Hey!
What's up everybody?! I'm doing just magically here in Oaxaca
enjoying my last two weeks before I'm back in the Gem State! (where we
don't make piñatas that look like people and then bash in their face
like in Juar-éz --Napoleon D.)
RANDOM!
So I´ve got some sweet news from this week. First of all let me go ahead and explain the best thing that happened!
Saturday morning I woke up at the crack of dawn. Before actually.
4:30 am to be exact :) why might you ask? well, just for a nice calm
everyday conference with Elder Richard G. Scott from the quorum of the
12 apostles!!!!!
Turns out he wasn´t the only GA there either. Accompanying him was a
member of the presidency of the first quorum of the seventy who i´m
pretty sure spoke in general conference this past October. His name is
Elder Clayton. He´s cool and to me what made him even cooler is that he
had an iPad. Booyah. He´s the second General Authority that i´ve met
that uses one.
The conference was sick. We started off by shaking his hand. When
we all had sat down and before the opening prayer Elder Scott goes up to
the pulpit very seriously and everyone gets real tense like, "oh
crap, he´s gonna planch us!" But then he said the following words. "In the
church it is very important to be allegre (happy) and smile. You all are
very serious, so i´m going to tell you a joke!" he then told a joke
about a dog that I didn´t quite understand but just the fact that he
told a joke like that was hilarious! After the opening prayer we sang
our song in our little choir. We did decently. I was slightly afraid my
voice was going to crack because after having two-and-a-half hour long
practices every day that week my voice was pretty much at the edge of
being shot. It went alright though. In fact Elder Clayton called us "The
Mormon Tabernacle Choir of Oaxaca!" and that we sounded almost professional. I took this as a high compliment :)
We did some scenarios (I almost volunteered but chickened out) and
turns out they went super easy on the guys that went up there. I was
sitting there in my seat like "Dang I could have totally gone up there
and been fine!" but oh well. Later on Elder Clayton gave a sweet talk
about how The Book of Mormon is a map for our lives and if we´ll just
"look at it," figuratively speaking, we´ll be able to avoid a lot of
very big and avoidable problems. Towards the end Elder Scott took
questions and finished with the most powerful testimony of Christ I have
heard in my entire life. It strengthened my testimony so much. There is
nothing like hearing an apostle bear his witness using his apostolic
keys. I honestly think the only way to have a more powerful witness of
Christ is to see him personally...
At the end of the first part we took a picture as a mission
(because everyone in the mission was there) and had some food. After the
food it was time for me to present the little video I had made for the
mission. To my surprise the technical equipment that was there and set
up originally was all gone when I got back from eating.
I frantically started busting out the backup equipment I had
gathered and prepared from days earlier to be able to present the video
without causing an inconvenient delay in the program. It was the most
miraculous thing I´ve pulled off in some time. I hadn´t checked the
cables or anything but everything turned out working perfectly.
Everybody seemed to love the video and afterwards when Hna. Leyva
(pres´s wife) accredited me for being the maker of it I got a long loud
applause. I felt so awesome!!!! afterward several people came up to me
complimenting me on the video and asking if I could pass it to them. So
that was pretty awesome for me :) I was way pumped that I got to put
that skill to use in the mission. I never in my life thought i´d have
the opportunity. Hna. Leyva said she was going to upload it to the
mission Facebook page if you want to see it. just sign into Facebook and
search "Tierra de Milagros" and it should be pretty easy to find.
you´ll also find over a hundred pictures from the conference there (supposedly).
Among other news, that division II soccer player we started
teaching last week now has a baptismal date for the first of April! I
won´t be here for it, but as long as he gets baptized I´m cool with
that. We never found the other dude...
Oh, one more cool thing is that Hna. Leyva composed a mission hymn!
It is now the official hymn of the Mission Mexico Oaxaca and she asked
me to make the official recording of it and be a part of the small group
that sings it. This recording will be the standard to teach this hymn
to all the missionaries that come to this mission for years. So that´s
quite the honor for me and gives me another cool project to work on to
help me not think so much about how soon I´ll be home!
I made a rough recording with my iPod the last time I was over at
the mission home with Elder Lund which I´ve attached to show you what it
sounds like more or less. It´s me and him singing. Its got mistakes but
it´ll give you the gist. also attached is a recording of the song we
sang for Elder Scott. This recording is from a practice we did earlier
on in the week so it sounded better when we actually sang it for Elder
Scott but this too will give you the all too famous, gist. ;)
I love you guys and am really looking forward to seeing you all
again for the first time in over 2 years in two weeks!!! thanks for
stickin´ with me to the end on here. And a huge thanks to Jamie for
keeping this sick blog. YOU ROCK JAM!!!!!!
-Elder Spencer Henze
Pics:
1.) Elder Lund the day that we were in the mission home making the video and the recording
2.) Elder Wittwer and I after the conference. I was so busy with
everything after the conference that this is the only picture I took.
There´s tons on the Facebook page though.
