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

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:

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

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

New Beginnings

HOLA mi familia amada!
how is everyone? for next week of course because I know that everyone is doing pretty good this week thanks to all your emails!
I´m doing well. This week has been a week of new beginnings. we have decided to clear the field of play and focus our efforts on finding new people who are going to progress! we´ve still got a couple of good investigators that we´ve been working with for a couple weeks like sujey and isabel and the family of a guy named Carlos who are just special cases but are progressing well who we´re going to keep, but the others who have just transformed into time and energy drainers we´re leaving. It feels good even though It means more work for us. It really is a drain having to deal with useless problems day in and day out when the person won´t do what they need to do. there comes a point where you just can´t do anything else for them and its all up to them to decide. It feels like coming out of a deep muddy hole and taking a shower. I have hope for these last few weeks of the change. the people here in Ocotlan are really closed and stuck to their traditions beyond logic and reason but i know there are some who are ready and that if we just do our part to find them.
We found one, I believe, on Tuesday! one of our best investigators (Omar) agreed to come to the branch activity on Tuesday night and brought his friend Luiz! We taught them a ballin lesson about the Book of Mormon and they both are way interested. it was soooo cool. we also found an inactive lady who works in a suuuuper fancy house (pics attached) who we´re working to reactivate.
we went to the gym this week to do some extra exercise and i way overdid it. I´m still super sore and do not have full range of motion in my elbow joints due to a cramp-like sensation that has lasted all week! I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity because it doesn´t come often and i killed myself haha! its made this week extra challenging because it hurts everywhere but I didn´t let it get in the way of the work.
lets see, what else do we have for exciting news...
me and my comp discovered that its real cheap to get our shirts custom fit out here! I took a couple and they fit good! They were pretty boxy and its always been slightly irritating for me because its all I wear but they fit good now. he only charges us $2 (dollars) a shirt! I think i´m going to take a couple more this week and just not get them quite so tight. so thats kinda exciting i guess... :D
Also I just want to announce to everyone that I have lost 12 lbs. since I left home. I now weigh 158 lbs. the only sad part about that is that it was all muscle mass... but its a good thing because the last time i weighed myself (about 3 months ago) I had almost gained back the lost mass in good ol´ Oaxaca grease. (mission fat) and now most of thats gone thanks to healthy eating habits and Herbalife! haha. I think its funny i´m actually eating that stuff cuz i always made fun of it before. ...still do actually. haha :)

alright, thats all for today. thanks again for your messages and love and prayers and support and awesomeness and everything else! you all are still awesome! :D

love,
Elder Spencer Henze

Pics

fancy house inside

Chicatana. these bad boys were all over the streets this week fallin from the sky like hail! ...not quite, but there were a ton that fell out of the sky due to the rain and were all over the streets. also my first meal here in Oaxaca was served with a salsa that was made out of these bad boys. ...YUM! :D

ITS ALREADY JUNE!!!

Hola mi familia amada!!!
como están todos? Espero que muy bien! haha.
well, this week was pretty good. pretty crazy but good. We weren´t able to really dive into the work until Thursday! It was like a half week. I mean, we were doing work, just not directly with the people. I was getting everything in order for the multi zone conference for my district. There's a lot to do as a district leader. I´m in charge of getting all the financial issues settled with the zone leaders for the district that have occurred over the last month and getting all the paperwork they needed ready to go to have quick smooth reimbursements, getting sleeping arrangements made... well, I better not bore you with all the details, but there's a bunch we had to get done. On top of that we had an "emergency" appointment last Monday which took a large chunk out of our p day, but the good thing is that once again everything is calm.
The conference was cool. It was really laid back because it was the last one for Prez DeLaCruz. He sang songs for us at lunch time. They gave us food and everything! it was pretty cool. after the lunch break we had a musical number that was part of the program but directly after the president got up and invited me to sing "A Poor Wayfaring Man Of Grief" completely spur of the moment. I was a little nervous but thought to myself, "well, it can´t go any worse than last time!" and got up there with the ice already broken for the most part from what happened at the last zone conference. I still made a couple mistakes with the lyrics but just grinned at myself and had fun with it and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves too. It was awesome and I was able to redeem myself from the last time haha. afterward President paid me a high compliment by talking about the situations that surrounded the writing of the song and the feeling the author intended it to have, and then said that when I started singing the song that feeling came to him strongly. It made me really happy :)
The rest of the week was good too. Not super eventful but good. Its really nice to have my companion be able to teach the English classes so that I can help him learn how and rest at the same time. Its a win - win situation.
Turns out that on Saturday Adreanas husband was about to hit her and her neighbor just happened to be passing by the house and saw what was going on and shoved the crap out of Julio Andres and chewed him out for mistreating a woman! I didn´t know those kinds of people existed here but turns out God protects in one way or another those who ask him to and are obeying him! He no longer lives in the house which makes her a candidate for baptism now, however, she wants to get away and start a new life living the gospel away from him so she has decided to go live in Oaxaca and I think I´m going to bridle my own pride in her interest and suggest that she get baptized out there so that the ward will be more excited to help her out seeing that she is a new convert and the transition would be much more warm if she did it that way rather than getting baptized out here and immediately transferring to a new ward in the which the members would just see her as another member and not be as helpful. It sucks because of all the blood sweat and tears I´ve spent teaching that family, but I have to do whats in her best interest. So thats been a tough pill to swallow today. The spirit just brought up the suggestion to me yesterday so today was the day I talked to my comp about it and he agrees that that would be best if she is going to leave. So we´ll see what happens. The good thing is that she will get baptized one way or another and thats what´s really important to me. and to God more importantly.
Well, thats my report for the week! I hope everyone is doing well back there at home and I wish you all the best in your week! I love you!

love,
E. Spencer Henze

Pics!

We got caught in the rain. forgot my umbrella and got totally drenched

It was windy too

Me on a neat bridge :D

Me and the Prez and the Hermana DeLaCruz

The Branch (well, the more active ones who come to the activities anyway)

Soybeans n' things

Hi again!

Elder Henze here with the latest report of the mish. I´m happy to report that things are still going great! they´ve slowed down just a little bit since the last bit of last change but i´m still enjoying myself quite a bit out here. I still feel like i´m on another planet or something because the seasons here don´t change much. Supposedly its the season of rain already but it hasn´t rained since those last storms I told you about. it´s kind of interesting to be able to talk to the people about why the seasons are changing and why the weather is so unpredictable. It says it pretty clearly in pretty much the whole 26th chapter of Leviticus. It talks about how if the people don´t worship idols and keep the sabbath day holy and basically keep the commandments then everything will function smoothly, but if not, it won´t :D its a good one for the idol worshipers and the people who have long forgotten the sabbath day out here. I don´t know if that's the only reason, but I´m sure it makes a difference.

This week has been good i´ve had some neat experiences. first of all me and my comp are getting along really well. like every comp he´s got his quarks but he´s super respectful and really nice. He also knows how to cook too and cooks for me! haHA! I just help him out with paying for the food and he prepares stuff almost every day. its so great and i´m learning a lot about how to make quick, SUPER cheap, and healthy meals! also he exercises with me in the mornings! you´ve gotta understand, i´ve NEVER had a comp who has done ANY of that before. so i´m quite content and it makes the things about him that bug me much more tolerable. I do my best to help him out where I can too and it looks like this companionship is going to be a strong one. so that's always a HUGE plus :D

On Tuesday night we were at the Branch Family Home Evening that we missionaries host each week and the little boy Jorge of Adriana who just got baptized this last week had a pretty bad stomach infection. he looked terrible and his little belly was swollen up and everything. After the lesson when everyone went outside to play we gave him a blessing. literally, not 2 minutes after we left the room he came out and started playing with us. he has been feeling great ever since.

On Wednesday evening we visited Adriana and the family in their house. It was an odd experience because Adriana started acting really weird and telling us that she had lied to us about how bad Andres was and all that. we played off the weirdness and shared a general message and left feeling very confused. later we found out why...

turns out she was doing that because he was in earshot and had threatened her that if she kept telling us those things about him he was going to hurt her in an attempt to manipulate us into telling her that everything was fine and whatever else.

the rest of the story is really intense and personal for her so I don´t feel like I should share it on here but its sufficient to say she has gone through some MAJOR trials this week. while telling us about them she kind of had a melt down and ran us off. This obviously freaked us out quite a bit and we felt really bad. luckily that same day she chilled out and apologized and things are back to normal now and she´s stayed true to her faith. If you knew exactly what the trial was this would be as impressive to all of you as it has been for me to see.

ONE MORE THING!

this week me and my companion discovered soybeans. Also we have an investigator who sells herbalife which I decided to try because she gave me an insane deal. I am going to try to live off of just those things this week and see what happens. If I succeed I will have found a way to eat healthily for less than $10 a week! booyah.

well my friends and loved ones, that's all for today! thank you for all you do for me. I love you all!!! see you in 9 months and 10 days! :D

love,

Elder Spencer Henze