Taylor Patterson - Reno, NV Mission

Hey everyone!!! This week was amazing. We had a pretty cool miracle happen. So we are teaching this guy named Jared here in Elko, he doesn't really believe in God but he is still interested in religion. His mom was visiting him as we taught the plan of Salvation and come to find out she is from O'Fallon Illinois!!! So I had the opportunity to send a referral back to my home ward. I think that's pretty amazing! Also another cool thing occurred this week, we are teaching a less active family, and my companion and I thought it would be good to extend a baptismal invitation to the girls who were 10 and 14 years old. They accepted the invitation and are getting baptized this month!!! It is super awesome. So we now have 3 people on date for the month of November! We also had a ward festival here in Elko and almost everyone we were teaching showed up! We had like 8 non-members there. And for sacrament the next day 6 of them attended it was pretty sweet!!! The work here ...

Hey everyone, This week was crazy busy! So much happened in such little time. On Tuesday I had to say bye to such an awesome missionary, Elder Monks. He completed his 2 year mission and man he left a good impact on me. Also on Tuesday I had to say bye to the Walker family who made Ely feel like home they are super awesome! I will definitely miss them. Wednesday we drove to Elko for transfers with the other Elders from Ely. Halfway there we got a phone call from our driving coordinator and he told my companion he had to let me drive since he went over 90 mph and that's the one main thing you can't do or your lose your driving privileges. So I had to drive on a gravel road in the mountains it was a fun experience. Then when we got to Elko we did transfers and I got my new companion Elder Kulikowski he is super nice, he has been out for 6 weeks and I already know he will make a great missionary. Since I'm senior companion I get to drive everywhere and it is AWESOME lol. ...

Hey everyone! This week was pretty exciting, I got a phone call Friday night that I'll be going to Elko to train a missionary! I'm super pumped. One because I get to train and two because I'll have a Walmart and I missed cheaper groceries, however, I will definitely miss the people here in Ely.  Other than transfer calls nothing to special is going on here in Ely. An 8 year old got baptized and it counted toward the missions convert list because she is a foster child, so that is sweet! Her foster parents are awesome. The temperature in Ely is so weird it drops to single digits at night and jumps to 60 degrees during the day it honestly makes NO sense, other than the fact it is the desert.  Also one of my good friends Logan made it to state for golf and that honestly made my week so after I heard that I went out and played golf today for my p-day and it was super fun.  My spiritual thought this week is from Elder Peter Johnson's General Conference talk. He...

Hey Everyone!! Wow I can not believe I have left home over 3 months ago!! So much has happened in my life and other people's lives in this long but short time period!  This week was pretty good, General Conference was awesome. You get spoiled at members homes when you go over for General Conference because they give so much food and snacks I loved it. All the talks given were super good I enjoyed how the focused on Joy so much, because who doesn't enjoy joy!?  Nothing super exciting really happened this week, they tore a house down next to the one we live in and it now looks super different. Also I got to hang around some horses quite a bit and man I feel like a country boy and well if you know me well enough you know I am not a country boy at all so it's still weird. I actually had a super spiritual experience I want to share. So we went to this ladies place and she struggles with addiction while we were there she was super emotional and telling us how she want...