¡bienvenido!

Spencer Michael Henze served a 2 year, full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints among the people of Oaxaca, Mexico (pronounced wa-ha-ka). This is the week-by-week account of his service. Elder Henze returned with honor March 21, 2012.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Hola!

Hi!
This week was really good! we had some cool adventures. first of all let me tell you about one of our investigators named Adriana!
now this is a different Adriana than the one from Ocotlán (who was baptized last week by the way). This one was a reference from a couple of recently returned missionaries in the ward who were talking to a mototaxi driver. she accepted to have us come to the house and when we went she was way excited and ready for us! she talked about how she remembered that her mom went to our church and she remembered listening to the missionaries as a little girl and was really excited to learn the stuff we had to teach now as an adult. To put it in short she is probably the most prepared person I have ever gotten to teach so far in the mission! she has accepted everything faster than we could teach it and is very excited about her baptism! yesterday at church we put baptismal dates with her daughters too! and get this, when we invited her husband to be baptized he responded in a VERY common way and said that he had already been baptized. when I heard this i was like, oh boy here we go again gotta explain about why his catholic baptism wasn´t valid and risk offending him. however, after a few more specific questions we discovered that he was baptized by missionaries in our church when he was like 14! so it WAS valid! so we´re going to meet with him and the bishop tonight to see if we cant get him reactivated so he can baptize his wife and kids!!! how cool would that be?!
other than that things have been going quite smoothly except for the heat and the few little things i mentioned last time but with each day i´m getting more and more used to it. I´ve discovered that axe spray deodorant is the way to go out here. i think it was designed to neutralize full body sweat odor. haha. never had to deal with that before but I bought some today and it seems to be working well :) sorry if thats too much info... haha.
also funny story. Friday we did divisions with the zone leaders and Elder Howard destroyed the lock mechanism on the door of their house and locked us out. so i had to leave a lot of my stuff there. I can tell you more about that later. its a pretty funny story. Howard´s kind of a dum dum.
ok well sorry, but i´m out of time for today. We´ve got an appointment with the bish and Adriana's husband right now. I want you to know that all those who wrote me with problems I am praying for you. Thank you for all your prayers in my behalf! you are the best :)

love,
Elder Spencer Henze

Monday, July 18, 2011

A Week in Tehua


SUP!
Its me again!
Things are going well here. I´m really liking the new area. Its got pretty much everything I was wanting that the last area didn´t have as far as the work goes :D we have a super helpful bishop who´s got a lot of experience with missionary work and he´s already given us 2 super awesome references! this week we received 5 references!!! we also have already put 2 baptismal dates and its just barely week 2!! that's quite awesome. i´m pretty excited about it. The members are chill and like us a lot and are willing to help, we have leaders for the different organizations, we have more than 3 active families (which is pretty much all we had in Ocotlán), we have a full on chapel, we have pretty much everything! the area is beautiful and lush with vegetation. I'm liking it a lot out here. my companion is cool too. he´s super chill and teaches really well so i get to teach lessons the way there were meant to be! I don´t have to teach everything anymore. its quite nice :)
the only things about it are that aren´t awesome is number one the heat!!! I don´t know what the humidity is here, but its insane! to add to that it literally rained all week pretty much without stopping. The clothes that got wet just barely dried today completely because the sun came out. a few of my shirts and a tie and one pair of pants though hung out to dry under a roof started growing mold. There was literally nothing I could do. Even my guitar case that was inside started growing mold. the roof was dripping water everywhere and even the walls were like... sweating. the house was soaked through. Luckily the sun came out today and gave us some relief. I got to really test the metal of the military boots I brought with me and i´m happy to report that they worked AWESOMELY!!!! water only got in once and just a little bit because there was a current in the street/river and a little came in over the top but the gore-tex took care of that and pushed all the moisture out :) booyah.
I luckily inherited Elder Baert´s super awesome hammock when he left so we got that hanging up and that's where I started sleeping to combat the heat and humidity at night. it works pretty well and is quite comfortable!
as for how I get stuff done without running water, the way is basically the way the olden days people did it and the way that many here in oaxaca still do is that we have a small pool of water that basically acts as a well we draw out of and from the buckets we do everything. I bathe myself by dumping water on myself from buckets. we wash the dishes, our hands, and flush the toilet by a similar manner. with water from buckets. its not very convenient, but now I know how to do it :)
we still don´t have the stuff we need to cook or clean in the house... so i´m gonna keep bugging the mission about that tomorrow because they were supposed to get back to me about that today but I haven´t heard anything. bozos.
well that's about all for today!! i´ll have to tell you the cool story about an investigator we found this week (one of the ones that now has a baptismal date) cuz its quite cool but i have no time right now. I love you all!!! thanks for all you´ve been doing to support me :)
love,
Elder Spencer Henze
what it was like walking around this week:

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Teuantepec!

HI!
I want you all to know that i´m officially writing you from my new area called teuantepec (teh-juan-teh-peck). Its about 5 hours outside of the city in a place called Salina Cruz in the Itzmo. I´M IN THE ITZMO Y´ALL!!!! that means that i probably wont be going back to the city until I go home in March! I´m so happy to be here I can´t even tell you. The city's cool and all but this is where the real meat of the Oaxaca Mexico Mission is. This is where I will probably get to try iguana and armadillo and stuff like that.
Its super hot and humid here. but its not a heat that burns you. It just feels like you´re in a humid oven :) You sweat a lot out here.
The ride out here was awesome! sooooo pretty. I don´t even know how to describe it.
the house is tiny and has no running water or anything that I need to prepare food or study, but we´ll see about what the mission can hook us up with. The thing is that they just changed houses out here a week ago because they were living (4 elders) in a big house similar to how we did it in Antequera and when they all moved out the other elders stole the goods.
Even with the heat, the lack of goods, and everything, I´m still very happy to be here and out of the house of Ocotlan. yes the new one. I know last week I was all pumped up about it, but that soon went away once I realized the thing was literally haunted... I can tell you the details some other time but ya. It sufficeth me to say that I got to perform my first house Exorcism. And along with that erase a spray-painted satanic black magic symbol off the front of the house. Awesome.
So, poor Elder Martinez gets to deal with that now for at least another 6 weeks. I think its all good now though cuz the casting out I did seemed to work pretty well and the night afterward I slept great and nothing happened.
anyhoo, thats about all thats new here! Its going to be much harder to send so many pictures in my emails now because the internet here is ssslllllllloooooowwwwwwwwwww... but I´ll be happy to show them all to you when I get home in 8.5 months :)
ok well, I love you all! have a great week! later!
love,
Elder Spencer Henze

Friday, July 8, 2011

AMERICA!!!!

Hey!
good news! I´m doing much much better than last week :D probly just cuz its the 4TH OF JULY!!! BOOYAH!!! obviously nobody celebrates that holiday here but i do. Guess what we´re doing to celebrate?? well, today for lunch we made a PIZZA! well, it was like a papa murphy´s take and bake type deal but we BAKED that bad boy!!! and ate it. and the party´s not over y´all. we´re still gonna have a hamburger night.
the rest of the day we spent cleaning and arranging the new house. oh ya, I just said NEW HOUSE! Saturday we moved! we finally ditched that horrible tiny room I´ve been living in for over 4 months that didn´t have adequate stuff to live in mostly in the food making category and a terrible clothes washing area, and all the other lameness it had and we moved into a much bigger much more comfortable place! I am pretty sure the terrible living circumstances were contributing to my lack of enthusiasm.
Also, last Monday night after having cleaned the little room really well, I was rudely awakened to a slight tickling sensation on my cheek. As a natural reaction I swatted at the source. Upon doing such I realized what it was... A GIANT COCKROACH!!! I exited my bed with record speed, caught it, and gave it its merited death.
so anyways, we scored the deal with an investigator we have. actually its the owner of the ballin fancy house I sent pictures of in one of my last letters. they gave us this place for just $10 more a month and it has a kitchen!!!! yep, complete with counters, cupboards, sink, oven, gas stove, and everything! now we don´t have to stack our food on top of our mini fridge!! :D and threes places to put my books so i don´t have to study in bed anymore due to my desk being totally occupied by my crap! needless to say i am excited. even though last night at 3 am some moron was pounding on our door. scared the crap out of me.
also this week we found 7 new people to teach!!! like, legit finds too. they were so interested that 4 of them offered to pay for their copy of the Book of Mormon! Obviously we didn´t accept the money. but that's unheard of in this pueblo my friends! God has definitely helped us out a ton.
well i hope all is well! you all rock and I thank you a lot for all your support! It helps more than you know!

love,
Elder Spencer Henze