Week 78 - Death of a Convert!

Hola Everyone:

Well, this week is finally over and I know that is a pretty bad thing to say, but this past week has really been a hard one.  Real de Minas has turned out to be probably my hardest area on my mission.  We almost literally contacted every part of the area and just really didn’t have any success.  The good news came last night late though that we would be taken out!

So today, I got transferred to the other side of Pachuca to an area called Nuevo Hidalgo and my new Companion is Elder Van from Nebraska.  He has only been out for a little under 6 months so I will be continuing his training as a missionary which should be fun!  This new area is close to some of the areas where I have already served in, so I sort of know the general area a little bit and I know that the work is progressing better here.  The best thing is that I am actually being transferred into an area that already has a few existing investigators for a change!

Some bad news I got this past week from Elders Bodegas and George was that Nancy who I taught and baptized in Actopan in October of last year, died!  She was a single mother who had 2 young daughters that she took care of.  When I asked what she died from, Elder Bodegas told me that although she was only 28 years old, she had been taken to the hospital with a lung disease and ended up dying because of that and the fact that she was malnourished.  She was really poor and even when I was there, she gave most of the food she could afford to her daughters.  I guess the good thing is that she got baptized before leaving this life!

Anyway, I am excited to be now working in Nuevo Hidalgo and I am happy to be getting right to work with my new companion!
I love it here in Mexico and for the chance I have to serve the people here as a missionary.  I hope everyone has a great week.

Love 

Elder Fawcett

Nancy at her Baptism Last October

Week 77 - A Long Week!

Hola Everyone:

Well, this week has really been a pretty long one!  I don’t have a lot to write about today because honestly, nothing of interest has really happened. We have pretty much contacted our whole Area without any luck.  So, we are just doing our best to stay busy.  One of the things we have started to really concentrate on this past week has been in trying to find less active people in the Ward or people who are on the records that we have never seen.

One guy we have been visiting a lot is Rafa who is like 35 years old and is a really cool guy.  We have been talking to him a lot but we have not been able to get him to come back to Church yet.  This week, we are planning to visit with him again a few times and hopefully we can get him to come back to Church again!

Honestly, that is pretty sad but he is really the only person worth talking about this week.  Everyone else that we have tried to teach or contact is simply just not progressing at all.  This is the last week of the Cycle so I am really hoping that the President closes this Area back up because the work is really just not progressing at all here!

Well, I hope everyone has a great week!

Love 

Elder Fawcett

Contacting in My Area

My Comp's 1 Year Anniversary!

Taking it Easy on P-Day

Glad I Brought my Hammock from Home!

Our Home Owner's Dog

Looks Meaner than He Is!!

A Member's Axe Thing!

Got My New Glasses

Elders West and Gomez next to our Area

Elder Fawcett and Gomez

Week 76 - Next One Married!!!

Hola Everyone:

Well, this past week has honestly been pretty slow again!  I thought that after the holidays, things would pick up a little but it is just a really hard area to find people to teach in!  I talked to the Mission President today about our Area and I told him how hard we have been working with not a lot of success. He said that he would pray about it, but he knew that the Area had been closed in the past because of lack of success but wanted to see if my Comp and I could do anything here!

Probably the most interesting person we contacted this past week was a lady named Rosio. She seemed really cool and everything started out great! But as we sat down with her and started to teach her, we soon found out that all she wanted to do was bash the Book of Mormon. So needless to say, that didn’t go very far.

Some good news for the week though is that the medication I got from the hospital last week for my pink eyes seemed to work pretty well!  My eyes are feeling much better and they are not puffy and red anymore!  Also, as part of Dia di Los Reyes last week, we were eating some of the bread that they eat and I found a ring in my piece!  So that is supposed to mean that out of the group eating that ring of bread, I will be the next one married!  Ha Ha!!  

Well, I hope everyone has a great week!

Love 

Elder Fawcett

Ring I Found in the Bread!

Week 75 - Día de Los Reyes

Hola Everyone:

So this week has been pretty much just another normal week without anything too interesting happening.  It has been a little cold here, so I have been wearing my coat a little. But honestly not too bad.  Teaching here is honestly really hard because the people just seem to be too busy with work to have time to stop and listen to our message.  We have been really working hard trying to find people to teach but unfortunately, we just don’t really have anyone yet that is starting to progress.

On New Year’s, we were invited over to the Natalia Families home for dinner.  They are a less active family in the Ward but we had a great time visiting with them and had some pretty good pizza.  As for the rest of New Years, there was nothing really too exciting to report. There were a few parties around the city on New Year’s Eve, but we steered clear of all of those! 

For the rest of the week, things honestly were just pretty normal as we went around trying to contact people to teach.  I guess the one interesting thing to report was that I somehow got pink eye in both eyes. So I had to go to the hospital to get a prescription to try and clean it up.  I look pretty funny with swollen pink eyes though!

Yesterday we were invited over to the Olmos Families home for dinner to celebrate Día de Los Reyes (Day of the Kings) which is technically today.  It was really fun to be with their family and they gave us pan la rosca de reyes which is the bread that they eat which has the baby Jesus in it.  I have a picture of the bread in this week’s pictures.

Well, that is about all for this week, I am really loving the time I have to serve as a missionary here in Mexico!  I can’t believe how fast the time is going!

Love 

Elder Fawcett

Cristo Rey in Pachuca

Dinner with the Olmos Family

Pan La Rosca de Reyes

Top of My Area Looking Down

Our Desks!