Mark and Ashley--Ambassadors of the Cause

Here's a word from Mark about his visit with Stake President Hassle!

On Sunday, September 9th, Ashley and I drove down to San Antonio after
church to meet with President Hassle of the San Antonio North Stake.
He had a meeting in the East Stake so we were scheduled to meet him
there. Due to some miscommunication, we ended up missing him, but we
ended up briefly meeting President Allen of the San Antonio East Stake
and Elder Olson, our Area Authority Seventy, to whom we mentioned the
documentary. They seemed interested also so we'll see how they come
into play as our production story unfolds (yes, that's the literary
technique of foreshadowing).
After dropping a copy of our demo off at the Normans, we went to
Ashley's parents house for dinner. We then headed up to President
Hassle's house, who Ashley had talked with on the phone and
rescheduled for that evening. President Hassle was very friendly and
we ended up staying there for 3 and a half hours and learned a bunch
about the construction of the San Antonio Temple (he's the stake
president who made the San Antonio Temple happen). In the end, we
scheduled a formal interview with him, where we would come with our
equipment and capture him and his wife on camera.
Our purpose in going there to see him was to ask him for funding to
support our project. We discussed this near the end of our 3 and a
half hours and he was positive, mentioning that he knew people who
would be more than willing to help. He also recommended that we talk
with President Otte, the temple president, who is a CPA and who is
rather gifted at raising money. We also need to compile a budget plan,
showing how much we've spent thus far and how much we expect to spend
for the remainder of the project.
So, our meeting with President Hassle was productive in more ways than
we had expected. I'm really glad we had our demo (displaying clips
from our interviews up to this point) ready to show him. He was really
impressed by it, stating how the color and audio were such good
quality, and was excited to be a part of the project. The feeling is
mutual as we're excited to have him as part of the project!

--Mark Sanderson