Week 56 - Finding Lost Sheep

Hola Everyone: 

This past week was really pretty good.  As I mentioned when I got here, the Bishop has asked that we really focus our time and attention on finding members in this area that have gone inactive.  To let you know how bad it is, there are over 800 people on the records as being members of the Ward and less than 200 are coming every week since I have been here.  I guess it makes a lot of sense, work on finding the Lost Sheep rather than finding new ones to bring into the fold!

Last week while contacting, we did find one new investigator that we are teaching now, his name is Paulo and honestly, he has a lot of questions.  We taught him the 1^st lesson this past week and it took quite a long time to get through the lesson which is alright! He is doing really good, so we will have to see how that goes with him. We have another lesson schedule with him this week. I hope he will really start to progress!

Also, this week while we were out with the Ward members finding the less actives in the area, we found a family that had just stopped going to Church, but wanted to come back.  They have 2 young girls named Erika and Leathi, ages 10 and 11 who are not Baptized, but would like to be so we are working with them and have a date set up with them for Sept 8^th.  We are also hoping that we can get their Dad ready since he already holds the Priesthood, so that he can perform the baptism for his girls.

Other then that, it has really just been a normal week.  This area is really pretty and it is nice to sort of be out of the city for a change!  So, something that also happened this past week.  I was playing with some members and twisted and felt a sharp pain in my knee!  No, not the one I had 2 surgeries on, the other one.  Well, it really didn’t swell up like I thought it would, but it still hurts a little so I guess I will have to take it a little easy to let it heal up.

I love being here in Mexico, the people are great!  I hope everyone has a great week.

Love

Elder Fawcett

Pachuca Soccer Jersey

District Class

Street Market

Catholic Church in Town

The Bulls!!

Around Town

Mountains

Houses are Spaced Out

Week 55 - Stolen Bike!!!

Hola Everyone:  

So, this week has been pretty good!  After first getting here last Monday, the Bishop took us to our apartment and helped us to get moved in a little bit and then he had a meeting with my Companion and I.  He told us that he had assigned members of the Ward to go out with us everyday so that we could get to know the area a little quicker and so we could meet some of the less actives.  Honestly, that has been going pretty well and we have met a few “magic investigators” that way.  A magic investigator is being a person that is not a member of the Church, but is a member of a family that is a less active family.  We have had pretty good luck so far in meeting with less active members and getting them interested in the church again.

In talking to the Bishop, he really wants us to work on reactivating people of the church more than anything in getting this area going again!  There are a lot of inactive members so that is probably what we are going to be spending a lot of our time doing with the Bishop and other active members.

So, something that happened that wasn’t so cool this week was that we were at the Church on Friday studying and as usual, we left our bikes outside which is normally not a big deal since there is a fence around the Church.  When we went out to leave, we found that one of the bikes had been stolen so that means we have to walk until we can find the other bike which we are pretty sure we will find sometime!

Probably the coolest thing from this week was that my Mission President gave my comp and I permission to go back to my old area on Saturday for the baptism of Sergio and Jose!  In the pictures, Sergio is the Father, but it was really cool to get to go back and baptize him after working with him for so long!

 I mentioned last week that my new city of Actopan is a little smaller and we are assigned to work the outskirts of it for the most part which is pretty cool and different from my past areas.  I told you that my new Companion is Elder Maquin from Guatemala, but I don’t remember if I told you that he speaks Mayan! I actually speak better Spanish than him, but I am also picking up some of the Mayan language from him!  Today I spent the day with the AP’s because my Comp had to go to Immigration so that was pretty fun!

I hope everyone has a great week; I love being here in Mexico!

Love 

Elder Fawcett

City of Actopan!

Cool Catholic Church We Will Visit Later

Gotta Love Nacho Libre Corn!

Covered in Mayo and Chili Powder

Elders Solorzano and Fawcett at Serio and Jose's  Baptism

Some of the Family

Sergio's Family

Sergio and Elder Fawcett

Our Area

This Area is a Little Greener!

Lot more Open!

Member's Dog at Lunch

Week 54 - A Really Hard Week!

Hola Everyone:

So honestly, this week wasn’t the best! We were supposed to have a baptism for the Sergio Family, but there were some problems that I won’t go into. So, the date had to be moved to next week. The family was really sad and I was also! They had really been looking forward to the day, but Satan is always there putting obstacles in people’s way so they will have to wait another week.

As for other investigators, we have been working really hard finding people to teach.  We had another lesson with Erika and her daughter and we taught them about the Plan of Salvation.  Erika got really sad during the lesson as I was explaining about spirit prison.  She told us about how her Dad wasn’t a member of the church so she was sad, but then I explained to her about the work that we do in the Temples and what we can do for those who have died without hearing about the Gospel in this life.  She got really happy for that.  The lessons are going really well with them and they should be getting baptized in the next few weeks.

So, I have only been with my kid for 7 weeks, but last night I learned that I was getting transferred today.  Honestly, it was quite a shock since I have only been here for one cycle but the President indicated that he needed me to go and open up another new area.  Honestly, with the success that we are having in this area, that is really hard for me. I have opened up many areas while I’ve been on my mission and I guess I’m pretty good at it and so that’s why they keep having me do it.  

My new area is the City of Actopan which is about 1 hour north of Pachuca.  My new companion is Elder Maquin. He is from Guatemala, speaks Mayan and is just coming to the Area today also. He has been out less than a year and as the senior companion, the President wants me to help him out. I am looking forward to getting to know him and my new area.  I don’t know much about the area yet but it seems to be more of a farming area and the Bishop met us at the Bus Stop as we got here to take us to our house so I guess that is a good sign!

Well, being pulled out of an area after getting it finally established has really been hard on me today, on top of that, I saw my trainer, Elder Castro, at the Bus Stop in Pachuca as I was leaving. He is done with his mission and is headed home tomorrow.  So, all of that has me a little down today but I am hoping that things are only going to get better from here!

I love being a missionary and growing through hard experiences!

Love 

Elder Fawcett 

Members Helped Me with a Coin Collection

Sort of Like the Quarters Back Home

Goodbye Elder Castro!!!

Week 53 - Hump Day!!!

Hola Everyone!

So, this week was pretty good and we worked pretty hard.  Probably just like back at home, it is pretty hot here in Mexico!  This week once again, we did a lot of contacting, met a lot of people and had quite a few discussions. The problem continues to be to find people who are really interested in the Gospel and want to know more than just one discussion.

So probably the highlight of this past week was that it was my Hump Day in the mission.  Really hard to believe that I have actually been away from home for 1 whole year!  As is tradition, I got to burn one of my shirts.  Everyone in my District has been really busy this week so one night this past week me and my kid, Elder Solorzano, celebrated my 1-year anniversary.

So, my Companion and I are starting to work pretty good together but one of the other missionaries in our Ward has been having problems with his knee so that has also been sort of a problem for us.  Elder Warren has been having knee problems which I can sort of relate to from my past and the President wants him to take it easy so we have been doing splits with his Companion so that they can keep their investigators progressing.  It is nice to help but it takes time away from our own work!

As for our investigators, the Sergio family is still doing great and they are scheduled for baptism this Saturday and hopefully there will not be any problems and that will happen.  In addition to them, we have started teaching a Women named Erika who is the wife of one of our members and their daughter.  They really seem to like the church and the lessons are going really well with them so hopefully we will be able to put a date on them soon!

Well, that is pretty much all that happened of interest this week, today we had a BBQ as a District since next week is the end of the cycle.  The Sisters keep wanting us to use the black mask stuff on our faces to clean them up so that is what is on my face in the pictures today.  

I hope everyone has a great week!

Love 

Elder Fawcett  

                                                                              Elder Fawcett's Hump Day

12 Months in the Mission Field

Serving the People of Pachuca

One Year Down

BBQ Today as a District

Elders in my District

One of the Sisters

Getting Ready for the Week

Setting Up Appointments Nice Face Mask!

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