Hey hey hey hey what is going on here?

Towards the end of my mission, each zone was required to put on an entertaining skit at mission conference. I honestly don't remember the point of this, perhaps there was none. As an arrogant writer, of course my zone looked to me to head up this unimportant assignment. And let them down I did not!

Imagine this if you will... A 10 minute skit, all in Portuguese, reenacting a classic Saved By The Bell episode. 2 hours of the Lord's time to write, a good hour of rehearsal, and I (and 15 of the Lord's servants) staged perhaps the highlight of my mission... (besides baptisms, reactivations, spiritual moments, whatever).

I didn't take this assignment lightly. Searching, pondering, and coming just short of praying, the perfect episode came to my mind... "Check Your Mate!" What better episode than the chess episode to encapsulate the spirit of the entire series? It had it all! Suspense, betrayal, love, passion, and a great ending.

We started off with our 15-person zone singing the Saved By The Bell theme song, translated into Portuguese. It sounded delightfully horrible as most of our zone couldn't help but laugh through most of the song. All the roles were perfectly filled - Zack, Slater, Screech, even Violet and Mr. Belding... And of course Russian Valley chessmaster Peter Breschnev (yes even after almost 2 years in the field I still remembered his name), played by someone many of you blog readers out there might now - Riley Balling of Centerville fame.

Even though we crammed it to 10 minutes, the plot was all there...Valley stealing screeches lucky cap, Zack dressing up as the Russian chess player only to be re-substituted last minute.

And don't forget the dialogue (all in Portuguese, mind you)...

Jessie: Slater, who do you think will win?
Slater: Big mama, I think Screech is gonna kick that commie's butt!
Jessie: Slater, you shouldn't say "kick the commie's butt!"
Slater: I'm sorry big mama. What I meant was "kick that commie's heiny!"

I had done it. We had staged perhaps the most worthless, spiritual downlifting (is that a word?) skit in LDS mission history. I went home a few weeks after that, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they never did skits again.

Yes, I had ruined it for everyone. And it was worth it.

ps. Take a fun Saved By The Bell quiz here. I only missed the last question! Tell me how you did in the comments.