Elder Alec Lange: 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