Tawni

Hey what's up? Thanks for emailing me back it was really good to hear from you. I still love it up here in Escanaba even though today it was 95% humidity. But it's like that pretty much every day so i'm getting used to it a little bit. Today though it was really bad because we went golfing right after a big rain storm so it was extremely muggy on the grass. I do love the weather here because i've never seen so much rain and clouds in my life being an Arizona boy. We've even had a few tornado's since i've been here. I haven't seen one yet but i told Dane that my goal is to get some sweet pictures of one to send you all. Bonnie's baptism went great yesterday and i get to refer upon her the Holy Ghost this next Sunday. My ties are starting to wear out and get pretty nasty because of the humidity. I need to get more ties or find some that do well in this weather haha. Going golfing every p-day has made me really dark that i almost look like a black guy. I love being in the U.P. I'm freaking out because i'm gonna be 21 on Wednesday and i don't know what i'm gonna do haha. I've been out for almost two months and it seems like i've been out for not even a week. It's crazy how fast time flies on your mission. The people here are still great and i've learned so much in the past two months. I've learned more about the gospel in the past two months than i have in my whole life and it's been a great blessing. I told Dane that i would never trade the memories that i've had so far for anything. I'll be sending some pictures probably today if i have time to run to the post office. I put them all on a disc at wal-mart so you can just take them off of that and i was gonna have you send the disc back to me after you do that because i'm gonna keep them all together. Thank you so much for all the support you and your family gives me. I love and miss you all but like i said earlier, i wouldn't trade it for anything. Bye!

Also i forgot to mention that you shouldn't give my Escanaba address out to people because i won't get what they send me if i get transfered. Everyone is supposed to mail me and send me stuff through the mission home and they foreward stuff to me wherever i am so i will always get it. Also if people send packages and stuff they need to do it through the post office and they need to send it as priority or over night so that when the mission home gets it, they can foreward that to me. If it's fed ex they can't foreward it to me. My mission home address is
Wisconsin Milwaukee Mission
5651 Broad St Ste 1
Greendale, WI 53129-1889
And like i said Make sure everything gets sent there to just be safe. But i'll still be here for a couple more weeks for sure so thanks Tawni!

Escanaba

Escanaba is great! We live with members Sister Schmidt and her husband is the branch president. It's just a small little branch and the church building is super small it's actually pretty dang cute. Haha. Sister Schmidt is way too nice and her and a member named Tommy Chicago are who make Escanaba the best area in the mission. Tommy was baptized about ten years ago and he has no teeth but he is the funniest guy i have ever met. He takes us out to lunch or dinner a lot and takes us out of town a lot for like district meetings and stuff. His family is Catholic and his niece got baptized last week and we went with him to Catholic mass and the infant baptism and it was so awkward being there. They didn't have the spirit there at all. The investigators here are awesome. We just got dropped the other day by someone but we've been working with a lady since i got here and her baptismal date is next week on August 1st. She is so ready and getting so excited for it. It's been so amazing watching her life just take a huge turn. She has been so happy lately and she's been coming to church including last week when Elder Hofmeister and i gave a talk. It was good because i talked about the Book Of Mormon because we had 6 investigators at church so i picked something that would be best for them. I never thought i could actually give a talk for 23 minutes haha. Well that's what's new in Escanaba Michigan. PEACE!!!

Dane's email's

Just to update you all Jacob is done with the M.T.C. and has been in his first area for nearly a week.

(First Email)
Hey what's hangin? How are things going? How's everyone doing?
Well i think they emailed you but just to let you know where i'm serving is in the Upper Peninsela in Escanaba Michigan. Everything here is so green and it's just so beautiful here. We are right off the great lake here. My companion is from Calgary Oberta Canada and he is so sweet. Elder Hofmeister. Well the library just told us that they're closing so we are going to try and find another computer so i'll talk to ya in a little bit.

(Second Email)
It's funny we woke up at 530 and went and played basketball with a bunch of creepy men and then at 9 me and Elder Hofmeister went golfing with two members and it was so fun. We golfed 18 holes and i shot a 169 which sucks but it could have been worse. But i did start to get pretty dang good at the end. We were golfing for 6 hours. We are about an hour from Greenbay and we were gonna go there for pday today but we didn't. We did drive through there from Milwaukee and saw the field and it was pretty cool because it's the biggest building there because it's like surrounded by farms, and one of the members we were golfing with is a huge packers fan and was all mad at me for being a cards fan because of the last time we played them.

4655 17th Road
Escanaba, MI 49829

I know Jacob truly appreciates the support that he continually gets from you all.

I'll keep you posted.

Dane

Pictures from the MTC

Provo Temple

My District

(top to bottom, left to right)

Elder Thompson, Smedley and Smith

Elder Bevan, Hyte, Bro Fereday (my teacher), and Day

Elder Sare, Robinson, Stephensen and Me

Missionary Statues

Our last night in the MTC

Allen Family

Hey guys how are you all doing? I'm doing great! I'm having a blast and I'm learning so much here. And eating so much. Brian's right, I'm totally gonna gain some weight but only in the MTC because it's all you can eat every meal of the day and it's pretty good food. Although it does give me really bad gas and it makes my companion mad. Ü I'm trying so hard to get along with my comp.
I definitely got it tough for my first one because he's like psycho. He would probably wear my skin to a B-Day party. HaHa But anyways, my second day here I got called to be the District leader
and it's been a blast just doing that. I love my District and I think they love me. (I hope). But anyways I picked an awesome time to come to the MTC because this is the time when they train all the Mission Presidents and so there are Apostle's and General Authorities walking all around this place. I think we have President Monson speaking to us tomorrow. Well I gotta go take a dump so I'll talk to you all later and make sure you all write me!

Love,
Elder Patterson

P.S. Send me some good snacks, I feel left out in my District because I'm the only one that hasn't gotten anything. HaHa.

Mission Pictures

I went out and took some pictures for Jacob's mission plaque.

And the winner was this one...

Some of my other favorites were...