Hi!
So this week has been a good one. It’s been a busy one though. We've
done a lot of GPS work, finding people and what not. This week we did a
division with those 2 guys I was telling you about. Teofilo and Holindo.
They're two branch missionaries. We work with them a lot because
they're probably the 2 most experienced branch missionaries we have. But we went on division with them for a day. Elder Peirson walked with Holindo and I went with Tiofelo. Holindo Speaks English fluently, it’s amazing. Elder Pierson really likes walking with him because they just walk and speak English all day. I went with Teofilo who speaks English ok, not really well, you can communicate with him but it’s easier just to speak Portuguese. I like walking with him because it’s good practice for Portuguese. He's good to correct me too, when I say something wrong. Then on Sat we did another division and Elder Vieira came over into our area and helped us find people. So we did a division that day too. Elder Peirson went with this other branch missionary named Munushu (he can speak a little English too), Elder Vieira went with Teofilo and I got to walk with Elder Harris. But we went into this area that I've been in once the entire time I've been here. We had no idea where we were going. We had a name and a house number. The area we were in is really densely packed with people lots of little mud huts made out of sticks and rocks and of course mud with scrap metal roofs. Every like 20 houses there might be a number on the door, but it’s not reliable, has no real order either. So we were walking down this path and got in the general area of where this guy might live and just started asking people. This guys we were trying to find was Luis. We went to this one house and asked, and someone said they knew him, so we followed them to the house where this guy thought he lived. We get there and the people there say no, no, he lives here, so we follow a different person to that house. We get there and they're like no, it’s a different Luis that lives here but we know that Luis too. So we follow that guy to another place. We show up at this place and it was this house with these big oil drums cut in half on their sides with fire under them, and this guy is making nippa in them. (nippa is moonshine or homemade alcohol..). Luckily that wasn't the right place either. However, we did find his kid brother there, who led us to where this Luis guys was... finally. It turns out he's pretty apostate anyway... but it was crazy bouncing back and forth between houses. Then later that night we were walking down the same road and it was 7:30 and way dark. We knew the farther we walked the larger the house numbers got. So we were walking and we hit this fork in the road. We didn't know which way to go so we just stopped and looked around. I saw this one door and it was just like I was drawn to it, like it was just sucking me towards it. We went over and talked to the lady and she took us right to the house we were looking for. It was pretty cool. It’s too bad that couldn't have happened with Luis... But it was a good week.

These next couple weeks are going to be busy. For Thanksgiving we're
going to eat at the place where we ate at with the Bailey's, it ought to be fun. Then we're heading out to the beach to play football. I'm way excited. Then the next week is crazy. We're have interviews with
President on Wed. then on Thursday we have a Mission Tour which is Zone
Conference but we're going to have a Member of the 1st Quorum of the 70 there(Elder Colicher.. sp?). It ought to be really good. Then Friday we have transfer meeting and then Sat. we have another baptism. It’s likely that I'll get transferred however, it’s still possible that I could stay here for another transfer, most of the guys in my district are already in their 2nd areas. However, the normal amount of time for being in one are is usually 3-4 transfers so we'll see what happens.

That thunderstorm you were talking about was so sweet. We saw it coming
in at like 5 that afternoon and knew it was going to be bad. We got
out of our last appointment at 9 and started heading back to the
house. Right when the chapa (public transportation van) pulled up to
our stop it started dumping. It’s like a 3 min walk from where the chapa stops to our house and by the time we got in we were soaked. But the storm was sweet. We sat out on our porch and watched it a little, so cool, there was so much lightening. It was an amazing show. A lot of lightening and a lot of rain. So cool, wasn't scary at all because we live in a pure concrete building. so ya. It was fun, but that really doesn't happen that much out here.

Well, I can't believe you guy’s are already having Christmas parties.
That’s just crazy to me. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet. Tell everyone I say hi down in California. Have fun! Thanks for everything. Love you guys and miss you! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Elder Okazaki