Best Christmas present a missionary could ask for

This week went a lot better I feel like. Everything just started falling apart and things didnt seem to be working out last week but this week, everything just fit together somehow. Last week Im pretty sure I said that we had a problem with some of our investigators. They weren't married and living together and separated so they could each get money from the government. They couldn't afford to live if they were to get married. We tried talking to them about faith and things just working out with the Lord. They said that they would just have to give up on getting baptized if that is what we were going to make them do and their baptism is super close. They come to church every week and are progressing really well. I didn't want all that work and determination to just go down the drain. So that is why I was stressed out. We went and talked to the bishop and he said he would go talk to them. What I wanted to get to was truly amazing. Our ward mission leader is the judge in the town and came over to give us a Christmas present. He asked if we had a minute to talk and we told him we did. He said he looked at his calendar and  was marrying two people at 1. I couldn't believe what he was telling us. They just took the leap of faith and took action. 

I've been thinking a lot this week about how weird the gospel truly can seem to people. We go to church for 3 hours and worship someone we have never met or seen. We follow rules and live standards and yet somehow it changes lives. They just want to change because they feel its the right thing to do. It's kind of a weird thing to think about. You can pick any principle out of the gospel, and if you start living it the best to your ability it makes changes in your life. No matter what principle it is. This is why faith is so important. Nothing works unless you first have the desire to believe. Its also crazy to think about how fast faith can grow. We have only been teaching these people for a couple of weeks and they are willing to put their faith in the Lord. They are making steps to become closer to the Lord and doing things because they just feel its the right thing to do. I love how the Lord works in everyones life! He is there and will help anyone. They are getting baptized the 16th. Then we have another family that gave up smoking and coffee and are making huge steps. They are ready to be baptized on the 2nd. I cant wait to see how these people will grow throughout their life when they make the gospel part of it. The gospel truly works wonders, whether you are doing it out of your choice or obedience. It will change you for the better.


 Love, Elder Lange

The Free's on their wedding day

New Bedding! 

Study the scriptures where you go

Arizona scenery 

Talking to the family on Christmas

Pictures from Arizona!

Alec's mom talking:  I have been getting a lot of texts this week of pictures of Alec.  I'm sure it's in part because it's Christmas and people know how much we miss him this time of year and it's great because Elder Lange is terrible at taking pictures!! 

Helping clean up at a wedding reception with Elder Shaw

Talking doctrine with one of the members 

Dinner at the Solomon's house in Snowflake

Elder Lange and Elder Shaw picking up their Christmas packages from the Rapier family who so generously drove it down From Logan to Snowflake for us! 

Don't be casual

This week was super good! Elder Shaw and I were super glad to stay together. We love this area and it is doing really well. We got 2 more 9 year old kids on date this week. Hopefully we can get 2 more next week. We are trying to get up to 15 again. I think we will only get to 13 because the other two are quite a stretch. We have been teaching quite a few families but some of them are are super busy this time of year and cant meet very often. We have two families with baptisms coming up, one on the 26th and one on January 2nd. They are both having problems with the word of wisdom but they have come along way. They all use to smoke about 20 cigarettes a day if not more. They have all cut down to 0-1 a day. Well I love these families so much and cant wait to see their lives improve with the gospel. We got to go to the temple yesterday and that was a really cool experience. I learn so much just going through the temple each time. What I've been focusing on so much this week is obedience and diligence. Its so true that if you are just casual about the work the members and the Lord notices! He will put people in your life if you are obedient. I've noticed that if I'm kind of just casual with the work then things don't go as well as you would like. I've been getting kind of casual about the work and couldn't figure out what was wrong with the week. Then I read that if you aren't diligent or obedient then the Lord notices and doesn't trust you with people and the work! Its crazy how this happens! We have been working really hard at this this week. We also went to see Jay this week for the second time and they told us he had passed away! :( So sad. Its good to hear from everyone. Send lots of pics.

Love Elder Lange

This wolf is so skittish so I couldn't get a good pic close to it, but it does come to you sometimes

One morning for breakfast at the Caldwells 

A super good week!

This week was SUPER good. It was long but good. We pretty much had a normal week teaching people but one of our families we had to move the date back to the 26th. They are really taking the steps to quit smoking but it is going to be hard for them. They wanted to have a white Christmas so we let them. Everyone we are teaching is progressing really well. Saturday we had a baptism of a family of 3 and I got to see Elder Meza again because he helped teach them! Its always awesome to see how happy they become after being baptized. You always think they are happy just taking the lessons but it doesnt really show until they take the steps to salvation. The families and as well as us missionaries can feel how proud our Heavenly Father is of them. Then we had a really good Sunday and we bore our testimonies and confirmed the family. The whole ward loved hearing us and loved what we had to say. One of our ward mission leaders got up and bore his testimony about how thankful he was for us. It was good to know that people love us as people and not just missionaries. He said im a quite person and soft spoken ( as you would of guessed) but there is a super bright light shining from me. I was a hard worker and a good leader) There is this family that we teach and before we left this last time hes like hang on i got something to tell. Every time i look in your eyes i see something. You are definitely going some where big. You are going to be a really good leader. Talk about scary! Anyways, then we had the mission tour and MLC. Elder Robbins (presidency of the seventy) shared so many things I've been trying to work on and it helped just to keep doing it. I've been working on letting people have their agency. It would make it so much easier if we could just make them do things without telling them why they had to do it. Its good to focus on why they need to do it and give them the choice. Sometimes they don't learn as much as we would like them to as fast as we would like them to but they will learn eventually. It will always work out. I've been praying for Elder Shaw to just have stronger desire just to do everything he can a put everything he has into it. This is part of the reason why giving people their agency is hard. I could just tell him to do things but he will learn nothing. He has grown a lot and has a lot more of a desire to do things! It makes me so happy. This doesn't just mean to leave them there and do nothing. We still have to encourage and help lift but we cant take their choice away. We are trying to get about 5 more people on date and then we will have about 17 people with a baptism date. It might take awhile and people will get baptized by the time others commit but we are doing really well together and Elder Shaw is growing a lot. Its good to see peoples growth especially your companion! 'I've grown a testimony of how strong pray is this week. Prayers really do work!

Love Elder, Lange

Their Christmas tree! 

Elder Lange and Elder Meza

A car selfie

Elder Shaw, Elder Lange, family members getting baptized and Elder Meza

The Elder stocking hung over the fireplace 

The Christmas countdown from momma Lange

One of their investigators has pet wolves 

Cookies and milk

Enjoying cookies and milk while taking to investigators on the phone 

Keep Moving Forward

This week went really good! It started out like any normal week but on Tuesday I went on my first exchanges. It went really well. I got them motivated to work harder and we TTId 4 people that told them to come back. I taught them to just open their mouths and the Lord will bless you. On Wednesday we had Zone Conference and that went really well. I learned a lot. On Thursday we woke up and helped with the Turkey Trot in Snowflake. We had to ride bikes in front of the first runner and lead the way. We had only one Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone was having theirs at 1 so we only went to one. We got invited to a whole bunch but only went to one. Thanksgiving went really well though. We saw a couple of other families after that. On Friday Elder Shaw invited 2 more people to be baptized and they accepted. We are going to a lot of peoples houses and they all say that they love the expressions and enthusiasm he shows. Everyone thinks he is going to be a good leader. He loves teaching, and the people definitely love him. I then went on exchange with Elder Anderson. It was a really good exchange. We both learned a lot from each other and I learned quite a bit about training

This week I made a cool connection with our Heavenly Father. Our Father in Heaven loves us and just wants what’s best for us. I feel like we could be so much better than we are sometimes and our Heavenly Father feels the same way. He’s just sad that we can’t grow as much as he wants us to. We are only human and I know we have weaknesses. We can only grow at a certain rate also. I love Elder Shaw I just want to see him become the best person he can become in the short time we are together. It’s hard giving him his agency. We always teach the principle but we can’t take their agency. Sometimes I want to just tell him he can’t do some things just to make it easier but he always has his agency. Sometimes it’s hard to see him fall just short, and I’m sure it’s the same way with our Heavenly Father. It’s hard for him to see us fall just short and that is why the atonement is so necessary. He loves seeing immediate rewards but it’s hard for him when the rewards are a lot farther down the road. It made me realize how hard we have to try for our Heavenly Father, he needs us. He needs each and every member to try their hardest to be doing the things they need to do. I’ve learned a valuable lesson this week of love, devotion, and eternal progression. We need to keep moving forward. Even if we feel like we keep falling short. He’s more focused on our direction instead of our speed.

Love,

Elder Lange

The "Turkey Trot"

(Alecs mom) We received this text early Thanksgiving morning from a member.  Alec and the Elders helping out with the "Turkey Trot" in Snowflake.  They all look so happy and helped us know that he was having a great day! 

Blessed with Opportunities

This week went really good! It started out like any normal week but on Tuesday I went on my first exchanges. It went really well. I got them motivated to work harder and we TTId 4 people that told them to come back. I taught them to just open their mouths and the Lord will bless you. On Wednesday we had Zone Conference and that went really well. I learned a lot. On Thursday we woke up and helped with the Turkey Trot in Snowflake. We had to ride bikes in front of the first runner and lead the way. We had only one Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone was having theirs at 1 so we only went to one. We got invited to a whole bunch but only went to one. Thanksgiving went really well though. We saw a couple of other families after that. On Friday Elder Shaw invited 2 more people to be baptized and they accepted. We are going to a lot of peoples houses and they all say that they love the expressions and enthusiasm he shows. Everyone thinks he is going to be a good leader. He loves teaching, and the people definitely love him. I then went on exchange with Elder Anderson. It was a really good exchange. We both learned a lot from each other and I learned quite a bit about training

This week I made a cool connection with our Heavenly Father. Our Father in Heaven loves us and just wants what’s best for us. I feel like we could be so much better than we are sometimes and our Heavenly Father feels the same way. He’s just sad that we can’t grow as much as he wants us to. We are only human and I know we have weaknesses. We can only grow at a certain rate also. I love Elder Shaw I just want to see him become the best person he can become in the short time we are together. It’s hard giving him his agency. We always teach the principle but we can’t take their agency. Sometimes I want to just tell him he can’t do some things just to make it easier but he always has his agency. Sometimes it’s hard to see him fall just short, and I’m sure it’s the same way with our Heavenly Father. It’s hard for him to see us fall just short and that is why the atonement is so necessary. He loves seeing immediate rewards but it’s hard for him when the rewards are a lot farther down the road. It made me realize how hard we have to try for our Heavenly Father, he needs us. He needs each and every member to try their hardest to be doing the things they need to do. I’ve learned a valuable lesson this week of love, devotion, and eternal progression. We need to keep moving forward. Even if we feel like we keep falling short. He’s more focused on our direction instead of our speed.

Love,

Elder Lange

Elder Lange and Elder Shaw

Hey everyone! This week went really well. Elder Shaw and I work pretty well together. We have already found a new investigator and he is progressing really fast. Elder Shaw is going to invite him to be baptized today! Elder Shaw loves the work and being a missionary but just being so new he makes the small mistakes that I think are just easy for everyone. He really is a good elder he just needs time to change to the missionary life. He always has the right mind around people and missionary work he just doesn't apply it full time. We are both trying our hardest to grow. I'm starting to see some change in him. Our main focus is leaving everything behind us when we come out. Its going to take some time but I'm teaching the principle and leaving it to his own agency. He is really making a lot of progress though. I am so grateful for the opportunityto be in leadership. It's going to help me grow so much. Before Elder Meza left he told me that I'm going into leadership to grow and that I was put in the spot because I was soon getting to the point where I would just hit a point of flattening off and not progressing as much as I could. I didn't think that I was getting comfortable, but now looking back, I needed something new to push me in a way of eternal progression. I didn't think I was quite ready for this leadership but now I know its something I needed. I started getting comfortable with the people, teaching, our area and my responsibilities. I needed something to help me grow, so as much as I'm helping Elder Shaw grow he is helping me. I think he just needs a few little things to get down and he will become a super great missionary. We have baptisms on the 5th and the 12th! They should be super good! Both are families of 3. We just need to start finding new people teach and help progress, so that is our biggest focus as far as investigators. I'm excited for the work to start growing as Elder Shaw and I put all of our might, mind and strength into this area!

Love, 

Elder Lange 

(Alec's mom talking:  When we were getting Alec ready for his mission, we bought all short sleeve shirts, lightweight pants and socks.  We didn't get him a jacket or sweaters or anything remotely warm.  When people would ask him where he was going and he would say Scottsdale, inevitably people would always say, "oh boy I hope you like the heat, because you are going to die!"  Well it seems strange and ironic that he sent this picture of him in the snow way before we have a drop of snow up here in Utah!  Needless to say we have sent coats and sweaters in every package!)

 Alec and his new companion Elder Shaw

The Lord knows me and knows what I need...

Hey everyone!! Its getting pretty cold here. Its already snowed twice. Shout out to Colton and his farewell. I wish you luck becoming a missionary. Its something you will never regret. This week has been super crazy though. So we had the Gordons baptized!!!! They are the coolest family. Garret and Heather and then they have 3 girls Kiarra(13) Kensly(11) and Kailey(9). I baptized Kiarra and Kailey. Elder Meza baptized Kensly and then some old friends that were members baptized the parents!! They have the coolest story and just had this prompting to move up here, so they did. Garret and Heather were all for taking the lessons but the girls werent too sure. Soon enough Kailey got super excited to be a Mormon and started telling everyone in her school that she was getting baptized and was going to be a member of the church. We were going to have the baptism a week before but they had a death in their family. I was sad because they all wanted to be baptized so bad and then had to wait another week. But this gave us time to try and get them baptized as a family! The day of the interview for everyone the 2 older girls decided to be baptized! This made both me and Elder Meza soooo happy. It makes it even that much better of an experience. The two older girls just got a lot of negative things from their real dad that they go to every other weekend. But they finally started to take a stand and do it for themselves!!!! I love this family. Maybe even more than my own ;) just kidding

The next day we went and saw Jay in the hospital. He is really not doing good and they are trying to get his will together. :( He has no family left and they are having just a friend put it together. We gave him a blessing that everything would work out and he would be at peace. Its hard seeing someone doing so well when we met him, now on his death bed. Its a really cool thing that we got him baptized though because pretty much the day after he started going down hill!

So good news again! I got done being trained finally! Bad news Elder Meza left me! It is super weird not having him around. It is literally like loosing a brother or something. But more good news! Im now training Elder Shaw from Oregon and he is only 24 hours old! I also got put in as a district leader. So I kind of have to take care of a small group of missionaries and help them grow and stuff. Its weird because every single one of them are older than me and I have to try to teach them. The only thing I keep telling myself is that the Lord knows me and knows what I need. I just got done training and now I'm in a ton of leadership. It almost seems like they made a mistake because that hardly ever happens but I know I was given this responsibility from God and he is helping me every step of the way. Ill send some pics from this week too. 

Love Elder Lange

                                                    The Gordon Family

                                             
                                              Elder Shaw, Elder Lange, Elder Mesa

Work hard, no matter what and things will work out

I want to tell about the lesson I learned this week. Work hard no matter what and things will work out. Elder Meza and I made a goal to get 15 people on date and we had a month to do it.  At the time it seemed pretty easy and then we got to the end of the dead line and we only had 10 people. I couldn't understand what happened. I felt like the Lord was pleased with me every night in what I did that day. I felt really depressed and couldn't think of the reason why we didn't have the people on date. I got down on my knees and decided to pray. The answer i got was just to keep working. I got up and decided to leave it behind me. This last Sunday we got another family on date and I realized we had 15 people on date.  It was one of the best lessons Ive had and we got them on date and they were all super excited to be baptized. It was crazy to think of how to Lord wanted it to happen, and it happened. We met our goal we set just because we kept working and didn't get discouraged in things we thought would work smoothly. 

We have four families on date and a couple of single people. To have "excellence" in your area you should have 3 people on date and we have 15! Elder Meza and i work really well together and our work is progressing so good! I think we are leading the mission in people on date but we still want more people. We are trying our hardest but i think Elder Meza is leaving me this week! :( its like a 95% chance he does! Ill tell you more about all of the families when they get baptized.

We also spent like 8 hours in the temple on Halloween. It was crazy! I was on the biggest spiritual high. We did everything we could in the temple. We were pretty much the workers and they kind of just directed us. Obviously there were some things we couldn't do but we did everything we could do. We got so much work done! After we cleaned the whole temple and it was one of the craziest things. When I get home I hope I can find time to spend a whole day in the temple every 2 week and at least go each week. It was one of the coolest experiences. 

And don't feel bad if I don't get to write you one week. I will try to get to you the next week. We are just always so busy! I will try to take more pics but I just usually don't sorry! I will send what I have.  I love you all

"Elder Lange, do you think you can baptize me?"

"This week has been really good! We had a lesson with a family. They have 3 girls, 13, 12 and 9. The youngest one wants to get baptized but the older 2 aren't really sure. During church I was sitting with them and the little girl comes up to me and says "Elder Lange, do you think you can baptize me?" I was like of course! Man my heart filled with so much joy to see this little girl having the desire to get baptized. And taking the steps she needs to. She was so happy that I said yes. Seeing people improve and become happy from living the gospel is probably the best thing to see! After church we had a lesson with the family and it went really good! The 2 older girls participated and wanted to learn. I know it helped a lot. This family is one of the coolest families, they almost feel like family. Im sure this is how every body you teach is supposed to feel. Hopefully we can change the girls mind before the baptism though, its on the 7th. 

We are teaching another family the lives way in the boones. We have to drive on the bumpiest road for like 10 miles. The road keeps going in all these different directions so we had to follow him out there the first time. He told us to never turn on the wrong road out there because if anyone out there sees someone coming up their drive way they will just start shooting at you, no questions asked. So it was pretty scary driving out there the second time trying to remember the exact roads he took, but we finally made it and now we just have it memorized. When you finally get to their house you go down a really steep hill. To get out you have to have 4 wheel drive. They have like 10 dogs just running around and they are all ratty and havent had a bath in like 2 years but he feeds and knows every single one of them. They all came from the same batch of puppies and are all pure white so i have no idea how he tells them apart. They live in a trailer off of the only solar they can get, so they pretty much dont have power. It sits on a couple of cinder blocks and looks like its going to fall at any second. The family is really cool though. They only have one kid and he is 9. He loves when we play sports with him because he has no neighbors so he has no one to hang out with. He will always go and get his flat soccer ball and we will play with him for a while, he loves it. The family has never come to church but showed up one day and loved it. They want to be baptized and love the feeling of being at church and always comes for all 3 hours. We had a lesson with them right after the Gordons and a super good lesson. We had him say the closing pray and by the end of it, the whole family was crying. 

We are teaching a lot of other people but I mostly wanted to tell you about these families. All of the people we start teaching progress really fast and love having us over. We literally just run into these people and somehow they are already prepared for us. Its so crazy to think how big of a part the Lord plays in our lives!

Love Elder Lange

Sharing a message on high

(Alec's mom speaking) I got this in a text message last night.  This is Alec sharing a message with some members after dinner.  I LOVE getting texts like this!

Squirrel tail

I don't have time to write a big long email but I'll send you guys apic! The tail in the window is from a guy we walked up on that was super redneck and he was skinning some squirrels. He chopped off the tail and threw it to us. So we hung it up after we cleaned it up a bit

Small and simple things!

(Alec's mom here:  Alec had a really busy week and so his email was very short, he spent some time in other towns this week doing exchanges which is guess is pretty common because his trainer is also a zone leader, so he actually didn't spend much time in Snowflake this week.  It sounded like he was here and there and everywhere. But I did want to share with everyone, his email about the message he wanted to get across this week and also the experience they had with Jay, whom they baptized this past week.) 

The message I wanted to get across is; in the small and simple things, great things come to pass and it feels so good to know that you are pleasing the Lord when you actually work hard. Jay is in the hospital I will try and tell you as much as I can about that before I have to go but first we show up to his house and his car is like half crashed. So we head up to his shack and the door was open and I could see him sitting on his couch/bed. I asked him what happened to his car and he wouldn't answer. He just looked at me and was totally out of it. He didn't know anything that was going on. It was raining out side and was super cold and he didn't even have pants on. We tried wrapping him is some blankets while we tried to find some help but he lives in the middle of nowhere so that was impossible. So we called an ambulance after awhile because we didn't know anything else to do. Long story short he had a blood clot and that is what made him loopy. The blood clot could of either went to his heart or his brain and been lethal. He didn't even remember us finding him. We were definitely guided by the spirit that day. It was really scary to see Jay like that. 

Love Elder Lange

Conference and A Baptism!

So that email I sent you last week I sent to the President in my weekly email and he called me and told me how good it was and had a training on it with all the missionary leaders and sent my email out to the whole mission. It was pretty freaky but I guess thats what he wants in the mission. He was really impressed with what I had to say. I feel like I'm growing a lot and he sees it. Which could be a bad thing because then I will be a zone leader or something, and thats a lot of responsibility but if thats what he wants I will do it but if it were up to me I wouldn't choose to be a leader. 

The two things I liked this week were conference and a baptism we had. I really liked conference and every thing they taught us. I never really knew how much I could like conference since I didn't really like it back home until I almost came out. If you just take your time and really listen to what every single person is saying, no matter who they are, then you can find knowledge and wisdom in every talk. You can get so many questions answered if you just really want an answer and search for it. General conference helped with a lot of things. 

Jay's baptism was really good too. We have grown really close to Jay over the time we have been teaching him and he has progressed really fast. He was afraid to get baptized because he didn't really know what to expect. We tried walking him through what happens but he was still scared because he had never seen one done before. The reason I loved this baptism was because after he was baptized he was the happiest person on earth. It made me so happy to see him happy and how much blessings and joy come from this gospel. When taking the right steps and becoming more Christ like you truly do feel amazing. I loved seeing how much he progressed and the steps he took to get there. He had recently had a surgery so he couldn't move around a lot or lift much of anything, but he took the steps he needed to, to get baptized. The happiness that comes from taking these steps and truly living righteously is amazing and that is mostly the reason I came out. I want to share this joy I felt when trying to do my best and getting as much as I could from the church and to see that that had happened made me so happy. I want to serve the Lord and do this for him but bringing happiness to others and seeing it in there lives doesn't hurt either. Everything is going really good in our area and we are trying to work harder and harder everyday.

I'll send some pics of us and Jay bird. He is such a stud. Try to pick something they told us to do in general conference and keep the commitment. Like ponderizing.

Love you all!

Love Elder Lange

(Alec's mom talking) I got this text after conference last night and it was just the thing to top off a wonderful day! "I love having your missionary son live in our apartment.  He is doing good and has already made great strides.  When he first got her he was pretty shy haha!"

Love the Lord!

Hey everyone! Surprise! We had a p day on Wednesday because of transfers and new missionaries coming in. This will be every six weeks. I am still here in Snowflake and don't have a new companion either. So everything is going great for me. The thing i wanted to focus on this week is loving the Lord. I'm super new to this and really had no idea what to expect but Elder Meza was assigned to me and didn't care.

I'm here now and the best time to plant a tree is of course 20 years ago but the second best time to plant a tree is today. Thats what I'm doing now and I'm working with what I have. Elder Meza has been working us so hard and it has definitely been paying off but its super hard. Everyday I come home super tired and I'm just exhausted. Studies in the morning have  been really hard too, to have the desire. It was always me, me, me. I'm tired can't we not walk so fast or visit so many people. Then Elder Meza turned to me and said who do you love more, yourself or the Lord. Hit me super hard and I've been thinking about it a lot. Of course we are going to be tired but you don't think the Lord knows that? He watches out for you in everything you are doing and all I was worrying about was me. I wasn't thinking about the people I could bless or the families I could be helping. I came out here for a reason and I learned a lot this week that is wasn't for me. It wasn't for my family. It wasn't my ward. It was for the Lord and help bring everyone back to him. He sent me to this very place for a reason to do the best I could do. I thought I came out because I loved the Lord and wanted to do this for him but I've noticed how much I think about myself and the natural man takes over. My love for the Lord has grown so much in just this last week and I'm striving to be the best I can and serve him. I look back and think of all the things he has blessed me with. Any time anyone complains in our zone with other missionaries, everyone will just say I'm grateful. Holy cow that puts thinks into perspective. He has blessed us so much and there is really nothing we should be complaining about. We should be grateful for everything and don't stop to the look at the things we don't have or the things we "need". I love the Lord and I'm starting now to try my hardest to serve him in everything I do. I encourage all of you to do things for the Lord. Serve others, Mosiah 2:17. Do something everyday to serve the Lord and then pray to him in your nightly prayers and thank him for the opportunity to do so. You will see a change in your life and blessings will follow. I hope all of you take this commitment and just know that as much as I love you, the Lord loves you more! Love you all!!! Have a good week full of serving the Lord.

Love Elder Lange