May 5 (Reuters) - Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans on Wednesday said that while he expects “very strong” job gains over the next several months, achieving 2% inflation is harder than many think, and doing so requires patience. “Patience is really an important tool for quite some time,” Evans told reporters after delivering a talk at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Asked when it could be time to start talking about reducing the Fed’s current $120 billion monthly pace of bond buying, he said: “I’m not in a hurry in any way to have that discussion.” Continuing the Fed’s bond purchases demonstrates the Fed is demonstrating it is “in it to win it and we are going to keep going and we are by golly going to be achieving, in this case, our 2% on average inflation objective,” he said. “I see our current approach as being a very patient one,” he said, adding that he does not see in place the building blocks for sustained, year-after-year 2.5% or 3% inflation. (Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Chizu Nomiyama) Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.