HOLA FAMILIA!

COMO ESTAIS!? Los falto muchisimo y quierro estar con vosotros, pero se que necesito estar aqui!

HOW ARE YOU!? I miss you a lot and want to be with you but I know this is where I need to be.

I just got the package and am chowing down on the pretzels now. I can't believe these things exist. They're awesome, thanks. And the flip flops are great! Thanks tons! My feet thank you for the lack of crazy fungus growing down in Mexico.

Nothing yet on the visas front, but on our letters they are saying the 22nd instead of just delayed, so that's kind of encouraging. Everyone's going a little crazy in the meantime. Tuesday was especially bad. Then when we were all laying in Bed at 10:30, Elder Tibbits just starts laughing and says, "I was thinking that we've been here for so long, we were supposed to leave on the 15th! And today's already the....16th..." So hopefully we can really buckle down and study this last week. It's an awesome opportunity we have to just study our brains out since we don't really have teachers coming in for us. We just wander around the MTC, so lots of time for studying. It's already helped me so much though, my spanish has improved like Crazy. We were investigators last night for some Elders at the TRC and they could barely understand me because I was using words they didn't understand and was talking quickly. So that was a nice ego booster .

I know it's going to be very humbling when I get down to Mexico, but whatever. Mostly we're just excited to get down to Mexico. We got to end (hopefully) on a high note though for our devotional on Tuesday. All 10 weeks here we haven't had an apostle speak, but last tuesday Elder Cook came by and spoke, so that was awesome. It is so interesting to see that ultimate spirit of humility they have. You can just feel when they walk in a room, they know exactly who they are, and nothing more. Servants of the Lord. It's a great lesson to me to not let myself ever think I'm anything more than a servant to the Lord and to the people of Mexico during these two years. Of course, that wouldn't be possible without all of you, so thank you sooooo much

OH! We got released as Zone Leaders! IM A REGULAR MISSIONARY YAAAAAAAAAAY! Now don't get me wrong, I loved serving the Elderes y hermanas aqui, pero I have wanted to be able to be relatively selfish for a while now. We have sooooo much more study time now.

On monday one of the Elders of our district, Elder Combe, left for Mexico. The only one to get his Visa when they needed it. It was a huge blessing, because he is such an outdoors guy, and he has been looking forward to leaving the MTC so much, his stress was apparently really building in here without the sun. But that left his companion alone, so Elder Aguilar (our district Leader) put him with us. We are now in a trio. It's definitely very interesting getting a new companion, especially while you still have your old one sitting right across from you. It's very good though, we have all learned a lot from each other already.

Sounds like everyone is doing great back home, stress filled, but still great. Good luck with those deadlines Dad! That is something I've always admired, is that you just always got the job done, no matter what you needed to do. Remember that 6th grade report I had to write on Greece that was supposed to be like, 6 pages long, we had the whole year to do it, and I had done practically nothing on it. You came down at like, 7 o'clock with Mom and realized it was due tomorrow and we stayed up all night writing it? That was fun.

Thank you all for being such great examples to me, and for showing me who good people are. Without you, and without the Gospel I know I would not be a good person today.

No puedo esperar hasta podriamos hablar otra vez! Posible manana(lo siento, este computadora no tiene accentos) si recibimos nuestros plans de viajar.

Os amo mi familia!

Hasta luego!

I can't wait until I can talk to you again! Maybe tomorrow (I'm sorry, this computer doesn't have accents) if we receive our travel plans.

I love you, my family!

Elder Joseph Neil Newell