The spirit should do the converting, not the missionaries!

This week was great! We had a baptism of an investigator that we have been working with for a while. She got sick and was in the hospital for a couple of weeks so we couldn't contact her. She finally got out and we got a hold of her. We had to move her date back a week but we got her baptized! Earlier this week we had a lesson with her on prayer and filled out her baptism info. So we got the whole record filled out and got into our lesson on prayer. At the end I asked her how she got here. She had told us before that she used to be super anti Mormon and turned her whole family against Mormons. Which is why no one has supported her. She said a couple years back she had an impression she needed to check out our church. So she asked a neighbor she lived by about us and she claims that all the neighbor would tell her is "you need to talk to the missionaries". She thought it was really odd that they wouldn't just answer the question. Fast forward to 3 years down the road to present time. She got the same feeling just even stronger this time. And a lot of hard life situations made her more open to meeting with us. So she drove to our stake center and asked someone to talk about the church that happened to be there. It just so happened to be our stake president. He called us and told us to call her. We called her and set up an appointment. Our first few appointments she was really closed off and skeptical of everything, but she slowly opened up as we kept meeting with her. So that brings us up to the day we were filling out her baptism info. She said that the thing that really made her want to join wasn't our teaching or the ward members. At first I kind of felt bad, like I wasn't a good teacher and she didn't really need us. She said it was the spirit that really pulled her into the church. Well after this happened I thought about it for a long time. I felt like I was a bad teacher and I needed to change. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized this is what we should want. We want our investigators converted to the gospel, ready to listen to the spirit and the promptings it has. Just like in the missionary broadcast we just had. The spirit is the one that should be converting, not us missionaries. This took me a couple days to figure out but once it clicked I was so happy! We had someone that I truly knew without a doubt was converted to the gospel and not us, the missionaries. This is how all our investigators should be. Willing to say it wasn't the missionaries that converted them but it was the spirit, the true converter. She is super awesome and I'm so glad she was able to be in tune with the spirit and ready to listen to its witness of the truthfulness of this church. I'm sure it's going to take a while to get used to our church since everything is new to her, not to mentions she was anti too, but I'm sure she will be a great new member to the ward.

This is her service dog, so this is what my Sundays are like haha :)

Kami Empey. She has seizures so she has to have a service dog. Elder Watts helped teach her mostly so he came to her baptism. (Front row Elder Watts, Kami Empey, Elder Lange,  Back row Elder Ashcraft)

Elder Lange's mom talking:  A member named Janette Larsen texted me one night and asked if she could get my meatball recipe.  I knew without a doubt Elder Lange had asked her to make him barbecue meatballs.  They were his absolute favorite meal.  So here he is eating a memorial day dinner made especially for him!  He is literally being catered to down there!  And she also mentioned that "so many people here love Elder Lange so much!"