Oi!!!

Merry Christmas to all of you too. This week has been a crazy one. I flew down Thursday night. I went and did the transfers between the zone in the morning with the ZL's and then the rest of the day; myself and another Elder went around doing random stuff. That night we went out to the airport but earlier that morning they had had a plane that had a problem, and so all of its passengers were still at the airport… and so they filled our plane up with their passengers... Lame however, we were lucky because another elder and myself, who were going down, got the last two seats on the plane. We ended up getting in a little late, but it worked out... So a busy day.

As far as Maputo goes, it is huge!!!! So much different than Beira. Today we've been able to go around a little bit and it has been good. Shoprite (the local grocery store) is huge and you can find almost anything in it!!! It’s amazing. I was blown away; I was like a little kid in a candy store walking around that place. It was huge and had a ton of everything. Then we went over to this place called Hyper Maputo which is the new mall that they built. It’s absolutely amazing. You feel like you are back in the US. Super weird. So it’s strange because it’s still very 3rd world here in Maputo, however, you can find some 1st world places...

The area is good. Large, we drive a new Ford Ranger around and so it makes it easy for us. I had an orientation with President the other night and it was nice. He just talked about being an Assistant and things like that. With being AP, we actually do less than the Beira Zone Leaders do. We've got a lot more help down here with the Office Elders, President, Senior Couples, and 2 sets of ZL's, where as in Beira you have 2 couples and the ZL's... So things are a lot more divided down here.

Anyway, I won't make this long as I'll be talking to you guys here in a of couple days. If you could call at 21:00 on the night of the 24th of Dec., our time. Thanks!!! Talk to you Christmas Eve!!!

Elder Okazaki