2 Months!

Hey!
sorry for not writing last week! The time escaped me. But don't worry!
things are going well. I don't remember much about last week... after
a few days the past just all looks like one giant blur!
This past week though we did divisions with some of the District
Leaders in the zone. That went pretty well I guess. haha they were
pretty dead days for some reason in both areas. the first day i went
with Elder Graves and we spent the morning in the doctor's office
getting his ingrown tonail cut out. I got to sit there and watch the
process :D I had to convince the nurse to let me in. I told her "I
need to go in so that I can translate for him because he just got here
and might not be able to communicate with the doctor. the nurse
grumbled "bueno." and I got in :) I'm sneaky. I recorded the procedure
too for those of you that will be around me after the mission you can
watch it if you want :) ...poor guy. After that Graves couldn't walk
on his foot very well. The doctor told him to stay off it but he
really wanted to work so we went to look for a couple investigators
and did a couple contacts but his toe started to hurt him pretty bad
so I called it a day and we went home around 6. he's doing well now
though.

The next time we did divisions with another DL and I chose to go with
the Jr. Comp again because he was strugging a lot with the language
and some spiritual things too. Those divisions were way cool becuase I
was able to help him out quite a bit which made me feel really good. I
was kinda worried I wouldn't know what to say to help him to feel
better but as always the spirit helped me out. He had some doubts
about prayer so i taught him a bit about how prayer works and used
Ether 2 and 3 to help explain the process. There's a ton to learn from
those two short chapters of the Book fo Mormon where the brother of
Jared is seeking the lord's help in building the barges and getting
him and his family and their friends from babylon to the american
continent. Its quite the story. I reccommend it if you haven't read it
in a while.
so that was awesome. along with that we had a ballin lesson with
Miguel. He's not progressing much but we busted out the Fuahhh with
him. If he doesn't progress after that lesson I think we're going to
have to leave him.

We got a few references this week! We're still looking for one who
lives on a very confussing street but apparently he's a sure bet and
has already expressed the desire to be baptized.
We also had a super spiritual lesson with a recent convert (now
inactive :/) and her non-member daughter about the sabbath day. The
spirit totally guided that lesson like a railroad track guides a dang
train! our original plan was to watch the Joseph Smith movie with them
to go along with the lesson about the BOM that we gave the last time
hoping to rekindle and inite testimonies. well, turns out that they
didn't have the stuff they needed to be able to play the DVD even
though they told us they did so we had to come up with a lesson on the
fly. My companion and I started flipping through the scriptures
waiting for inspiration. We randomly came to Alma 32 and decided to
talk about faith. We didn't know why because it seemed kinda off the
wall but we just went with the impression. After reading just the very
first verse of the analogy (verse 21 which is where we started) the
non-member daughter started going off about how she has had lots of
blessings that lead her to believe firmly that God exists. this gave
me a perfect opportunity to share John 14:15 and talk about how if she
would thank God for the blessings he's given her by keeping the
commandments that he would give her many more. That lead smoothly into
going over the commandments and focusing on keeping the sabath day
holy which was a much more relavent and needed teaching. The rest of
the lesson was purely awesome. ...the most powerful one i've taught in
a long time. I really hope they take it to heart and come to church
next week...

oh one other thing. You all should make a mormon.org profile! its
something the mission is now intituting a lot in the work. They had
all of us missionaries make one and explore the site. it's really cool
and a super powerful way to share your testimony with lots of people
with almost zero effort! I mentioned that in the talk I gave yesterday
in sacrament meeting about how the members could start involving
themselves a little more in the work. The church is really doing a
good job of utilizing technology to their benefit. its awesome.

well thats about all I can think of to write. Thank you for all of
your love and support! I love you all!!! SEE YOU IN 2 MONTHS!

Love,
-Elder Spencer Henze

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! IT'S 2012!

Hello!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! IT'S 2012!

its me again! wow these weeks are going by fast. I feel kinda like I was just here writing you guys like yesterday. Quite the change from the beginning of the mission where I felt like monday couldn't come fast enough.

This week was kinda crazy with the changes and the holidays. The first few days we were waiting for the new gringos to arrive and hosting an elder in our house and running him around to wherever he needed to be and Friday we did a cool zone meeting. We did a sweet activity with flour and building pyramids out of styrofoam cups. It turned out to be pretty fun and i think the Elders and sisters enjoyed it quite a bit.

During the later part of the week everyone started leaving the state and going to Mexico City or some place in the North of the country for the new year because new years eve here is a bigger deal than Chritmas. The area in a lot of spots looked like a ghost town and there was much less transportaion available. Due to all these things its been pretty tough to accomplish anything but knocking doors. we did, however, find a cool guy named Miguel while doing so! I contacted him and he let us in! ...this is the second time we've gotten in the door of someone's house in my entire experience here... this is a big deal. So we went in and taught one of the best lessons i've taught for a while with respect to the organization, the orchestration of participation between companions and the investigator, the presence of the spirit, etc. I felt so good afterward! I'm really excited to keep working with him this week. oh, and in the lesson something happened that has happened several times before but i wanted to mention it. During the lesson one of the main doubts/questions that Miguel had was about "saints" and why we refered to ourselves as such and all that. Well it turns out that was a topic I had just studied that very morning! so I had the answer right there ready for him with examples from the new testament where Jesus refers to his followers as "the saints" and explained that  there is no record of "saints" as the catholics believe them to be in the scriptures. But the point is that the spirit guided me to study that topic that very morning just like he has done several other times throughout my mission. D&C 100:6

For new years eve we went to eat with the same family we went with for christmas. They were nice enough to invite us over again! The food was delicious! It was a good time. We then went home and waited for the fireworks to go off at midnight. Last year I went to bed and totally missed the show so this year I decided to check out the Oaxacan new year :D it was pretty cool. I bought a couple sparklers for us. ...pretty extreme. We fit in quite nicely with the display haha. 

well, I think thats about all from this week. My time here is tickin' down quick. I've only got 2.5 months left! i'm going to do all I can to make them the best ones yet. 

As always thank you soooo much for your love and support. You are the best :)

Love,
Elder Spencer Henze

PICTURES

Pictures from the Mexico Oaxaca Mission Christmas program!
Spencer was very involved with this production. He participated in a quintet (audio recording of their performance posted here) and he made the posters and flyers for it too!

Outdoor performance

Spencer's quintet! (He's on the right with his back somewhat facing us.)

The whole choir

Spence with some hermanas

Spencer's quintet! (he's on the right)


The official Christmas program of the Mission

This is the invitation Spencer made!! He has mad skills.

Do you see him? I do!

Ghost of Christmas Present

Scrooge & his ghosts

Mr. Scrooge gets a visit from the Missionaries!

Spencer's quintet! (He's on the right!)

Ghost of Christmas Past

Pow-wow with the Mission Prez.

Happy Boxing Day!

Hey!!!
Sooo I know I just talked to you yesterday (family) so I'm just gonna just consider us updated up until that point. Or be it, last night!
So after getting off SKYPE (awesome) I went to church for about 5 minutes and listened to my buddy Elder Romero give a talk because the three wards combined for a "building" Christmas sacrament meeting and all the missionaries were there. Then just as he finished his talk he informed me that we needed to go get all the equipment for the performance we were going to do in the night time from a stake center that was kinda far away. From that point on it was pure craziness up until the performance. To make a long story short it was a total fiasco haha. Basically we performed in a plaza type place with a gazebo in the center and some fountains and stuff. Almost like a park but it turns out that all the power they had supplied to the plaza was wired to just one circuit. 120 Watts at just 40 Amps!! That's a total of 4,800 Watts of potential energy for the whole plaza. Our system alone requires about 2,400 W. And with everything else that they had plugged in out there the power just wasn't enough. During the entire performance we were frantically running around rearranging the load on the circuit but no matter what we did it overloaded. Everyone thought it was our fault which was kind of a bummer but it turned out alright. We were pretty close to the tiny audience so they could still hear without microphones.

So that was my adventure yesterday. Today we're throwing a little party for Elder Mota my companion because he was sad on Christmas for reasons I probly shouldn't go broadcasting. He's a way cool guy so mom and dad the help you sent to go out to eat we decided to use to buy stuff to do a barbecue and chill with some of the other elders from the zone before the changes tomorrow. It went a long ways and he seemed Way happy about it. When he came over to the house we were all at we shouted WE LOVE YOU ELDER MOTA! Like a surprise party :D it was perfect. We made some super delicious meat and baked potatoes and flour tortillas (his favorite) and some other stuffs :)

That's about it for this weeks update!! I love you guys!!! Oh, and HAPPY BOXING DAY!!! (Canada)

Love,
-Elder Henze

It's Almost Christmas!

Merry Almost Christmas!!!

hey everybody just checkin in for the week! i don't have a whole lot of time becasue we have interviews with the Pres tomorrow and absolutely a TON to get ready. We've been trying to get all the reports and documents and information that we need for the zone in the area book but theres a ton and pres just told us yesterday that he is going to chek the area book tomorrow as part of the interview and it all needs to be there.

So anyways! this week was pretty slow to tell you the truth... We've been so busy doing little things during the time when everyone's home that when we are finally able to work all we have to do is knock doors which is officially the least effective method. This week we're going to focus on getting people to invite investigators and friends to the christmas program we've spent so much time practicing for. the performance in our stake is on sunday and failure is NOT an option. this program represents about 400 hours of cumulative invested proselyting time so its showtime.

I miss everyone so much! i wish i could be with you throughout this christmas season, and i am in spirit, but the good thing is that we have more to look forward to :D

Thank you for all your packages!! I got a whole bunch from you mom and dad!!! I was the most popular kid in the offices on tuesday. Also from Kendal and Clark and ALI!

And ali, all i've got to say is BOOYAH! NAILED IT!!!

Funny story for today,

so we were washin clothes in the house of this one member right, and her mom emerges from out of the back room and sits herself down and starts talkin to us about the end of the world.

she was especially excited about the topic because she recently had seen a very informative program about such things mixed and mingled with a bit of doctirne and recent discoveries about the myans.

According to her Jesus is going to come in the second coming in a... ready for this... SPACESHIP! Cool huh? George Lucas would be thrilled! She also said that Moses was taken away by aliens.

Just some prophecies for the future.

Hasta luego!

Love,

Elder Spencer Henze

Special Changes

Sorry for not writing last week! well I did write but I didn`t send it
till today.
This week was pretty unusual. After a trip to the coast to check on
the missionaries out there, a very saddened president returned to the
city and immediately made a bunch of special changes in the mission. I
don`t know exactly what problems they found out there but they seem to
have been pretty serious. This directly effected my companion and I
because due to the special changes one of the elders from my zone went
out to Juchitán and left his companion ...companion-less. As the LZs
it has been our unique privilege to be the designated escorts of this
fine young elder. See he`s involved in the bigger theater program
we`re going to be putting on in a week or so and is in charge of putting
together the AV for the whole thing and needs to go to the offices
(which are not very close by) almost every day. we`ve had to
drop him off, pick him up host him in our house, etc. Long story short
we haven`t gotten to work hardly at all in our area due to that and
choir rehearsals in the morning twice a week until the afternoon. It´s
been a bit difficult to lead the zone and set the standard with our
numbers because of all this. And the appointments we do have time for
have all been falling through.
Even though this sounds like a very lousy situation I´m happy :) I
know that I'm doing what I need to do and that the Lord is happy with
me and that's all that matters.

I had a pretty cool experience on Sunday in our gospel principles
class. One of my favorite things to teach is the atonement of Jesus
Christ and I had the opportunity to teach a little bit about that. The
ward mission leader who is a fairly recently activated member touched
the subject in reference to the topic of obedience because of love,
but it was clear that he didn't understand very well what it is that
Christ experienced in the garden of Gethsemane. I shared some things
that I had learned about the atonement while on the mission to help
him and the other recent convert in the class to understand a little
better. As I was explaining some doctrines associated with this
crucial event and that no matter what happens to us Christ can
empathize perfectly and that through his atonement all injustices and
hardships will be made right I saw a change come over the guy and
could tell that the spirit was teaching him at that moment. I don't
think he'd ever realized those things before. Or at least those
particular details. The guy has had a very hard life and for the last
year or so has been bitter due to two stillborn children. I don't know
to what extent or what it was exactly that I said, but the spirit
testified to me that my testimony had strengthened the faith of that
brother and given him some measure of new-found hope. It was really
cool to experience. I love being able to be an authorized witness of
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Especially in this holiday time
because it seems like people listen and open their hearts a little
more than usual.

I hope we can all keep our perspective right this month and onward
striving always to keep the true spirit of Christmas in our hearts
because as President Thomas S. Monson taught from the pulpit last
night at the general Christmas devotional, the spirit of Christmas is
the spirit of love and the spirit of love is the spirit of God.

Have a great week!!!

Love,
E. Spencer Henze

Church Face Off (Nov21-27)

Happy holidays everyone!
How's it going?? Sorry for not writing on Monday. We only went to the
computer for a little bit and I ended up spending all the 30 minutes
trying to copy music and stuff I have onto a disc for my companion.
The computer was Super crappy.
So little by little I've been typing this up on my iPod in my spare
moments this past week so that I could have it ready to send whenever
I got a chance to connect to the Internet. Pretty clever eh? I thought
so.

So this past week was pretty fun. All my fondly remembered experiences
with choir performances and using sound equipment and stuff were
brought back on Sunday during our mission choir performance on Sunday
in a park called "llano." that's funny because "llano" sounds like "ya
no" which in English basically means "not anymore." ...fun fact for
ya.
But ya it was really fun getting to work with sound equipment and
being able to sing again. My voice is kinda weak and got pretty
thrashed in the rehearsals but I was still able to sing in my quintet
:D it went pretty well. I'm going to try to attach a recording of the
quintet in this email so you can get an idea of what it sounded like.

So why the funky title? Turns out the place where we sang was right
smack in front of a catholic cathedral! Haha. Pretty much the most
ironic place for a choir of Mormon missionaries to perform. What's
even more funny is that they held a mass service while we were
performing and the priest or father or whatever they call him came out
in his fancy robes to give us dirty looks :) they were even ringing
the super loud bell. Quite humorous. It wasn't our plan to mess with
them; it just turns out that there was the only place in the park that
had steps that we could use as risers. It was really fun though and
turned out to be pretty cool. We're going to do it again this week so
it should be even better!
Well, other than that I'm doing great! It's cold here at night now. It
gets down to the 40's at night which is quite brisk for me having come
from the coast just recently. I sleep nice and cozy with my under
armor and two big blankets haha. The truth is that I'm loving the
weather. It makes it feel more like its really holiday time!
Oh btw Peterson family, your packages came today!!! I opened them but
I'm going to save the wrapped stuff for Christmas day! THANK YOU!!!
You Gus rock. The little treats in there saved my life today because I
was suuuper hungry.
Oh and before I finish here I just want to give a huge shout out to my
cousin Jacob because he's headed out on his mission!!! Good job man.
You're going to rock it out there! :D

Alright, that's all for this week. As always you guys are the best.
Thank you so much for your love and support.

Love,
-Elder Spencer Henze