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