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!"