren´t going to give up on him. We will try and talk to her directly because she was always working :) so we´ll see how that goes.

Our other investigators Caylan, his older brother, and Jefferson are all progressing soo much. Caylan read what we told him to read in the book of mormon and wrote a summary about what he understood. It was incredible. And then we took the three of them to conference with us. They all loved it as well :) 

Saturday was a great day as well because we were able to take Marcos, Rute and there two kids to conference as well. They are such an awesome family and I can just see them being sealed in the temple. They just have to accept to follow the feelings and promptings of the holy ghost. Something that I loved this week was what Marcos said. He said: ``we love you guys, all the missionaries! when you are here we feel something different. You always leave the house with peace and joy. Like this week when you passed by, we were fighting and things weren´t going so well, but when you both left the house was just full of happiness!´´ And I am just thinking ´´get baptized already to have these feelings forever!`´ ha. We love them and hope that they can truly recognize the Holy Ghost.

As for the conference, I loved it. It was incredible. It was the only conference I watched completely in portugues and it was way cool. Normally I like to watch in english, but since it was my last conference on the mission (tear drop) I decided to go all out. I hope you all know how much I love the church. It is so incredibly true and perfect. The very first session was just amazing. The spirit was sooo strong in my heart and mind I couldn´t deny that everything we have and know is of God and His son Jesus Christ. I can´t even explain what talks were my favorite because they all were. Of course Elder Holland is the best. For sure my favorite apostle :) I was sooo happy when he talked last. Something that you all don´t know or realize is how that man speaks with his heart and the spirit. Because when the interpretors are translating his words they always have a hard time. Especially when he starts to bear testimony. The talks are written weeks before and they translate all before, but sometimes they say what is being revealed to them. so awesome. I also loved the priesthood session. Everything was about marraige and families :) That made for some funny conversations amongst the missionaries. But I am running out of time and I want to write a few of the funny things my companion does and says:

1- Tries to iron parts of his shirt he missed while wearing his shirt... When he yelled Ow! I laughed so hard.

2- Opens up the bible to leave a message. He opens up to a random page and then recites a scripture he has memorized. 

3- Every morning he says ´´I am sick!`´ and I ask what is wrong with him he replies ´´my eyes won´t open´´ 

4- falls asleep on the ground when we get home

5- Puts flour of soy in a milk shake because it has lots of protein. (it is actually pretty good)

These are just a few of the things he does that are hilarious daily. He is just a goof ball. But I love you all. Have a great week! 

com amor, Elder Patterson

I didn't even get an Easter egg

Well hello!

So just want to start out thanking mom for getting in contact with Sister Lundgren to pass me the news about Joe. It would have been a lot more difficult going through the week not knowing exactly what happened because everyone here asked us if we had heard about the missionaries. I was very very sad the day she called me but I know Joe is a champion and in the hands of the Lord. He for sure is receiving prayers from every missionary here in the Brasil Brasilia mission. <3

I don´t have much time, so I will make it quick today and this weeks update. We have truly seen lots of miracles this week and I am so thankful for the goodness of the Lord blessing us so much. But first I want to write about the trade that we did this week. This week I went back to Luziania to do a trade there with Elder Silva (argentino, I lived with him in Porto Nacional) and it was spectacular. It was funny because we decided to do a surprise trade and we went there early friday morning to surprise them and you better believe we surprised his companion. When we got there it was 9:30 and he was fast asleep in his bed... The look on his face was almost priceless. He is finishing his mission in 2 weeks and thinks he can just be disobedient and do nothing... That morning I had to use a lot of patience and not chew him out and call the president right then and there to have him interviewed and transfered... We just patiently let him get ready, get his things, and we did the trade. We are definitely helping him remember why he is here and I am sure he is going to finish his last 2 weeks of his mission better than he has been working.

But the trade was so gratifying. They told me that the lunch we were going to eat was at the house of Valeria and her family! I was soo happy because that is the lady I found that has 5 kids (4 of which were baptized). Walking to the house I asked elder silva ´´do you think they will remember me?´´ and when we they saw us the kids all yelled ´´patterson came back!!!!´´ Oh man, did that put a smile on my face :) I will send a picture to you all of the lunch we had. It sure was the task to get all those children on the couch to take a picture. lol

But here in our area we were able to find lots of new investigators and Jefferson is progressing so much. He didn´t go to church last week because he slept in and I was pretty upset and thought about cutting him, but we decided to give him one more week and this week he started reading and praying! It was amazing. We also found another young man Caylan, that we taught and he too is progressing. The best part is that the two of them went to church this week and loved it. They even made friends with some of the members and they both became friends themselves! And the best part was when Jefferson pointed to the Missionary Wall with pictures of baptisms and said ´´my picture is going right here!´´ That puts a smile on any missionaries face. Even after church the two of them came up and asked what day they can go out and do visits with us. :) So awesome. 

We also had another miracle. Besides those two, we had 5 other people that went to church :) We were super excited because that has been something hard for us these past few weeks. No one was going to church, but this week was different :) We even got a few references from a few members and we are super excited because the references are of family members of theirs :) and they always have the most potention to progress. 

But that is about it for the week. I felt like I celebrated easter week like a catholic because our apartment is right next to the biggest catholic church in the city and everyday during the week they did something ridiculous :) ha. But it was cool to see some of there traditions and beliefs. (besides the fact that everyone eats fish on friday... worst tradition ever.) I love each and everyone of you. Please have a good week and never stop praying for the missionaries!

com amor, Elder Patterson