Week 52 - It Has Been One Year!

Hola Everyone:

Well, this past week has been really good but pretty much just another normal week down here in Pachuca Mexico.  My Companion Elder Solorzano is starting to work a little harder everyday so that is taking a lot of stress off of me!  Pretty much this week we once again did a lot of contacting, setting up appointment and having a lot of them not show up.  We have taught quite a few people lessons but most of them so far have just not been that interested.

The Serio Family is still doing really well and they are coming to Church so their baptismal date for August 10th is still looking really good.  It is good to have at least some investigators that are progressing towards baptism pretty well!

As far as highlights for the week, probably the biggest 2 that I had were getting to know my new Mission President and his Wife a lot better through interview and today, having to get together again with my MTC group to go back to immigration for our new Visas.  
President and Sister Maldonado are definitely different from my previous President!  They are really new and are still learning the ropes but I can already tell that having a native President is going to be different.  Although I think that our house is really pretty nice, when they visited use, they were worried that it was in sort of a bad neighborhood and would like us to get something better!  Unfortunately, they don’t realize that this is the better part of the city but I guess they will learn!  As for my first interview, it went pretty well and we talked a lot about my family back home.

So, the second highlight was the fact that today I got to get together with my MTC group and go back to immigration and renew our yearly VISA.  Not only was it great to see all of them, it is officially my one-year mark on the mission this week!

As for my pictures this week, I wanted to show you some of the outskirt parts of my area!  Also, I have not told you before but the Zone Leader share our Ward so we do a lot of splits with them.  One day, the sisters gave us some stuff to try on our faces to clean them up a bit!!

Anyway, I hope all is going great at home for everyone, I love being a missionary and serving the people of Mexico.

Love 

Elder Fawcett

Outskirts of Our Area

Elders Fawcett and Solorzano Tracting

Streets of Our Area

Cleaning Mask!!

Some of My MTC Group

Elder Fawcett with the AP's

Elder Fawcett and Sister Fagatoa

Week 51 - Filling the Font by Bucket!!!

Hola Everyone:

So, this week seems like it has been really long and hard and I have been trying to work really hard.  I say I have been trying to work hard because honestly my Companion is still trying to figure out if he really wants to be out here or not so most of the time although he is with me, I am the one doing all the work!

The best thing about this past week was that we had Naomi’s baptism on Saturday and that was really cool but was pretty stressful for me.  So, I got to the Church at 10 am on Saturday and didn’t leave until about 5 pm. I had to clean the font, get the boiler turned on and working, then I had to fill it up by buckets and after the baptism I had to empty it by bucket.  It was a lot of work but was really worth it.  Naomi was originally found by the Sister missionaries that were here.  We taught her most of the lesson’s but I invited the Sister’s back for her baptism.  In the Stake, they have EFY leaders for the youth and Naomi asked her EFY leader to baptize her which is really good since they will still be here long after we have transferred out.

As for the rest of the week, we have spent a lot of time trying to contact people and visit the inactive people in the area. We are still working with the Serio family and things are looking good for them being baptized on August 10th.  They are coming to church every week and the lessons are going well so things should be good with them!   One of the nights as we were getting home, the CO2 detector in our house went off and we couldn’t figure out what was wrong so rather than sleeping there and possibly not waking up, we called out Zone Leaders and we went over to their house to sleep for the night.  Let me tell you that the floor was great the sleep on!!!  We aired out the house and the CO2 detector has not gone off again so we are watching it and keeping the windows open. 

While we were with our Zone Leaders, a member asked us to come over to their store and get some things to eat.  They own an OXXO gas station that is really popular here in Mexico and when we got there, they gave us a ton of junk food to eat like pizza, cookies, Coke and that sort of stuff.  Needless to say, I was on a sugar high when we left there!

Well, that is about all for this week, I Love being a missionary and being here in Mexico.

Love

Elder Fawcett

Elders Fawcett and Solorzano with Naomi

Naomi's Baptism

Naomi and EFY Members

Naomi and Members

Eating at the OXXO

Walking the Streets of Pachuca

Week 50 - The Tree of Life

Hola Everyone:

So, this past week has been pretty normal and we have been working pretty hard with our investigators. This week we have Naomi’s baptism scheduled for Saturday at 3 in the afternoon and we are pretty excited about that! Some of the other investigators that we are working with are a Dad and his son, Sergio and Jose. Sergio and his wife just barely got married and his wife is a member already so things have gone pretty smooth with them. We put down a baptismal date of August 10 for them and they are progressing really well.

Another person we are working with is Alzaicain. He is a young guy that we met and have been teaching. He has used the internet to search about the anti-church stuff so when we teach him, he always has a bunch of random questions about things like why there are horses mentioned in the Book of Mormon and stuff like that. Honestly, it is pretty hard teaching him since I am the oldest missionary and have to basically answer all of the questions. I have found that every day I have to study like crazy to figure out how to answer all of his strange questions and although I am learning a lot, it is really hard a lot of days! We are hoping to get him over all of the anti-stuff and get him progressing but we will have to see!

As far as being a “Dad” goes, I am still working my hardest with my companion Elder Solorzano. He really has a hard time with the rules and he really hates the fact that I make him live by them every day. I am still hoping that he progresses more but honestly a lot of days it feels like I am having to drag him along while trying to do the work!

This week as a Ward, we had a really neat activity on the “Tree of Life”. We had a Christmas tree with lights on it and then decorated it with pictures of our families. We tied a rope to the tree and wound it though out the church, tying it to door handles and stuff. Then people were blind folded and held onto the rope while trying to navigate their way to the tree with distractions being all around them. It was a really cool activity and the members and investigators had a good time. Sorry I am not sending pictures of the activity today; my camera SD card got a virus so none for today!

That’s it for this week. I love being a missionary and serving the people of Mexico every day. 

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Fawcett

Lehi's Vision of the Tree of Life

Week 49 - Meeting President and Sister Maldonado

Hola Everyone,

Hot!! This week down here in good ol’ Mexico has been really hot and quite tiring to be honest. We have been working hard with just a little bit of success, but we haven’t stopped trying. We have done A LOT of contacting and tracting this week like normal, but the heat drains you pretty fast.

As far as investigators go, we have been going through our Area Book to look for investigators. My companion and I found a 15-year-old girl named Naomhi. She is getting baptized on the 20^th of July, so we are super excited for that. The other investigators that we have are progressing really slow but we are continuing to work with them!

Also, this week, we had our first Zone Conference with our new Mission President and his wife. Their names are President and Sister Maldonado and they are natives of Mexico. They seem like great people and I look forward to working with them and getting to know them.  Although I have been told that "native" Mission Presidents are strict on some things like drinking Coke, so far he has not made any changes to the rules!

Training is going great and I’m doing the absolute best  that I can to be a great “DAD” to Elder Solórzano. He is getting the hang of things and we are truly working hard.

Sorry for the short letter this week. I don’t have a lot of time today because we are so busy. I love being a missionary in Mexico and serving the people here.
Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Fawcett

Zone Conference With New President!

Our Zone With President /Sister Maldonado

Me and My Companion

Week 48 - It Is Hard Being a Dad!!!

Hola Everyone: 

This last week has really been a busy one as I was transferred into a new area and also became a “Dad” with my new Companion Elder Solorzano. I have learned that training someone is not very easy. I have to teach the rules, plan the day, etc... I have to plan everything. It certainly has made me appreciate my trainer, Elder Castro more!  We have been working pretty hard. With Elder Solorzano being a new missionary, he’s trying to adjust and figure out if this is where he really wants to be. So, it’s been difficult because it is not easy going on a mission and I think to some degree he is still trying to figure out if this is where he wants to be.  I am doing my best with him and working him hard although he really does have a hard time getting up in the mornings and I have to pull him out of bed every day for companion study! 

Also, I want to tell you a little bit about my new Area.  If you use Google Maps and look up the Pachuca Football Museum, you can get a pretty good picture of what my new Area is like!  In comparison to my last few Areas, this Area is really nice and is a lot richer! Also, the people here are a lot more receptive to the Gospel and right now we have 5 investigators that I will tell you more about next week, but we have a baptismal date for one of them of the 20th of this month. But we are working at it and working hard opening up this new area. Our Ward has about 150 active members and they are really great people. 

I also have been teaching my Companion how to ride a bike. He didn’t know how to before he got here, so it's been interesting and fun watching him and teaching him how to do it. He’s getting the hang of it slowly and this week when he got on the bike, he had a drunk man grab hold of it and was yelling for five pesos. I was a little ahead of him and so my Companion was yelling “Help” to me because he didn’t know what to do. We gave the guy five pesos and he left us alone and we went on our way! 

Today for P-Day, as a District, we went to the Pachuca Futbol Museum which is really pretty cool.  Soccer is really big here in Mexico so it was cool to see the museum.  Also this past week, President and Sister Kimball went home and it was sad to see them leave!

So that was basically my week. We are working hard and I’m doing my best to be a good trainer. I am grateful for the opportunity to train and for being a missionary.  I love it and love serving the people of Mexico. Have a great week! 

Love, 

Elder Fawcett 

Meeting My New Missionary

Proud New Dad!

Elders Fawcett and Solorzano

President and Sister Kimball with New Missionaries and Trainers

Pachuca Futbol Museum