The Lord teaches us principles

Hello loved ones!

I hope you all had a great week! I am jealous of the Kenny family and their reunion! I wish I was there with you guys, but it sounds like you are all having a BLAST!!!

Okay, so just a few things:

1. Last Tuesday, I got a call from the Senior Sister missionary Hermana Coleman from the mission office. In her sweet grandma voice she said something very poisenous. 

¨Hi Hermana Patterson! I am just calling to tell you that you have an appointment with President Wilkinson for your final interview on August 18th at 2 p.m¨ WHAT!?!?!?!

2. Our buddy Oscar (pictured below) is leaving on his mission this week. He is a really cool cat. He was just baptized a year ago, and has been preparing for his mission since. His entire family is CATHOLIC CATHOLIC CATHOLIC and, you know, super against the church, but he comes every week on his own, and now is leaving for two years to serve the Lord in the Domincan Republic. He already is an AWESOME missionary. He has been helping us out with his friend and our investigator, Gabby (mentioned in previous emails and also pictured below).  Because his family is not excited the ward got together and had a great Farewell party for his friends and family members and not members. We even made him a stinkin´ sweet agenda for his first change in the mission field. Of coarse, its the sweetest agenda Ive ever made. We had a good time making it.

3. Gretel. I have a special place in my heart for Gretel. I don´t think I have talked about her in these last few weeks, so I will share her story now. A few weeks ago, Hermana Coburn and I were walking down a street that we walk down about 5 times a day, but this time a street I had never noticed before caught my attention. I looked very nice with houses that had cute little gardens outside. We were walking in a hurry, but we made mental notes to return to what we would later refer to as the ¨little old grandmas street¨ (on account of how cute little old grandmas have nice houses and cute gardens). The next day we had a lesson with a member present and then we were planning to go contact on that street. The member had told us that she would only be able to join us for the one appointment, but when the appointment ended, she said she could accompany us for a little more time. She tried to explain that we would be just knocking doors, and we doubted she would take us up on it, but suprisingly she did. We were super close to the ¨grandmas¨ street, so we crossed to road and started trying to see where the spirit was leading us. I became very suprised to realize that the street was not actually as nice as I remembered. It just had ONE house that was sweet and had a cute garden outside, when I thought there had been various. Well we decided to ¨upe¨ and see what happened. Gretel came out. We explain that we are missionaries for the church and we are here to share a message about Jesus Christ. She invites us in. We then go on to have an EXCELLENT 10 pts (How to begin teaching) lesson using my favorite video and long story story short, she begins crying telling us that she has been praying for God to send someone to help her come closer to him and accepts a baptismal date. Woooo!
So since that first day, its been a little hard to see Gretel, because come to find out, she is almost never at home. She is always on the run. But POR FIN this week we got to have, not one, but TWO lessons in with her! She was excited to come to church. Yesterday (sunday) morning I was a little worried because I told her we would stop by on the way to church to bring her with us. When we were calling her in the morning she wasn´t answering her phone (which, anyone who has served a mission can tell you isn´t a good sign) but we decided to go anyway. Usually, one of two things happen : 1- They make up some excuse in the doorway about how something came up or how they are sick out of the blue and dont come or 2- they are barely waking up and you have to wait about 30 minutes as they run around like crazy people trying to get ready for church. But as we get to the door, her husband is on his way out to a baseball game he is playing in (side note, they have baseball in costa rica? who knew?) and says she is on her way down. She was totally ready and excited for church. Also she loved it. With gretel I feel a special connection with her. I feel like she might have been one of the people I promised in the pre-earth life that I would find and bring to the gospel. I LOVE HER!

4.Yogeilan- She is still just SO great. I love her so stinkin much. This week was kind of hard for her because she had to change where she was living, and got in an ugly fight with some of her sisters (other investigators), but she has decided SI O SI that she will be baptized on the 9th!! When she told us that she started to cry she was so excited! AAAAH! She is the best! We are so excited for her! Basically we feel like she is our best friend. We laugh and cry and feel the spirit in her grummy gambeling place. Its, hysterical. Also, she has the hots for Said, which basically just makes our lives complete. I would LOVE if two of our converts got together.... okay.... so not important.... 

5. I love studying about the restoration, because its something I just SO didn´t understand before my mission. Like, AT ALL. And now my testimoney of it is so strong and I get so excited helping people understand it. My companion gave me this talk this talk and it just BLEW ME AWAY. Enjoy ;)

6. I thought I would let you know a good spiritual experience I had last week. In our district meeting Elder Hernandez talked about using inspired questions inspired questions, which is something i LOOOOOOOOVE. When it came time for the practice he decided that rather than doing a practice with a missionary pretending to be an investigator, that we would use inspired questions to get to know the missionary better and try and teach a principle according to the missionaries needs. I won´t lie. I was very skeptical to begin. We started first and shared something with Elder Hernandez and Elder Reed and I had thought that the practice was good. But then came their time to use inspired questions on us. It started out normal, talking about what we had learned on our missions and what hoped out of life. At some point the topic changed to Christlike attributes and both Hermana Coburn and I shared how the attributes that I feel like are my weaknesses are her stregths, and vis-versa.  To be honest, I can´t even remember what the inspired question was, but the spirit hit me so strong that it brought tears to my eyes.  The year before my mission was the hardest year of my life. I cried a lot and spent a lot of time miserable. But in that district meeting the spirit touched me and let me know that everything I went through that year was necessary and that it taught me how to become more like christ. Although I am no where near close, I learned so much that I would NEVER had been able to learn in any other way. My heart swelled with gratitude as I learned once again that my Heavenly Father knows me better that I know myself. He knows what I need to learn for my future and even when I am passing through hard times, its necessary for my own salvation.

7. Something I love that President Wilkinson has taught me recently is that the Lord wants us to learn principles so that we make right choice. Likewise, we should teach others (sisters in our zone, our companions, investigators, future or current children) correct principles and let them govern themselves. We can not force anyone to do anything.

I am excited to see this next week! I know its going to fly by! Tomorrow we have Leadership Council, and I will be giving my final testimony to many of my peers and favorite people. Then, Thursday we have another Zone meeting and before I know it I will be back at this computer!

Love you guys! Have a good week! 

Hermana Patterson