Happy Halloween!!

Hola,
It has been a great week here in Mexico.  I really cant complain about the weather!!Sounds like it has been pretty crazy up there but that's cool that you will be having a warm Halloween.  It was pretty wild this week because we have been changing a lot of things up, working more with members and stuff like that.  I really like working with the members, because we get to help strengthen their testimonies and baptize their friends..Its like two birds with one stone. 
 

 We have brought our ward mission leader out of inactivity and we plan to have a lot of success in the month of November.  Tuesday and Wednesday I was a little stressed out because we have Elder Benjamin de Hoyos of the 70 coming to our zone conference this next week and the President needs everything to be perfect.  So we are just working our butts off with that right now.  I am excited for it!  This time we only have to conduct and not teach anything.  It should be good training.  We've made an appointment with the whole zone this Wednesday to clean the church.

I have a testimony that the Lord can really comfort us and give us guidance,  I had to turn to him with all this stuff that we are doing and he has shown me how I should do it.  The lord gives us weaknesses so we can be humble . . . yep, that's important!!!
 

Here in Constitution, we put a baptismal date with Suzana.  She is awesome and loves the church, she is one of the oldest people I have taught, she is like 85ish, I am not really sure her age but I know she is really old.   

Other than that not a ton going on, trying to help everyone stay positive,  I guess that's whats important no? I love you all!!    Have an awesome Halloween!
Con Muchísimo amor,
Elder Joe Fuell 

Do I really talk with an accent?

Hola,
It has been an awesome week down here, and it sounds like you have all had a great week up there.  I remember that in my first year I really missed all the fall colors and stuff because here it is always in spring mode, but this year I feel normal.  I really don't think too about it much.  We don't have pumpkins here, that I have seen, so I bought some oranges and drew some faces on them ha ha.  I stay as festive as I can.  I think I am going to be a missionary for Halloween, what do you think?

I am sorry to hear about brother Warner.  He was a great man, I have a lot of memories working in his yard, planting tress, watching them die and then pulling them out again and then planting new ones in his yard in the same place!  Ha ha!!! It was a cycle that lasted for years.  I am sure he is busy working on the other side knowing him.

This week we had a leak in the house.  I was stressing out, because it was leaking a lot of water,  and I thought if only I could call Dad and talk to him he would know what to do and he could help me out. I said a quick prayer, did some stuff, and fixed it.  It was quite the miracle!!

While all of this was going on Pdte Valadez called us and asked us if we could give a training session to the members who took the missionaries to the change reunion.  It was 10 at night and the change reunion was at 9 in the morning so we planned something up rapidly and went to bed.  The training session went really well...We used the talk by Elder Nelson.  "Ask the missionaries".  It went really well and we have heard that a lot of members have put into practice what we taught.

I spent most of this week in Mirasoles, because they pulled both of the missionaries out of there and I had to show the two new missionaires the new area and help get them all organized.  It was quite the job but it went well and now they have there feet on the ground and can start working.  Yesterday the President told us that we are going to be changing a lot of things up in the mission.  That this stuff was instruction from the First Presidency.  We are going to be working a lot more with the members and we are not going to go on so many interchanges or have so many training sessions.  He said he feels that everyone now is a lot more aware of the things they need to do.  I was so excited for this change!! Even though these last couple months have been super difficult doing all that stuff, I have learned so much and I know I am going to value it for all my life!!  We have 4 new zone leaders after this last cambio (change).  I feel bad that they didn't or don't get to have this opportunity but its all good. 

I am glad to hear that you are all doing well.  Do I really talk with a Mexican accent? (He asked this question cause this past week we got a tape with Joe speaking to us) (AND yes, he has quite the accent and had a hard time speaking in English.  It was great to hear his voice.....We all enjoyed it so much!)


Con muchísimo amor,
Elder Joe Fuell

Everything is perfect here!

 The Oillataguerre`s ( A senior couple who serves in Mexico City with the missionaries) and Joe

Hola,
Wow, what a week here in Mexico! It has been really hot, and I am a little burnt but still not as burnt as my companion ha ha.  First off neither I nor my companion have changes. I will be staying here for 5 more weeks minimum, because my companion goes home this change.  I will probably be here until December.  This will be 6 months in this area.  I had 6 monts on the other side of the metro and now six months on this side of the metro ha ha.

Well Elder Stauffer and I started to change a lot of things because we needed more time to work in our area, so we adjusted our schedule and we had a very good week in the area and in the zone.
Wednesday I went on intercambios(exchanges) with Elder Ruiz from Chihuahua.  It was really fun.  He is a really good elder, really serious, so I helped him to liven up a bit and we had a good time working our area.  We put a baptismal date with Kristina.  She is awesome!!!  She has a lot of trials in her life right now' she is getting divorced and her kids are doing bad things but she has found a lot of hope through the gospel for herself and her family.

I was told to open my mouth.....How am I doing?

Thursday my companion and I worked together and we found this other Christian guy named Angel.  He is super ready to receive the gospel.  He invited us in and had lots of questions for us, about Joseph smith and prophets.  We had given him a pamphlet and he had read through it two times before we came to visit him.  It was pretty cool, and his wife made us sandwiches too.  He says he feels like he should pray to God, to know if this is true, I am pretty sure he has already done it.  We have an appointment with him on Thursday.

I went on intercambios with Elder Stevens from Spanish Fork Utah.  He is a real cowboy and has lots of cows in Utah.  He was a lot of fun to work with and we found a lot of new people that day.

Friday night we had a zone meeting where we talked about the difference of "being a missionary" and "going on a mission".  It went really well and I believe the elders left edified. 

Saturday I worked in Iztapalapa, the center of the center, with Elder Cruz.  It is one of the best areas in the mission.  We taught this crazy guy..... I am serious he was pretty crazy!  At one point I thought he was going to kill us and at another point I thought he was going to kiss us.  We left at the high point of the lesson so I hope he progresses.

This week we had our last zone meeting of district leaders of the change. Elder Brito shared his testimony.  I am going to miss him a ton.  It always feels weird when one of my companion goes home.  I am going to miss him a ton, we had a lot of fun together.  Elder Brito thought that I would have changes too so he brought a family from Mirasoles who wanted to say good bye to me.  They gave me a cool cowboy shirt with two roosters fighting on the front and back, it is pretty dang cool.

Everything is perfect here!! I am glad to hear that you are all doing well, thanks for the letter, they´re always great.  have a great week,
Con Muchísimo Amor,
Elder Joe Fuell

Spiritual Marathon!!!!!! (pics)

Zone leaders and the Oillataguerre`s(Senior Couple on the left) and President (Right)

Hola,
It has been another Amazing week down here in Mexico, let me tell you why:
I will start off by General Conference, it was awesome!  I cant believe all the awesome things that are going on in the world right now!  And now the missionaries are going to come even younger!! I am stoked!  It is so cool.  I learned so much.  When we got done with conference I felt like I had run a spiritual marathon.  It was good and we had a lot of investigators that came and I know that every talk they heard helped them.  It was also really cool to see a lot of my converts at the stake center.  I am so impressed with them they are all turning into little missionaries.  Just about all of my converts brought a friend to general conference.  One of my friends, Elder Andersen from South Salt Lake made me a disk of general conference yesterday so now we can listen to it for the next six months. it is going to be awesome.
I went on intercambios this week with Elder Reyes.  He is new and from Guatemala and is a great missionary.  He gets downtrodden a bit so I decided I would show him how to have fun on the mission.  We must have found 24 new people that day and we had a blast. We where doing whatever crazy thing we could do to get the peoples attention to listen to us.  I even wrote a rap in Spanish,  it is pretty good I am not going to lie.

This week President called us and asked us if we would go give a blessing to Elder Cruz that has health problems and would be returning to his home the next day.  I have known Elder Cruz for a long time, he had had cancer before and now it came back.  He asked the President if Elder Stauffer and I could come to give him the blessing because we were his friends.  It was an honor and an experience I will never forget. The spirit was really strong.

This Monday is going to be my preparation day.  I don't know if I will leave or not but if I leave I will let you know.  If I stay, I have some families in mind for Christmas stuff that you could send.


Joe and Elder Sweetin





Joe enjoying the rain




Nice hat!!




Joe cleaning out the Baptismal Font




There's a hole in my shirt!

 I love you all and hope that you have an awesome week
Con Muchisimo amor,
Elder Fuell

There's nothing like it....words cant describe it, but it was awesome.

It was a great week in here in Mexico.  It was kind of sad because I didn't get to work in my area at all this week due to going on intercambios (exchanges), meetings, and baptisms, but I still saw lots of miracles and got to help a lot other missionaries.

Elder Fuell and his Companion Elder Stauffer

I went on intercamibios this week with Elder Malpica (yep, that elder Maplica) and Elder Hernandez.  To tell you the truth I was a little worried because we have had our conflicts in the past. But it was an awesome day and we had a blast.  We had a bunch of fun contacting people,  I tried to get them excited to try new things so it would be more fun, we did and it was a blast.  We knocked on one window and a lady came to it and said that she was busy doing homework and we were about to leave when a half naked wet man came running to the window and said  "Hey,  I want to listen to your message!! Can you give me 10 minutes to dry and put on my clothes? (he was showering)  We told him that we could wait.  He was the father of a family of 8 all above the age of 8 years old, and they will all be attending general conference this weekend, it was quite the miracle.

Happy

Then we had the baptism of Brenda Alcala this week.  It was an awesome baptism and the spirit was really strong.  There's nothing like it....words cant describe it, but it was awesome.

Glad that you all had a great homecoming weekend and topped it off with the primary program.  I have been to one primary program here in Mexico, it was really cool,  I don't know if they will do one in this ward because we only have 4 kids in the primary, but we´ll see.

I love you all have an awesome week.

Con Muchísimo amor,

Elder Joe Fuell

Sad

Site seeing

I know that this is His work!

It was a great week here in Mexico. I learned a lot this week about a lot of stuff and although my body is a little tired my heart and my spirit are still working at 100%.  Let me know how everything goes with Uncle Dales surgery.  He is in my prayers.

That is pretty cool that you are all getting ready with your homecoming stuff.  That brings back a lot of fun memories for me.  There is nothing like fall time in Utah.  You'll have to send me pics of all the fun stuff that's going on right now.

I got your package, what a surprise, I didn't even know you sent one!  Thanks a ton, I love the cereal and the soft cookies!!  My companion was super excited too because we don't ever eat soft cookies down here.

This week I went on intercambios with Elder Padilla from the Yucatan.  He can talk Maya.  He taught me some phrases that I can use with my Bishop and his wife because they are Mayan.... like "vash cow wa li sukum" translation: Whats up brother?  and Kik, ta ki hana wi hen.   Translation:  Sister, I am hungry, feed me please!!  These have proven to be very useful with the family of the bishop ha ha.

I also had an awesome experience this week when I went on intercamibos in Oriente, which is on the other side of Quetzal.  I knew that the sister of a person we are going to baptize in October (Elizabeth and Bryon) lives there in Oriente, but I didn't know where so I just forgot about it.  Then during the day when we were working there,  an appointment fell through so I felt I should knock a door, and you will never guessed who opened it,  Sofia the sister of Elizabeth.  She recognized me from meeting with her sister and said she wanted to talk to us because everyone she knew "is" or "is becoming" Mormon, so she wanted to know a little bit about us.  We put a baptismal date  for October and she is super excited.  I know that the Lord guides us to the people who are ready.

Sometimes with all this hectic running around doing intercambios helping the elders I am lost, and I feel like I don't know what I should do, and I have seen that if I say a quick prayer and turn to the scriptures I find my answer.  One time this week I opened up an old Liahona magazine and I found the same scripture five times in the magazine.  I know that the Lord talks to us through His scriptures and through His spirit and that this is His work.  I am extremely blessed to have the opportunity to serve.

The mission president is cool if you guys want to come pick me up, if not, its all good too.  Its not that dangerous as long as we are indoors by nine.

Joe decided to do some water coloring and painted the first vision.  He is really proud of it.

I love you all and hope you have an awesome week,

Con Muchisimo Amor,

Elder Fuell

A week full of exchanges (pics!!!)

Hola,

It has been a great week here in Mexico.  A lot has been going on and we have been super busy.  Since the mission president said that we need to do intercambios(missionary exchanges) 3 times a week, it has been super hectic, almost every night I am sleeping on the floor of someones house, but it is really fun and I am having a blast.

I am so glad to hear that Kate got a job and has finally gets to sink into a routine.  That job sounds awesome for her.  I know she will do great.

So the first intercambio we went on this week was with Elder Frazier.  This was cool because he is a new missionary from the U.S..  In all my time here I have never talked with a new missionary from the U.S.

They always go to the other side of the mission.  Maybe that's why I still feel like I don't have a lot of time in the mission.  It was really fun.  It made me think back to when I was a new missionary.  But he did awesome, we taught some great lessons, and his Spanish is coming along really well.

The other intercamibo I went on was with the Elders of the Iztapalapa ward.  I loved working there.  The area was twice the size of my first area and it was full of people.  I had a blast because we were finding and teaching people all day long.  I love getting to work with the other Elders and with their wards. When we were in Iztapalapa that day we focused a lot on working with members and did everything we could to get their support.  It was a little hard because the missionary's weren't working with the members before,but I hope to see some real progress form that area.

The other intercambio was with the assistants, that was a lot of fun. Usually I go with Elder Bodine.  We are pretty good friends but this time I went with Elder Black and it was really cool because I had never worked with him before.  We had some great lessons here in the area and I don't know how we made it to the district meetings because we left 40 minuets late but somehow the Lord got us through all the traffic.

We are teaching a bunch of training sessions too so between the two training sessions we had this week and all the intercambios, we have really learned to organize our time . . .  or we are learning to organize our time.

But even with all the craziness that is going on we still have time to see many miracles here in Consititution.  Brenda Alakala one of our investigators is going to get baptized.  She is one of the best examples to me of repentance which I believe is one of the greatest miracles of all.  Even though she hasn't been able to get baptized for the last couple weeks she does not give up hope and she knows what is important in her life.

That's just about it, keep me posted on Uncle Dales surgery.  I am glad to hear you are all doing well. have a great week.

Con Muchisimo Amor,

Elder Joe Fuell

Joe and his companion Elder Brito on their day off dressing like Vaqueros

Goofing off on their day off-Elder Fuell and Elder Brito

Cooking Lobster

Lobster

Cooking Lobster

Joe and Elder Rios fixing their shower

Unwinding after a long day

Got it!!!

Eating breakfast in our apartment...