No Better Place!

Merry Christmas! This week was super good. We aren't getting very many lessons but we are still sharing the message. On Christmas Eve we went over to a members house and he told us a story about his mission and how it was his first Christmas out and he was feeling a little home sick. He said as he was out there they started singing Christmas Carols and the Spirit hit him comforting him there was no better place he could be during Christmas than being a servant of the Lord. As he told his story I had a feeling the same as he did. The message we have and are sharing with people is something that no other religion has. Christ's gospel is a gospel of hope and peace and we have that message to share. I know there is no better place I could be during Christmas. I so happy to be sharing the gospel and blessing people in anyway I can. I only have 2 of them on my mission and each one were well wort it. I'm so grateful to be a servant of the Lord and serving Him at this time. I know there is no better place than to be on a mission. I hope all of you know the message you have a the power it has. I'm grateful for this gospel and the blessing it has been in my life. 

Snow for Christmas in Arizona!  They got three inches and cancelled church

Tradition at the Lange household is to build a big fort on Christmas eve.  Elder Lange just had to carry on the tradition in the mission field!  

Sleeping in the fort

Making ugly Christmas sweater cookies on Christmas eve

Blueberry pancakes, bacon, eggs with ham and cheese for Christmas morning breakfast! 

Merry Christmas!

Hey everyone! This week has been pretty good. We were pretty busy this week.  We went down to the valley this week to go do a temple session. It was super good. After we went through the temple we had a ZTM. The Zone Leaders called me the night before and asked for me to give a training. I hate giving trainings. Especially when I don't have time to prepare. I thought I would get out of that when I wasn't a zone leader anymore but I guess not. 

Well the best part of the week was our baptism! Danielle Brown got baptized. She is super awesome. She is super ready to be a member and super excited to do what she is asked. One time we were talking to some people after sacrament and she was standing next to us waiting to go to class and she just takes off and said later guys I'm going to class. It was pretty cool to see how comfortable she is and how willing she is to learn. Well that's about it for this week. Have a Merrry Christmas! 

Joints Heirs With Christ

Hey everyone. This week has been super good. This holiday season is so nice to do missionary work with. Everyone's hearts are just softened buy the spirit around this holiday. We have been trying to take advantage of it and work really hard. We found a new investigator this week and he is super awesome. His name is Mike and he says he just wants to take his spirituality to the next level and he know that by taking the lessons he can do it. He is pretty solid and we are going to try and put him on date this week. Its been pretty hard work here. We only have like 5 real investigators we are teaching and the rest of the people we have are potential investigators that we are trying to set things up with. We dont have very many people to work with here but they all seem to be doing pretty good. 

We had a zone conference this past week and it was super good. Our whole mission read the Book of Mormon in 62 days and marked the Doctrine of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost and endure to the end). We talked about how each of the doctrines apply to us daily and why they are talked about so much in the Book of Mormon. We also talked about things we learned just reading the Book of Mormon in such a small amount of time. My favorite thing applied kind of to enduring to the end. It was Suffering with Patience. There are so many things in this life that we have to suffer for. Just trial after trial. Test after test. And sometimes its hard to see the meaning behind all of it. But in Romans 8:17 it says. "And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together". We must suffer WITH Christ if we are going to be joint heirs with him! Meaning that we will inherit all he has. Its pretty crazy to think about how much we are going to receive for the small suffering we do. And we dont have to do it alone we have Him to help us along the entire way! Suffering with patience is key. We just need to understand is for a purpose and the Lord is watching out for us. 

This week we are also having a baptism for Dani Brown! She is so awesome and so ready. She knows so much about the church and is so eager to learn. She is ready to turn her life around and knows the happiness that comes from the gospel already!

We went and explored a cave today!

I'm staying in Payson!

This week has been super good! So I forgot to tell you last week we had transfers and I'm staying. I'm also going to be the District Leader. It's been pretty good. We have been working really hard and just worked right through transfers. Usually everyone slows down the work during transfers just because they are worried about getting transferred and things like that but Elder Hampton and I literally didn't even think about it. We forgot we were even getting transfer news Sunday night. And I'll tell you what it payed off. We have Dani Brown planned on getting a baptismal interview Saturday and then getting dunked the next week. She is really on fire and doing super good. She had a ride planned out to come to church with her and her ride talked her out it that morning and so instead of just saying she couldn't find a ride she did everything she could to get there. She realized Satan was trying to work against her. She is super awesome and loved church and wants to come every single week. We have two more people that came to church that we are going to try and baptize this month too. They are pretty good too. They are always together and take the lessons together. They are currently living out of their car but love the gospel. It's a little bit hard with them because Laurie knows everything about God and Jesus and has them a part of her daily life while on the other hand, Brad, her friend doesn't even know who God or Jesus Christ are. So it's a little difficult teaching them together but they seem to really like it and are super excited to get baptized. It's gonna be a good transfer in Payson during this Holiday Season! We also got ourselves into a parade this week. It was really good and we just helped with the parade and walked next to the floats. It was a light parade and everything was covered with lights. It was really cool! A ton of people saw us and it was good to get our faces out in the community. Literally everyone was there. It was pretty awesome. Well take care back home and remember the reason for the season! 

Gratitude.

This week has been pretty good. Not too much of a different week. We had a few good experiences this week like always. The one I want to talk about was the Thanksgiving dinner we had with a less active. Well this less active lady called us out of the blue and said she had a friend she wanted us to meet and help get Jesus in her life. Well we went over and met the less active and her son. They are super awesome and live in a little humble trailer. We met the friend and tried to share an uplifting message that would touch her. But what touched me more than anything was the type of lives these few people were living. They had holes in the ground that they had to cover with boards so they wouldn't step in them. The turkey we had came from a food bank and we had some potatoes and gravy that came in a microwave dinner. Then they had some beans to go along with it. It was pretty different after coming from a dinner with 4 tables of food. With the little they had they were still super happy and glad to be together. The only things they wanted was a little bit of food and friends and family surrounding them. I was amazed at how humble of a dinner it was and how happy they were. Later on that night after leaving and thinking about it I was filled with gratitude for everything that I have. But most of all I'd like to express my gratitude for our Savior. Definitely the best thing I've learned on my mission is the relationship I have with my Savior. It so hard to even begin to comprehend how much he loves each of us personally. He literally took every sin I have ever committed and every sin I'm ever going to commit upon him self. He took the blame for all my wrongs. I know no matter how many times I mess up he will forgive me every time. Even if I make the same mistake over and over again. There is no limit to his love and his atonement. But the most comforting thing is that he descended below them all. He didn't just meet the requirement and go out with as little as He could get away with, but he went below them all. And I know that even if I was the one that made him suffer the most and take upon the most sins, He would love me enough to go below me and pay for everything I did. I'm so grateful for Jesus Christ and everything He has done for me but beyond all I'm grateful for the closeness of the relationship I've gained with him. 

The gift of having a family!

This week was pretty good. At the beginning of the week we got a add on to our area. Young! It's about an hour and a half away and the hour of it is on a dirt road. The area is a super small town. Lots of people who ranch and raise cows and just kind of keep to themselves. We went down this week and met our Branch President. He took us around town and we met with a few different branch members. The only thing they have down there is one gas station and everything else they have come out to Payson for. I'm pretty excited though. It's should be pretty good getting in the and starting things up. 

We had a pretty good lesson with one of our investigators this week. His name is Terry. We met him a little bit ago tracting and he said he would be interested in having us come over again. Well this Sunday we went over and had a lesson with him. It went pretty well. It's started off kind of weird because he didn't know what we do so he thought we were just coming over to talk instead of teach a lesson. We asked if we could come in and maybe talk little bit more about The Book of Mormon and then started the lesson from there. We got about half of the lesson in because he kept talking about how he has seen God in his life the the role God played in his life. His only set back is coming to church. He said he used to go to a church and stopped going because he didn't see he importance of it and doesn't see the importance of coming to church now. I guess he just needs a lesson on the Sabbath day. He is a really good guy though and has some potential. If he just feels the Spirit I think he will want to change

I hope all of you have a really good week this week and eat lots of turkey. Spend time with your family and appreciate them and the gift of having a family. No family is perfect and no family is meant to be perfect. But we are met to learn and grow with them. I love the talk President Uchtdorf gave in April 2016. He talks about the importance of saving our relationships with our families and cherishing them. Families are a huge blessing and never take them for granted, Heavenly Father put you in your family for a reason! Love yours while I'm out here for a short while helping others bring theirs together :)

Celebrating Elder Hamptoms Birthday!  

Good ol Payson

This week has been a pretty good week. We found this investigator that had come to church on Sunday and said she just got in her car and was led by the Spirit to the church and felt like she needed to go in. Well she really liked it and wanted to meet with us. Her name is Laurie. We met with her twice this week. The first lesson was really good and we invited her to baptism. She said she was willing to do anything that we told her she needed to do. Well our next lesson she had read from the Book of Mormon and had already prayed to know if it was true. Both the lessons went pretty well and she was making some good progress. Well later that week we were walking around the park and saw her and decided to talk to her. She has struggled with drugs in the past and wasn't living in the best house. She ask to see if we could find a place for her to move into and so we had been looking that week trying to find things. Come to find out while talking to her at the park she found a place and is moving out of our area. A pretty solid investigator just picked up and left. But the good thing is that she had a friend that was with her. While we were talking to her we set up a lesson to see her on Tuesday. Before we left we asked if he wanted to join us too. He was pretty excited to come. He said that he needs to find a church to go to. He hasn't been to church since he was a little kid and was excited to come to ours. So hopefully he turns out just as good. He lives in our area and his name is Brian. He has a strong belief in God and Jesus Christ and "wouldn't be anywhere close to where he is today without them". Other than that just slowly trying to pick up our number out here in good ol Payson.

Knockin on doors!

Well this week has been so good. So awhile back at the beginning of the transfer we made a goal as a district to try and talk to 5 new people a day. We don't have very many people in Payson so we decided to do 5. There was a General Authority that gave a promise that if you talk to 10 new people a day and try and teach them the gospel, our numbers will quadruple. Well elder Hampton and I have been trying to get 5 a day and this week we just hit the ground running. We were going to try and talk to everyone we see. We got 70 TTIs this week (teach, testify, invite). We had so many miracles doing this. We stayed out till we got at least 10 a day. We passed out over 12 Book of Mormons throughout the week and picked up about 5 pretty solid people that are interested in learning more. It was so awesome to see the miracle that happened this week. Some of the missionaries in the valley think its hard to get 60 TTIs in a week and there are people everywhere down there. 

One miracle that was super awesome was a 16 year old kid named Doug. We were out knocking doors in an apartment complex and we hit most of the doors and there wasn't a lot of success that happened so we were walking to our truck to drive to the new area we were going to go tracting. Well before we hopped in we both decided to hit 4 more doors. Well we got to our last door and we had knocked 3 times and was about to leave when Doug came walking around the corner. I was like "Hey whats up? Do you live here?" He said yes and we started to explain what we were doing and what missionaries are. We asked if he would be interested in learning more about what we talked about. To our surprise he said he had some time so we taught the Restoration on his door step and he was super interested. He accepted a Book of Mormon and said he would pray to know if what we had taught him was true. It was so crazy to think that if we didn't decide to knock on just 4 more doors we would of missed the opportunity to bless this kids life forever. 

There are people waiting to hear the message we have to share they just don't know where to find it and if we dont listen to the spirit on where to find them they are going to miss the opportunity of a life time D&C 123: 12 For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it-

Love Elder Lange

Effort is Required! (Halloween in Payson Arizona)

Well this week has been super good. So lately we have been working super hard to try and find people so we have been doing everything we can. We have been kinda chasing people down the street seeing if we could talk to them. We have just been knocking on a ton of doors and things. So far it hasnt been really that successful. Its was just hard going out with out seeing any results. We kept going out with faith though trying to have a spiritual experience every day and take away something that was good about everyday. We knew that if we kept going out in faith it would pay off. We have been having around 3 or 4 lessons a week and only 2 investigators to work with. Well one night we were driving around trying to think of what to do and we decided to try and go by this lady even though we had texted her and called her multiple times. Well we stopped by and she let us in. We had a lesson on the restoration of the church. It was a really good lesson and the spirit was super strong. Well during the middle of the lesson she went to grab her Book of Mormon and I told Elder Hampton to invite her to be baptized on Dec 17th. I just hurried and look at my calendar and the day looked pretty good. Well at the end of the lesson he invited her to be baptized and the spirit just came flooding into the room! It was so awesome, her eyes watered up and she was excited to accept the date. It was a super good lesson. Its also good to know that hard work pays off. In Ether 12:6 its says "ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith". It was so good to come to know the truth of this scripture. We have been working really hard and doing everything we can and stretching our faith. Then we finally saw the witness of our faith. "Effort is required, but it is effort you will never, ever regret." -Thomas S Monson

Thumbs up for the wiener dog! 

(Elder Lange's mom talking) I received this text from a member, they were feeding the missionaries on Halloween in Payson.  She said "Truly our pleasure having these missionaries in our home."

Elder Mangus, Elder Bell and Elder Lange making pumpkin pancakes and buttermilk syrup on their last night together in Phoenix

When you get hot at night in Phoenix, you do what ya gotta do! 

Elder Bell getting transferred to the mountains. 

The small cowboy town of Payson!

Hey everyone! Payson is pretty good. It's a pretty small cowboy town. I serve in the Ponderosa Ward and Christopher Creek Branch. We had to speak in the branch on Sunday. I wrote a 6 minute talk and couldn't think of anything else to write so I went in with that. Branches are crazy! They are so small and there are just a bunch of chairs in the chapel. Well I ended up having the Spirit take over and I spoke for around 15 minutes so that was pretty good. My comp is awesome. Elder Hampton. He is from Layton Utah. We also live with 2 other companionships. The work here is pretty slow. We had the highest numbers this week and we had 4 lessons. Pretty rough. We do a lot of service though. 

So recently we started to focus on more investigators and just pretty much drop all of the less actives we were teaching. We are called to teach repentance and baptize converts, not be good home teachers. A General Authority came and told us that so we have been tracting and finding a lot instead of just using our time teaching less actives. We have seen some pretty cool miracles from it though. One miracle at we saw this week was a guy named Dylan. So one thing we have been trying to do is called lightning visits. We show up to a members house for about 10-15 minutes, share a message and ask if they know anyone who could use that message. Well we chose a name on our list and the guy was less active. He had lived there for 5 years and no one had come by to visit him in the 5 years. That in it's self was a miracle that we just happened to stop by. Well it was late so he said to come back another time. Before we left we asked if he knew anyone. He said to go to his neighbor a couple houses down. Well when we were driving to Brother Lutz house I was looking out the window and saw a house full of people and thought we should stop by and knock just to see what happens. We saw a guy outside and decided to go see if this guy needed a message. As we were walking over he had his truck open blaring rap and he was smoking and drinking. He had earrings and a bunch of tattoos. It was a pretty scary looking guy but I just kept walking toward him for some reason. Well we said hi and the conversation just got going. We asked if he wanted a uplifting message and he said he was going through some hard things and could really use a message. He said he had been through some things and really admired us for coming up to him and sharing what had helped us in our lives. He said we didn't know if he was a gangster and was gonna shoot us or not but was glad we walked up. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he wants to meet up later to discuss more about it. He also wants us to send him a text of a scripture everyday so he can have a good uplifting day everyday. It was a super cool experience! Experiences like those are why I came on my mission. I felt the spirit so strong and love sharing the gospel with others. 

Love, 

Elder Lange

The beautiful town of Payson

Elder Lange is headed to the mountains of Payson!

This week has been super crazy. We found a new investigator.  A member gave us a referral. Saturday we went and saw her to set something up. We gave her a Book of Mormon and told her if she gets around to it you can read it but we will explain it a lot more in our first lesson. Well she ended up coming to church the next day. We saw her on Tuesday and had a lesson with her. She had already read the Title page, the Introduction, all the witnesses and part of first Nephi. She couldn't see the words on the copy we gave her so she downloaded it on her computer and figured out how to use it on that. She is on fire! We had a lesson with her put her on date. She is so awesome. We also had a really good lesson on Thursday with her. She's gonna get baptized soon! 

Well in between our awesome lessons with her we had a temple trip! It was super awesome! The temple is the best. It's been a really long time since we have been too so it was good. We went with our zone. It was pretty stinkin good. Well the next day we had a ZTM. We talked a lot about faith and the love for our Savior. It was the best ZTM I've had so far on my mission. 

We also got transfer news this week. I'm being transferred back up to the mountains. It super sad leaving these comps. I really loved them and we worked super hard and our work is finally starting to pay off. We got like 10 referrals this week and like 4 people on date. This is arguably one of the hardest areas in the mission so it's hard to just see all the work gone. I'm going to Payson to train. It should be pretty good but I'm not going to be a zone leader anymore. I'm just a normal missionary. It's kinda hard. I feel like I did something wrong to not be a zone leader anymore but I'm sure this is where the Lord needs me. 

Having this week has made me think a lot. It been super crazy with spiritual highs and spiritual lows. Along with everything in between. But I've thought a lot about it and all I can think about it gratitude for everything I've been given and everything I have. So many times in life we can go through these spiritual high and spiritual lows and it just depends on which way we turn when the lows come. If we turn to Christ everything will work out, but way too often people try to do the right thing and their life isn't going "according to plan". I've heard way too many times on my mission "why should I try to live the gospel when it's so hard and when I start living it everything seems to go wrong". I've thought a lot about that this week. Why try and be a good missionary and try to stay exactly obedient and work hard when it doesn't go my way anyways. My heart and mind are brought back to the Savior every time. I know the Lord has a plan for me and I don't want to mess it up. The Lord has literally given us everything we have and all he asks is that we love him. Showing our love is hard sometimes but always worth it in the end. I know the love of my Savior and it's what keeps me afloat. Just keep going. The Lord is there to pick you up even when everything seems to be going wrong. If you're trying your hardest to follow Christ, you are headed in the right direction.

We are here to grow and become better!!

It was a super good week this week. We picked up 2 new solid investigators. One was being taught by some other missionaries and they wanted to come to our Ward so they handed her over to us. She is a little 9 year old. She's super awesome. Her name is Vanity and she has an 8 year old brother named Leon. They were both at church and both had the biggest smiles on their faces. They were super happy to be there and it was awesome. The other is super nice. She is in her 60s. She is the sister of a member in one of our wards. She already feels like a member. You know those people that just feel like members and just have a good personality, well that's her. She is awesome and she also came to church. 

Well we had a General Authority come to our mission this week too. Elder Zaballos. He and his wife are super cool. One story that he told was when he was living in Chile. He lived near the coast and there was a hill in the back of his our. One of his kids really wanted to climb the hill and would ask his dad every day. But much like Arizona the sun was hot and not worth climbing in the day. He told his son if he really wanted to climb it he would have to wake up early so they could hike it before it got too hot. Well sure enough his son woke up bright and early and they climbed this hill in the morning. When they got to the top of the hill, to their surprise they found another larger and taller hill beyond the one they just climbed. They were not able to see this bigger hill from their home because of the view and angle they were looking from. His son wanted to climb the next one and he told him they would do it a different day. Well they got back home and he asked them what they had learned from the hike. One of his sons said that he learned they found another hill behind the other one. He explained that this was a good lesson to learn. Sometimes we have to do hard things in our lives to get to the next level and find a high altitude. He applied it to life and finding new view that we can strive to achieve. Sometimes we have to climb a hill to find the next one that's even higher. We are only here to grow and become better so do it! Love you all and strive to achieve new altitudes in your life. 

Daring to eat a scorpian

Family Photo:  I trained Elder Shaw (bottom right).  He trained Elder Guebler (bottom left). Now Elder Shaw is training again, elder Hales (top right) and elder Guebler is training 2 missionaries. (Top left and middle). Elder Pendleton and Elder England.  I'm a great Granddad now. Super cool! 

Don't be a TURKEY!

This week was super good. Conference was super awesome! There was a lot of good stuff talked about. I think my favorite was President Uchtdorf in the priesthood session and President Eyrings about Joy. Both were really good. Well now that we listened to conference we need to not be like turkeys. We talked about turkeys this week in conference. So let me tell ya a little story. There was this group of turkeys and one knew how to fly. His name we will just call Fred. Now Fred wanted everyone to learn how to fly so he started teaching all the other turkeys. The turkeys worked really hard and tried to fly for hours. Finally they learned how to fly. After learning to fly they flew everywhere. They soared to new heights, and went to places they have never experienced before, new views and loved what they had just learned. Well in the end they thanked Fred, had a closing prayer and walked home. Don't be a turkey. There was a lot of good stuff talked about this conference. Do something with that knowledge. It wasn't meant to just up lift us for the day or even the week but actually change our lives. Take what you learned and change your life. Become closer to Christ. Love you all!  

Elder Lange

Power In The Book

So we had an awesome experience this week. We were driving by a house that we have been trying to get into for a while. I saw some one out side and told Elder Mangus to hurry and pull over so we can go talk to him. We got out and walked over there and he wasn't outside anymore but we knocked on the door to see if he would answer. They answered and we went in. It was him and his girl friend who are both less active. We talked about their life and where they were at with religion. They were both pretty set with where they were at. We talked about the Book of Mormon and testified of the truthfulness of it. We left one with them just in case they wanted to read it. And left our number in it. We could tell they needed some peace in their life and promised them that if they wanted peace in their life they could find it through the Book of Mormon. Like it says in the introduction. They both said they probably wouldn't read it but we left it anyways. Well after dinner we got a call from her saying we needed to come back. She was in a rough part in her life and needed our help. Well we went back and she opened up more. She asked for a blessing and it was super good. It was cool to see the power of the Book of Mormon. Even just testifying of it, they can feel the power. The Book of Mormon is true and all 3 of us have a strong testimony of it.

Skinny Tie Gang

Burden Baskets...Leave your burdens at the door

Hey everyone. The mission is super good. This week was super busy. We only had 3 days of proselyting. The rest was a bunch of meetings. We have a bunch more meetings coming up too. We have zone conference this Thursday. A mission tour from a General Authority and a temple trip coming up. But anyways we had stake conference yesterday. Our Stake President talked about Native American burden baskets. So Natives used to carry around baskets to pick berries and fruit and things and then bring them home but they never brought the baskets inside their homes. They wanted to leave the burdens of the world outside the door. Well he told us that we need to leave our burdens at the door. Any burdens that are making our basket heavy, that we have been carrying around for a while. Or any burden that needs to be taken care of. Even if you've been carrying it for years. Let the atonement take care of your burdens. The atonement is very real and can fix everything. We all have burdens we need to leave with Christ. Whether it be jealously, anger, unrepentant sins, etc. I have a very strong testimony of the atonement. Not just being forgiven of our sins but the enabling power of the atonement too. Christ can help us and give us the strength to get through anything. So choose today to leave your burdens at he door. Love you all and always turn towards Christ. 

Elder Lange

Workin as a trio!

Well everyone this week has been super good. We have had so many lessons! It's so nice have a trio. We have a lesson scheduled with someone so we drop them off with a member and have them be their comp and then the other two go out knockin doors or trying to visit I've probably had more lessons this week than any other week in my mission. Well we also put someone on date this week too. She just had her son die so she has been having a hard time lately but we went back over and she said "My family isn't going to be happy with my decision but I don't care. I want to be Mormon because I know it's true" now it's just a matter of teaching her and getting her ready for baptism. She has two grandsons that live with her and they haven't sat in on the lessons yet but both of them came to church all dressed up in whites we dropped them off. They stayed all three hours but we couldn't be there because my comp has pink eye and didnt want to give it to everyone. It's been a super good week though. Hopefully we can just keep up the pace. Miracles happen when you you believe that it can happen. 

Elder Shaw is training again so the 2 on the left are my grand sons. The one in middle left is training and get his comps today. So I became a great grand dad today! 

(In mission terms. Order of training)

Frontier of Faith!

Wow it's been a crazy two weeks! Sorry I missed writing everyone last week. So I'll just tell ya about some of the major things that happened. We had MLC. That's was super crazy. It was like a personal General Conference. We had a general authority come down and talk to us. Elder Pearson. He talked a lot about faith and getting to the next level as a missionary. He explained it as a graph. On the x axis is effort/diligence and on the y axis is attitude/attributes. Some times as missionaries we have a good attitude towards the work and want to do good just have no effort behind it. Or we might have a lot of effort and then it hits 110+ and all of out diligence goes away. Then on the same graph, just a little bit out is what he called the frontier of faith. Beyond the frontier of faith is where all the miracles lie. Too often as missionaries we stop ourselves before we can get beyond the frontier of faith. So he talked about get to the next level as a missionary and getting passed the frontier of faith. So that was super good. Then we had to have a ZTM and train our zone on it. That was super hard. We had to try and make a meeting as good as a general authority. Just doesn't quite measure up, but it was super good. We gave a 30 minute training and an hour training. That is probably my least favorite part about being a missionary is giving training's and I have to give an hour long one at least every month and then some in between for district meetings and things. Well later this week we put 3 people on date! It was super awesome. Especially since we haven't had a person on date in about 7 weeks! But later that week we got transfer news. The mission is changing a lot. Lots of weird stuff happening and tons of people training. I also got transferred! Super lame! I was kind of mad. I'm going back to my last area with Elder Mangus and we are going to be training. It should be a pretty good transfer though. 

We have been eating in and out so much they gave us hats. People just take us out all the time and give us gift cards to go there 

Training our zone

Elder Lange eating with a familiar face

Deven Grange was down in Phoenix this week for work and he and Alec finally connected and he was able to take Elder Lange and his companion out to dinner.

This is a snapchat I (Alec's mom) got from Deven 

Elder Lange, Deven Grange, Elder Carlsen

Stand Ye In Holy Places

Well this week was pretty good! We are have another MLC Friday,tbecause we are having an area Seventy come down. It should be pretty good. Well he highlight of my week was Friday night. We went over to a less active family house. Well we had dinner with them and just talked about the gospel. It's the mom, a son and a daughter. Well at the end we shared a message and talked about doing the simple things in life like church, prayer, read can really go a long way. Well pretty soon they started opening up and they started telling us why they didn't want to go to church and why life was so hard. They felt like God had kind of abandoned them. Well my companion had the prompting to ask if they wanted blessing. They all wanted some. So we gave them blessing a it was just super powerful. They were all crying by the end and thanked us so much. Well after all the blessings were given we gathered in the living room and kneeled in humble prayer. It was one of my best experiences in the mission field. It makes me grateful that I could be called upon by the Lord to act in his name. I wasn't expecting to do that and would of felt so bad if I wasn't worthy to act. Always stand worthy to act when the Lord calls. It says in Alma 8:18. Now it came to pass that after Alma had received his message from the angel of the Lord he returned speedily to the land of Ammonihah. And he entered the city by another way, yea, by the way which is on the south of the city of Ammonihah. I love how it talks about acting speedily. The Lord told him to act and he did. No second thought, no delay, no hesitation just doing the will of the Lord. Always be ready and worthy to be called upon and act in his name!

Good but super busy!

Well everyone this week was super good but super busy. The training at MLC went really good and ZTM also went pretty good. I got rid of one of my comps. He left yesterday. So the work down here is a lot slower. Everyone is nice and will tell you they are going to do things but it's hard to get them progressing by themselves. But... We got an investigator to come to church! I haven't had that happen since I've been down here. The kids name is Eric! Some sisters tracked him out trying to find Spanish speakers. He said he wanted to come and find out what we teach about. Well he came to sacrament and after I started talking to him after. I was wondering what he believed and what his religious back ground was and he didn't really know who Jesus Christ was. So our lessons in church were like temples and family history. I told him to not pay so much attention to what they were teaching but to focus on what he was feeling like. At the end of church he said he really liked it and felt super peaceful and comfortable! It was super cool. We are going see him Thursday. Then another investigator is in a part member family. They are a really cool family. And the stake president is going to start seeing them and working with them! She is gonna get baptized sooner or later! Well that's about the highlight of my week!

Elder Lange

I guess my shoes needed a little polishing

This is our new house.  It is a nice house