My last letter to my mission president before he leaves!

So we are getting a new mission President by the end of the week and the one we have now asked us to email him the best thing we learned on our mission so here it is. Our area is doing great too. We found 2 new investigators this week and put them both on date for July. Hopefully they can keep their date and get baptized. We are doing really good but the heat is killer! Haha love you all!

I think the best thing that I ever learned on my mission was the day I learned I needed to love the Lord. I was out about 2 months and was having a ton of success and seeing a ton of people. I was super tired and fell asleep all the time. I would fall asleep during studies, in the car, at lunch, etc. I wasn't used to this kind of work. I didn't expect missionary work to be so hard. It drained me physically, spiritually and mentally. It was kicking my butt and Elder Meza just wanted to keep on pushing harder. We were on one of our last lessons we had planned for the night and we arrived at the house. When we got there I was complaining and asked Elder Meza if we could just go home. I already knew what he was going to say so I tried to rephrase the question. I said or just not see so many people. Maybe we could slow down. He just looked over at me and said "Who do you love more, yourself or the Lord?" Then jumped out of the truck to go into the lesson. It hit me so hard and I don't even remember what we talked about in the lesson. All I could focus on was who I really did love more. From that day on I think was when I really became the missionary I was trying so hard to become. I put all of my "needs" behind me and worked for the Lord. I soon found out how selfish I was. I thought of myself all the time. I wanted people to look at me and what I was going through. Very rarely I looked outward and helped out others before myself. I love the Lord and everything He has done for me. It's all I can do to try and repay Him as much as I can. This is one of the biggest things I've learn on my mission and I'm so glad I did! 

Soup-a-hot

It was so hot this week. You could literally put soup in your car and it would cook. It was 122 yesterday from 3 until 6 and its 110 when we go to bed at 10:30... It's too hot for people to live down here. Well anyway this week was super good. We went to the temple this week because President and Sister Sweeney are leaving in 2 weeks! It's so sad. I love them so much! It was super good to be able to go to the temple though. I love going to the house of the Lord. So this week we went to a bunch of less actives houses and taught them but at each of these house I felt he spirit so strong in each of these house. It made me so happy to see them trying to work back to activity and the temple. Something that stuck out to me a lot this week was the gospel truly works for everyone. There isn't one soul on his earth that the gospel doesn't work for. The are people that are excommunicated, lost hold of the iron rod, became bitter, or even just hit rock bottom. The cool thing is some are rich some are poor. Some have everything you could ever dream for, but want something so much more. The gospel brings so much peace and happiness into our lives. The gospel is real and there is no doubt about it. We are all on different gears of spirituality and growing at different paces. Heavenly Father doesn't care where you are at in life. He doesn't care how far down in a rut you are. He just wants to see all of his children coming back to him. Even if it's a slow process, it works. I love to see people turning towards Christ knowing it can change their lives. The gospel works and I have a STRONG testimony of it. You can always lean on the Lord. Love you all. Take care and hold to the iron rod.

Check out the temperature on our dash!  122 degrees

Finally got one of these corn sticks.  I've wanted one my whole life haha

This is only part of the mission, he had to break it up so we could all fit in the temple session. 

Valley Yo!

Hey everyone! This week was super good. We had ZTM (where we train the zone) we had to give like 3 trainings because they switched the schedule on us the night before and we didn't want anyone complaining that we gave them a training the night before. We had like half the mission at this MLC because we are getting a new mission president and they want a lot of leaders. So we had a lot of people we could of given trainings to but it switched the night before so that was super stressful. Anyways then then 2 days later we had transfers and I thought I was going to stay in my area and stay there until my last comp went home. He only had one more transfer. But I got the news Thursday night at 8:30 and had to be packed and ready to leave by morning. It was super sad. President even told me he wanted me up there for 2 more transfers. But here I am... down in the valley... It's supposed to be record breaking heat next week. Like 117-120 Saturday and Sunday, in June! It literally feels like a hot blow dryer. The work down here is crazy though. Everything down here is crazy. Every time you take off from a stop light it feel like nascar. And if you don't speed up fast enough everyone honks at you and some flip you off. It's pretty stressful. There are a ton of people to talk to down here though! You can LITERALLY preach the gospel everywhere. That's the only thing I like down here. Oh I forgot to tell you where I am. I'm just north of Central Phoenix. There are apartment complexes down here that are called the slaughter house. If that's not freaky I don't know what is. It's pretty much like a prison complex. You walk in and there are only 4 places to get out once you're in. Little hall ways that are like 20 yards long and all four sides. It's just a giant square with huge walls around every side. You really have to gain strength from the Lord everyday down here. Lots of faith that you will be taken care of. In the heat mostly, because it's killing me. Wish me luck that I don't melt this week. I think it's super cool that faith is the first principle of the gospel. Faith in Jesus Christ. If you don't have faith then you can't grow in any other aspect of the gospel. You have to base your faith in Jesus Christ off of everything. Oh yeah, my comp is Elder Mangus. He is super awesome. We get a long super well and he wrestled too. He is from Billings Montanta. Wish me luck! 

Elder Lange

114 Degrees

Hey everyone this week was pretty crazy. We started off with a pretty normal week. We did a lot of contacting people we needed to get in touch with (less actives, referrals, etc.) it was super good. We are going to start slowly getting back some members to church that the ward has been trying to contact over a year now. Somethings are just falling into place. We are just meeting people that we haven't been able to contact and finding people that want to have us back over to their house. I'm not saying these people are golden or anything but they are fine with us coming back over and talking to us. We tried getting as much work as we could in during the week because we went down to the valley Friday. We drove down there Thursday and had MLC the next day. It was pretty fun. It was a special MLC so President invited people he thought would benefit from being there not just Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders. We had 91 missionaries in the meeting. We had assigned seats and all of the Mission Leadership Council sat on the front row while I was the only one sitting on the second row... I thought it was kind of weird but I got to sit by Elder Shaw so that was fun. It was good to see him again. He is training so we got a four generation picture. Elder Meza, Me, Elder Shaw and then Elder Gubler. That was pretty cool to see because most of the time at least one missionary goes home before they can get to the fourth generation. Anyways, the meeting went super well and now the hard part is just taking it back to our zone and training them on it. It's always super hard because I'm nowhere close to where President is as a teacher. But it should go pretty well if we plan well enough. So we got out of the meeting and went out side and it was so hot! I was dying and then figured out why. It was 114! You can literally get blisters touching the wrong things. We got back up to the mountains and it was still 90. Arizona is heating up real fast. We got back up at around 10 so we just went back to the house. The next day we had this triathlon in Show Low and all the missionaries in our zone helped do water stations. It was so crazy. Some people will literally just take like 5 cups and dump it on them and keep running with out even looking back. Then other will yell at you asking if you have Gatorade and bananas and things. They just run by and get everything they need and keeping on going. It was so intense. We stay and help with that for about 7 hours. They were all super grateful for our help. I just it at least plants a seed in them. They all you can really pray for in some people. Some people we meet are super rude and yell at you to get off their property and all you have to do is kindly wave and say "sounds good thanks, have a good day". With some people all you can really do is just hope with your good attitude and your kindness it rubs off on them and they might think to them selves, you know those guys aren't that bad after all. Just because they aren't ready today doesn't mean they won't be ready in the future. It's like a grape vineyard. As farmers go through, they only pick the ripe grapes and leave the other ones there to ripen. If they aren't ready today they sure will be sometime down the road. Just finding the ripe grapes is the trick. Well love you all! Sorry I don't have an interesting story this week. Love you all! Stay on the straight and narrow! 

Four generation picture which is me with my trainer and the elder I trained and the elder he is training. Right to left: Elder Gubler, Elder Shaw, Elder Lange and Elder Meza  

Arizona Cactus 

They added me to a bike area...just kidding haha

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!" 

Find your "WHY"

This week went pretty well. We finally got in contact with our investigator that was in he hospital. We had an interview with her and she has a baptismal interview and passed. We will be having her baptism on the 28th! Elder Ashcraft and I made a goal to have a baptism every month we are together. It might be kind of hard but I think we can get it done if we are diligent and obedient. Other than that we are just trying to do a lot of finding and sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't. We either have super good days or just not so great days. There seems to be no middle ground. But the good days definitely surpass the not so good ones. It's just really hard to find people prepared in our small towns. Other than that everything is going pretty well. We are trying to do a lot of contacting with new people and weed out the ones that aren't prepared. We are finding people and they seem pretty prepared and want to take the lessons and things like that but when we schedule a time to come back something always ends up happening to them and they can't meet. This has happened at least a couple times with a few people. I can't tell if this means we need to keep trying or if they really aren't prepared. 

So we were asked to read 1 Nephi for our up coming zone conference. While I was reading I came across the realization that Nephi knew his "why". Laman and Lemuel didn't know their "whys". This is what made it so hard for them. They wanted to do what was right and even tried but complained the whole time. They went back to the city because their father told them to but they didn't want to. Nephi knew the best why and that is faith in Jesus Christ and what he did for us. He wanted to do all he could for our savior. He even search for his "why" to make it stinger and deepen it. "Whys" don't just come from living the gospel and doing what's right. They come from honest hard pondering and praying. I've seen so many good missionaries that are doing what's right but have no idea why they are out on a mission. But like Laman and Lemuel, when they get called to do something hard, they murmur and complain. Nephi searched for his "why" in chapter 11. He wanted to truly know for him self what God wanted. He wanted to deepen his "why". So he got down and prayed. He pray earnestly and hard. He found his why and worked with it. He deepened his "why" each day. So I challenge each of you to find your "why" of living the gospel and gospel standards. It's just going to get hard to live the standards as time goes on. Satan won't stop working on us and he will make us think "the gospel isn't for you", "the gospel is old fashioned", "the gospel is boring or doesn't really work". Satan can tempt us with so many things and this is when we need our why. Our firm foundation in Christ and what he did for us. What he can do for us now. How much he can help us in our everyday lives and when we realize how great of debt we are in to Him, then we will notice how much we need to try and repay him as much as we can. Then we will understand why we live the gospel and how great of a blessing it is to have it in our lives. He only asks of so little for how much he did for us! Stay true to the iron rod! I love you all. Sorry I don't have much to say about how the missionary work is going this week. But here are a couple of pictures 

Arizona sunburn

Elder Lange and Elder Ashcraft just chillin

Elder Lange and Elder Ashcraft

A blurry picure of where we live 

Alec's mom talking:  This was send to me in a text the other night.  Eating cupcakes after dinner, I love how Elder Lange has three on his plate!  Typical. 

The three amigos!

Hey everyone! This week was pretty good. It's started off with a p day that wasn't really a p day. We had to help an investigator move out of an apartment by the next day. She was down in the valley in the hospital so that wasn't very fun. But Tuesday was pretty fun. We started the day off with a ton of service in our area and helping out some others. When we were driving home we thought we would take the dirt road and shoot somethings out of the truck while driving. Well we saw a squirrel and then later on we were skinning a squirrel for lunch haha. We got pretty good with our sling shots. Enough about messing around though. The next day we had exchanges with the APs. Of course my comp doesn't know the area so I had to plan out a super productive day by myself. The day went super good though! We found 3 new investigators. They were all super open to religion and were open to our message. They each had some dumb concerns that didn't really matter like why did you guys practice polygamy back in the day and not now. We told them that the Book of Mormon would answer that question. We read them Moroni 10:3-5. It's the promise in the Book of Mormon that says if you pray with a sincere heart really wanting to know if it's true then you will get an answer. They were kind of confused at first but then we explain that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion, meaning if the book isn't true then nothing else is. But if it is true then those small concerns that they have don't matter. We know that the book is from God and that's the way he wanted the gospel at the time. We of course bore our testimonies of the Book of Mormon and told them to read it and ask if it's true. They all were really excited to read it and find out to know. He told me I'm doing super good and he admires me but I think they are payed the big bucks to tell you that. Because I can't see it. He told me some things I could work on as a missionary which was good because I want to grow as much as I can. And he also gave me some things I could do to help with my companion. He's kinda hard to work with sometimes but he's a super good guy. Well after we had a pretty good day with the AP we took him into Show Low to meet up with some other elders. The next day Wednesday, was ZTM or Zone Training Meeting. We had to plan a 2 1/2 hour meeting and give an hour long training on the atonement. It was a really cool training. I learn a lot about the atonement myself. We also had to train on deeming your "why". What I talked about a couple emails back. Anyways it was super hard because we were supposed be taking turns during our training but he kept forgetting what he was supposed to do next and just sat there and looked at me. It was one of the most awkward things of my life. Our whole zone was just staring at us and I had to keep the training going. The rest of the meeting went good though. The next day we weekly planned forever and got some goals that we want to do this week and then later that night we went to fathers and sons. I didn't get any pictures but it was really fun. There were some non members but it didn't really go anywhere so that's a bummer. We got back Saturday and had a bunch of member present lessons. They want us to be at 90% member present lessons. Which means when we get a lesson we have to have a member there with us so they can keep in contact with them and fellowship them when we are in other wards. Anyway Sunday was good too. It's kind of weird, I used to hate Sunday's but now they have become a delight to me Sundays are always so good now. If you truly try and get as much as you can out of Sunday's and not just go because you are "supposed to" they will become a delight. It's so fun going to church when they are a delight. Our week was pretty good all in all. Just a little bit crazy and stressful. Love you guys. Keep on the straight and narrow! 

A picnic on P day 

Our lunch Tuesday haha