Memoirs of A Melodic Mind

but when we arrived at the gorge entryway, the coolest thing started to happen, the clouds began to spill over the hill side pouring down like gravy moving in a perpetual motion downward, so it looked like the clouds were just a river moving through the crevices of the hillside and disappearing down the mountain side that was off to our left. Off to our right the sky started to clear and the sun came out super bright while behind us the clouds were still showing grey.

Then suddenly the sun burst forth and brightened up the sky allowing us to prepare all we needed to to get a good shot on the gorge hillside before it began to descend to golden hour. It was interesting because as that happened the light became more and more beautiful and created the most beautifully dramatic lighting and was everything we could whai asked for. The sky turned into the most wonderfully golden back drop with a turquoise sky that seemed unreal. All the risk and worry and searching was worth it.

We had an absolutely beautiful shoot and finished in darkness. We then traversed the mountainside back down and took the long road back up to the Papakura house in Auckland so that we can get rested for the upcoming flight. To the South Island. Everyone was so stoked on the dinner and the evening.

When I woke up the next Morning the fog was so thick outside that I could barely see anything in front of me. It was enchanting to say the least. But definitely a precursor to the day.  Nek Minit it started to rain... So we all gathered in the room to sus out our options. I was worried because our plans were to go down to Raglan and film at the Gorge, but with the rain threating to make muddy roads I was reluctant to do approve it. Mean while Fernando had gone to the airport to pick up his wife and bring her to the convoy. The weather led to a heated debate as to what we should do and we weighed out the pros and cons of taking the 2hour trek to Rags. I was leaning towards not wasting our day going down there, but it seemed that others were in favour so we debated some more until we finally came up with a compromise. A search party would travel for another location to shoot nearby and within an hours drive was The mouth of the waikato river, where the river meets the sea. From pictures looked as if it could have potential. I was still skeptical so I sent the search party without me while I waited for Fernando to return to the group. When he did arrive I made a phone call to the party to find that they only made it half way to the river mouth so I told them we would meet them there. 

While the location was beautiful when we got there we were a bit bummed, the weather had turned from decent to windy and the it was cold sandy and didn’t have the ledges we were after. I was a little deflated at this point and really just wanted to go back to the house and prepare for the next day, however the optimists of the group were feeling great and encouraged me to go on to Raglans, We decided to roll the dice and take the 2hour drive to Raglan. When we arrived in Rags everyone was getting a bit hangry so we parked up and had a kiwi dinner of Fish and Chips on the beach. Which turned out to be awesome and a unique experience for the crew who were visiting from the US. 

When we were first scouting this area, there was another spot about 10 miles down the road, where I had pulled the Van in to scope out the property, no more than 5mins later a guy comes screaming up the road on a 4wheeler hoisting a shotgun, he pulls up to us and says, “ Who are you?” “What you want?” Etc. I was taken back but I stayed calm and said oh we’re just here looking for places to shoot a music video for my church about faith. Would you be interested? He then declined and said get off my property before I shoot you off my property. I was pretty floored, cause I thought I was being nice, and didn’t realise he would take such offense that I would ask such a request. At that moment I was really discouraged because we had been driving around all day looking for places to film without any luck. We immediately left his property and went on our way again, I was fuming and feeling really bummed when all the sudden a thought of a song came into my head, “ After the trial you will be blessed...” I laughed and said Tom lets move ahead... 10 miles down the road we came upon Tapapakana Park, and found the place we had been searching for all day. It was awesome... Fast forward to Shoot day... The drive was about an hour away from where we were staying in Papkura, so by the time we got there it was perfect light. We had just enough time to get set shoot and do what we needed to. The crew was awesome and it felt like since everyone was rested that we were all ready to begin chapter 2.. with Melissa Main, she played the role of clarity. 

Just before driving of course they had to get ready... 

Lighting was perfect 

I was also impressed by Tay Steele’s ability to just hand shoot everything. He litterally shot everything hand held. 

Whilst we took selfies in the sunset.. Behind us is the thames bay inlet. 

It was dark when we left and the sheep thought they could sleep but not quite yet. 

after the shoot was over we rushed back to the house for some much needed rest and an overview of the days’ work along with the plan of what we would do the following day. Over all Tapapakana Delivered and once again we felt ultra blessed. 

We finished up that night at the lodge after having some pretty miraculous things happen out in the whatipu grass marshlands. The rain was just a mist, the sun literally painted the sky and we got shots we didn’t think would be possible. Meanwhile back at the lodge everyone was prepping to leave as it was time to move to the next location but we were tired. We hurried back to the lodge after shooting and we were welcomed with another amazingly warm meal and things halfway packed up to go. Earlier that day Fernando and James Ratana had gone out to Sylvia park to interview a few youth from out here for the Strive to be social channel. So we were all together again and ready to leave to the next location. We took a while to pack up but there was a convoy that left early to prep the house for our arrival. Thomas and Jules and Fernando James . They took the vans and we took the RV. It was dark by the time we were all packed up but we were happy to see what would lie ahead.

They took off to the Karaka house Early whilst I stayed back to do the last rounds of cleaning at whatipu. When we arrived at the karaka house it was nearly dark but it was good because it had a washer and dryer everyone could use to finally wash their clothes. We did laundry, and had an amazing dinner.

The house was beautiful and everyone was looking forward to sleeping in real warm beds.

The next morning we had a big group breakfast and some time to kill so we have everyone a chill day till later on in the evening so Fernando and I decided to seize the moment and cruise out to Long bay to meet up with some other kids for the strive to be channel. It was good we shot the Murray family and Tayla Tuala and Collin Moller. Their shoots would be used for instagram stories and such. Some of the others decided to go scope out the local area and just sleep. 

The next morning we were up by 4:30 to get the sunlight super early we got out in the chili morning air cold and Huia got into it straight away. We Tracked the whole of the beach and got several call shots in that one location box near the beach in the water and more. Huia was a trooper and shot all morning in the soaking cold, she seriously killed it. Poor girl was so exhausted by the end of the shoot. it was only 10am by the time we finished but she was cold and wet and we all were tired and were happy to head back to the lodge. It was at this time I realized that I should have brought a quad. By now we were on Wednesday morning so we decided to Let everyone rest and nap and thentrack out to the caves later that afternoon. I should mention by the way that Thomas Swain was our craft services guy on this project and he was legit awesome his food was great and he always made sure everything was ready for us to eat when we got to Base. I think the first night we had fettuccine the second night we had some amazing chili and there was always breakfast and sandwiches and things like that. So everyone took naps hung out for a bit and then before you know it we were off to the caves at Whatipu. It was cool we found some really amazing spots to shoot Zion and he was a great help we hiked into the caves out of the caves and all around the caves shooting Zion whilst we could before the weather turned it was crazy because while we were there clouds started to roll Lynn so we decided to turn around and go back towards base Camp we still wanted to try to shoot Melissa though so we were hoping things will be OK by the time we got halfway to base Camp It really looked like it was going to rain so we decided to sit and wait for a moment and contemplate what we should do in the end we all looked at each other and said let’s just go for it if it rains it rains. So that’s what we did and wouldn’t you know it there was some crazy awesome experiences we had. The weather turned in our favor and became the most beautiful weather sunset glow and another massive rainbow appeared in the super tall grass. we all felt like it was a miracle. 5 minutes before we thought it was going to rain and now we had a beautiful rainbow and one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever beheld truly a gift from God. The grass was so y’all and beautiful it was exactly what I was hoping for. And matched the treatment spot on. Melissa was too short so in some shots she had to stand on Jordan’s back whilst he was down on all fours. Rad... then Tay was such a super hero he sunk his body waist high in swampy sludge holding the camera and getting the shot. He was the man!!! Over all a night I’ll never forget it was amazing.

We finished up with Huia round 10:30 am and went back to the lodge for some brunch and R&R . Everyone ate and took naps. We then tried some wardrobe with Melissa and then took off to go scout a neighboring beach Keri Keri. On the way home the guys pooped out and fell asleep. Which was good cause by sunset we were all back out and shooting again. The rest of the night flew by and pretty soon we were all back inside trying to warm our toes by the fire before eating and bed time.

The lodge was old built way back in the early 1900s so it wasn’t exactly warm that first night but we were all eager to get our shoot on so at 4am we were up and having breakfast prepping for sunrise... It was a 10 min walk across a sand bed trail, poor japeth carried the door the whole way, and we still got to the beach before the sun rose.

Huia was a trooper though and her acting was on point. The rest of the morning was a blur but we did end up getting a ton of great footage.

The scout was amazing we were worried cause of the rain but when we got to the beach the clouds cleared away and definitely gave us the confirmation we should be there with a huge rainbow. Like a sign from the heavens!!!

Earlier this year I was tasked with coming up with a concept for the 2020 Mutual Music Video for the church. The process was a ton of work but was a huge blessing and the work is almost done. Initially I came up with an idea to create 4 doors in four scenes around the world that would show 4 youth doing some sort of service coming to a door contemplating whether or not to go in and then marking the choice to go in and serve etc. I know, very cliche and very typical. But the concept worked...well sort of... worked enough to continue working on the project! The next few months would prove to be both intense and wonderful but overall an amazing experience. The product manager for the project actually had tasked this to the pacific area the year previous and was kinda freaking out cause he had recieved no reply about whether the area was going to fulfill it or not. I hadn’t arrived to NZ yet and I think my boss was crazy busy and didn’t have enough resources or time to take it on, so when I arrived it was my first assignment. At first I wasn’t sure what to do but decided to go ahaead and create previously said concept. Since the product manager hadnt heard from us he hired another director to begin concepting as well: so with the initial collaboration my original idea morphed into something completely different...a beautiful story about a journey...just not anything like the story I was thinking about telling. None the less I thought it would be a cool story to tell. During this initial phase I also called an old buddy of mine Taylor Steele an amazing cinematographer who had taken over my previous position at BYUH to come on as a director/cinematographer. I asked him if he would be willing to shoot and he accepted, I was stoked. Meanwhile the other director and I continued to work on our journey idea, when suddenly said director got sick and the journey concept started to suffer. The logistics started to feel like they were spiraling out of budget range yet we were to present our concept on the next day. That night I said a prayer and decided to rework the original idea with some tweaks, consulting, ideation and encouragement from Tay. I kept hearing something in my mind say keep it simple. so that’s what I did. In the morning after our initial pitch, I could tell the product manager was freaking out a little bit so I told him I had a second idea and asked him if I could pitch it to him as well. He gave me a green light and I was off in explanation. Long story short the idea was accepted, and we were green lit to expand on that concept. For the next three weeks Tay and had many long long working nights, we prayed, edited the concept, talked about it, hashed out our ideas and in the end Taylor created an awesome treatment. The door idea was approved by the quorum of the Twelve and we were off and running. Tay and I worked hard over the next few weeks via web chats and etc and the other director was so gracious and decided to move on to another project. We worked on costs, budget, locations, ideas, storyboards, cast, and more tweaks. I traveled with a conworker to queenstown to meet up with Doc to obtain permits and make sure we could shoot in the locations we wanted to. We created a casting call and after a month of vetting we cast 4 youth to play the main characters and travel with us and be the focal points of the video. Huia Moana Shortland, from Whanagarei, Melissa Rachel Main from Papakura, Theo Magalogo from Hendersen, and Zyon Lavakula from Papatoe. These kids were amazing. We also hired Julia Wihongi to do hair and make up, Thomas did food and locations, Tay hired Josh Christiansen and Jordan Tane Williams. We also hired James Ratana to do behind the scenes, and Japeth Tiakia as a PA. We held a production meeting that was awesome, we met each other, had some Kai, and did some fittings. Then continued the preproduction process for 3more weeks. At this point Fernando Camillo, The product manager, was excited too. He also told us he would be bringing his wife along so we made sure to plan for that.

Production lasted 10 days. In that 10 days we shot in 10 different locations in the North island and the South Island. Let me break it down.

We started in Takapuna where everyone would meet and prepare to leave for our first location. After introducing everyone to families having some pizza and saying a prayer we packed into a van with a furniture trailer from hire pool and a 6 berth Maui camper van and began our caravan off to location 1. Whatipu.

Whatipu was amazing. It was raining when we arrived and it was chilly as well but everyone was in such good spirits that it didn’t take long to get into the swing of things. We rented out the whole lodge so the first night we settled into our rooms, took in the scenery scouted the area and then came back for dinner.

All the many miracles part 3 an update:

Recently I got an email from our old bishop in Utah, here is the email followed by the email I responded back with. The timing really couldn’t have been better.

From Bishop Tate recieved June 1st 2019:

Mossi,

How are you all? We sure miss you guys.

Im not sure if you are aware, but the Segura family you are renting to have been taking the missionary discussions and now getting baptized June 15th. Its been a really special thing to witness and for so many in the ward to be involved. I was at their home (your home) last night visiting (they were excitedly showing me their baptism program picture) and couldn't help remembering when you guys moved in and how excited I was to get to know you all and become friends. As I was driving away in a beautiful thunder storm last night, I was thinking about you guys and the journey and spiritual promptings you and Sharla had about where you were supposed to be in life last Fall. Then was thinking about the timing of things and how quickly you guys came and left. It always felt a bit sad to me, but I had hope, that you indeed had unfinished work in NZ like you all felt. I hope you all are having those experiences and am also so grateful you acted on those promptings for yourselves. That courage and timing opened a door for this family from CA to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope they would have had a similar experience elsewhere if you guys stayed longer (which is what I wanted), but the timing of your decision and them coming is a magical thing. I’m super proud of you all, and what must of been a conflicting process and transition, and how your willingness to follow spiritual promptings enabled a beautiful plan to roll forward. I felt it was important for me to reach out and let you know how your good life decisions have reverberated and touched so many lives. Thank you! All the best B Tate

Here was my response:

Bishop, I’m so grateful and happy to hear from you! We are settling back into our life here in New Zealand, and realizing many of the reasons we came back on this end. We have been privileged to see several miracles on our end in many ways we never expected, two weeks after we arrived I was called into the bishopric and have been serving in newly formed ward which was a combination of two wards here in Auckland it was pretty awesome how it all happened which is a story in an of itself hahah, so We’re currently learning how to take on all that comes with that service and try as we go. At work this past week I was privileged to produce the broadcasts for the Prophets Pacific Tour in Samoa, Australia, New Zealand and Tonga And a few months ago was able to produce the 2020 Global Mutual Music Video that will be released later this year and support the new Youth Programs of the Church. That being said we still face all the challenges one could expect fro an international move and your email couldn’t have come at a better time, The day I left for the tour some 15days days ago we were told we had to move from our current rental as the developers were ready to now tear it down and create a new Multi dwelling here, of course that put us into a little bit of a panic as I would be gone and Sharla would have to begin the search without me. Long story short it’s been a fun couple weeks and we have found a place to go to, but your email is so motivating and such a reminder to continue to have faith in the Lord and his timing. We’re Taking it all as it comes and miss you guys as well. I feel like in that short time there we made some amazing friends and It sounds like our tenants are as well. We couldn’t be more excited for them as well and it looks like they may even become permanent residents if all things work out. We are speaking to them today about purchasing the house. Hopefully that can work out as well and can be a quick win win for everyone. We’re saying extra prayers that things work out for everyone. :) Thanks again for thinking of us and encouraging us, it means more than you know! Give our love and Aroha to the ward and all the awesome families helping out over there we love and miss you all. Amos Watene

About 1year and a half in to my job at BYU Hawaii I received an email from some of the members of the Publishing Services Dept of the Church asking if I would be willing to help produce voice over translations in the Marshallese language in our BYUH audio studio. Of course I agreed and a few months later I found myself in Auckland New Zealand over looking the Bay of the North Harbor from a hotel room in Takapuna. It had always been my dream to come to the place of my fathers birth and I believe that by following all the little previous promptings the Lord had given me an opportunity to achieve one of my dreams. The best part is that I got to share it with my wife. We explored New Zealand together and went back to Hawaii thinking we’d love to come back to New Zealand someday. And wouldn’t you know it! We got an offer and A few months later we ended up taking a Job with the PSD of the church in the pacific and moved to New Zealand. It was amazing cause all expenses were paid and our lives were about to change. I worked and traveled to amazing places and worked with amazing people including leaderships from all over the pacific. We stayed for a year and even had a baby. (He mayor may not have been conceived on our original visit :) )

Wolf was born in August and in for the rest of that year we had fun living a new kiwi life. suddenly in January I recieved an offer to work for a software company in Utah. The offer came out of the blue and at an interesting time as well, my wife’s visa would soon be expiring and my daughters was already expired. We had received a strongly worded letter to get her paid for or get out a NZ. Our rent lease had also come up and we were currently looking for a new place to live. Sharla was feeling pretty homesick and wanted to see family again and all signs pointed to going back home. I was confused why bring us all this way to send us back home? I dragged my heels but Sharla wanted to take the job and something said for me to do it. Long story short we decided to move back to the states.

We accepted the position and took off in March 2018 to what we thought would be a permanent move. We bought a beautiful home and got settled in...

This is where the story gets good. We were only there for a short time when we started to receive promptings to return to New Zealand. And despite having moved to a dream neighborhood with great family friends a great job and a fantastic perks we felt the spirit was prompting us to move back to New Zealand. I was confused again? Really?! We just got here! Why turn us around again. Earlier that month Sharla went to temple and when she got home she poured out her soul to me and said she knew we needed to go back. I won’t lie I was pretty irritated, frustrated and not really willing to admit that I knew she was right. I loved my job and was stoked about our house I didn’t want to give it all up yet. But Deep down I knew she was right and I asked her what she thought I should do.

To my chagrin I called my old boss and asked for a position back at CHQPA and on that call he said there was nothing available. He was of course awesome about it and then added in something I’ll never forget He said “Mate don’t let that stop you from following your promptings, make your way back to Aotearoa and I’m sure the Lord will provide especially if we felt so prompted. I took his advice and we prayed about moving. We basically told HF that we acknowledged his will and would begin making all the arrangements to move back in the course of a few months we “rollercoastered” back and forth emotionally but every time came back to the inevitable decision to do all we could to get back.

In our prayers we asked him to stop us if it wasn’t right and though there were hurdles...tall ones like what to do with our cars and home we made the commitment and watched miraculous things occur. Our van was especially poignant, cause we had a hard time getting various things fixed on it but in the end the dealership paid for the repairs and replaced all the faulty parts and even gave us a reimbursement for the broken AC. Blessings. Well after plenty of prayers and asking for heavenly help we’re blessed to hear back about a job in PSD that was opening up. And lucky for us it came just in time.

See in our planning and faith we we bought plane tickets in advance a few months earlier with the intention of making the commitment a hard one if things worked out we would go and it really allowed us to work towards a deadline. We were nervous that we would have to move over with no job or prospects but we’re willing to if the lord needed us too. We made it NZ and even more miracles occurred, for the first three days we stayed with uncle Murray, he is such a sweet man.

He made sure I got to the AA so I could get my license and then gave me a ride to the car dealership where we bought a car and walked off the lot that day. The next day was full of house hunting with no luck. So the next day I decided to have a harsh prayer and ask HF for his help. I pleaded him to make the process easy and the second home we saw on the second day we loved: close to the beach, it had a beautiful yard for the kids, a sleep out and the price was right it’s everything I wanted in a house and would t you know it HF came through.

It’s been a crazy few weeks. Let’s see maybe I should rewind this way back to about a year ago. Actually I’ll go back even a few more years.

Looking back Everything about our life over the past 7years has built our faith been interestingly poignant and has really made me see how the Lord works in interesting ways that are built for us to grow. Ways that make one question and then trust and then question and trust again. Now over the past several years I’ve been horrible at being a consistent scripture reader, and I’ve also not always been as righteous as I would have liked to be, but what I have tried to be is obedient to the promptings I have gotten and sensitive to the promptings my wife has gotten and shared with me.

When I graduated from BYU Hawaii I could have never imagined my life to be so dynamically challenging and fulfilling at the same time, see at that time I was still working on the TV show Yo Gabba Gabba as the voice personality of brobee and the live action character plex. At that time I imagined my career to be my launching pad into stardom. I figured I’d get done with school and get more voice over gigs, acting gigs and songwriting gigs and eventually hit the big time, a movie or a tv series or something but that just wasn’t the case.

Looking back I can now see how the Lord definitely has a way of teaching one to be humble and to realize their aptitude for success far exceeds their own personal expectations of themselves.

When I graduated the final season of Gabba was just wrapping up and the side gigs from the show we’re good but I could tell that it would only be a matter of time before they all dried up and the ones I was hoping for seemed to be non existent or not really my thing. so I figured I better get a job. So I did. I started working for my friend Scott Windes who owned his own media agency called brother creative he hired me as a project manger and I really enjoyed the work. In fact after he moved from California to Utah I liked it so much it inspired me to start my own digital content boutique called Wheelbarrow Media, it did surprisingly well and after running that for a year and a half, I had made enough money to support the family and buy a home somewhere outside of California, and so begins our following the spirit journey!

After previously saying she would never do it, Sharla came up with the idea and we chose to move to Idaho and left in January that year. I originally thought Idaho would be easy...I could pick up more accounts there and run my business remotely - but I was wrong... it was hard, we bought a house and figured we were solid...but quickly learned that the business market is not the same everywhere, my brother in law was seeing some awesome success though and soon offered to partner with me and even finance a few music projects. Pretty soon I ditched the media firm and was off on a music tour Financed by my brother in law.

It was awesome and I was having fun doing something I loved and trying to make a go of it, I’m not sure if my bro in law was just humoring me but he seemed to be confident in what we were doing too, needless to say I was stoked....but while I was driving through Denver I recieved a call from Sharla saying there was a FT job for me at BYU Hawaii and that I should persue it. Of course I knew she was right but I wanted to be a rock star and I was feeling like I would be giving up not only my last chance at a music performing career but we’d also have to figure out how to tell my brother in law I would be asking out of our deal. He had already put down a significant amount of money to help this project succeed and I didn’t want him to think I was just trying to ditch him.

Long story short after praying about it and feeling the undeniable confirmation of the spirit, I did end up calling on the job and surprise surprise I got it! I never thought I would ever work for BYU in a million years! I just didn’t think I’d be a qualified enough candidate. But after securing an offer spoke to my brother in law. He was such a stud about everything and so awesome. He told me that he agreed with me that the opportunity was something I should Persue and that he felt it would lead to important things in my future concerning the gospel, the opportunity I wondered what to do but my heart knew and my brother in law encouraged me with no question to go for it.

Sharla and I spent the next few weeks packing up our brand new house and before we knew it we were in Hawaii. But let’s make sure to tell you the whole of the story, I accepted the job and left for Hawaii 6 weeks before Sharla leaving her and our newest baby Odelia and other two kids Cooper and Zeke to pack up the rest of the house while I prospected for a place to live. We received help from everyone and I felt so humbled to know people were caring for our family while I was gone. I searched everywhere for a home and by the grace of our Lord and savior found a beautiful 1 bedroom and loft condo that we could rent month to month and was already furnished at turtle bay resort condos kuiilima south .

It was miraculous to say the least and when Sharla finally arrived there we spent two years in Hawaii where I worked at BYU Hawaii as the audiovisual broadcast manager. It was amazing to work with young people and the brethren directly. Also broadcast the last two years of BYUHawaii NCAA sports. I oversaw the MPC there and as part of my duties I I was in charge of the audio studio, broadcast studio, film production and media production for the internal marketing there. Sharla became a psychology professor there and taught as an adjunct professor of psycho therapy and psyc 111. She helped to create a practice in the community of Laie and started a partnership to open a community therapy practice in Hawaii with a fellow staff member and they began seeing clients in the local community. She was reaching her dreams too.

Today was a good day and because of our parting circumstances our schedule allowed us two hours of free time in the morning that means sleepy sleepy time so today I slept till 710 instead of 6 o’clock so extra z’s. Helped out a lot. I was able to purchase a Camera today which was good because now I can catch some final day photos and I also ran into Ryan was great to see him his spirits are up and he’s enjoying himself a lot more now I tried today to get as spiritual as possible, succeeding in someways and failing in others, during this last week I think I’ve been getting on my companions nerves and as result the feeling has become mutual. We are two very different people, he is nice but I’ll be glad to move onto a new companion. His name is Elder Sealy he is awesome I do love him I just want to get in a different experience in so now is the perfect time to leave. Well I have a new favorite scripture 2nd Nephi 22 and Alma 29:17-19 I was able to gain a greater relationship with elder Felton however and that was a humbling experience he intrigues me he comes from a hard financial background and family of inactivity and although his hope of the MTC wasnt exactly what he thought he continues to work hard and is growing in spirit...of all the missionaries I feel like I’ve seen him grow the most since we’ve been here and I myself have my own huge burdens to overcome too but I know things will be helped and fixed with the help of the Lord. anyways I think I’ve said a mouthful so I’ll go to bed now I love you good night.