by Ken Jarvis, Area Media Specialist
As anyone who lives in or around San Antonio knows, late April is Fiesta time. For the
members of the San Antonio Texas Hill Country Stake (a group of congregations) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the spirit of Fiesta is very much alive and well. That’s because each year they sponsor their own Fiesta, only this year it was a little different and a lot bigger.
Planning and organizing this year’s fiesta was the responsibility of Randall Wright of the Texas Hill Country Stake Stake High Council (leadership council). “We moved to San Antonio last year and I got the assignment last fall. Unfortunately I had never even heard of Fiesta and had no idea what it was all about.”
Not knowing what to do he took his problem to the Lord. He knew the Doctrine and Covenants (a collection of modern scripture) was written by asking questions of the Lord. For example, Wright said, “Joseph Smith went into the grove with a question and came out with the first vision.”
Wright didn’t know anybody in the stake so he put his fellow High Counselors to work. “My
Fiesta committee WAS the High Council. Every High Councilor has a unit so I told them it was their responsibility to share this information with their unit.”
He thought they should have a midway with booths on either side. “Every unit was to have a
booth the size of three parking spaces.” To that he added booths for the Stake Relief Society (women’s ministry), Primary (children’s organization), Just Serve and Family History. The rest of the space was taken up with booths for face painting, games, crafts, displays and especially food. “My parents passed on to me a catering background. Where that came to play here was that it’s a terrible thing to run out of food.”
In addition to that he wanted an activity for different age groups. For example there was a
petting zoo for the little kids. The large multi-acre field owned by the Stake behind the chapel provided room for soccer, wiffle ball and many other games for the older kids. To all that an obstacle course and bounce house was added.
The next challenge was how to get the word out. Wright put a lot of emphasis on a flyer that
listed “Five Reasons You Don’t Want to Miss This”. Then he made sure each family got several emails from the Stake reminding them that Fiesta was coming with the last email sent the night before from the Stake President.
Well, apparently a lot of people “didn’t want to miss this” since approximately 1200 members and friends showed up. That’s an increase of 700 over last year. In addition to having a large crowd, the crowd stayed late. Wright said it was scheduled to close at 7p.m. “But we had music and a DJ and the dancing went on until much later!”
Next year’s Fiesta may very well be larger since many members who attended left with only one regret…they hadn’t invited their friends. Well, there’s always next year.