Oi,

Well, this was a packed week. We did a ton of stuff. We sent off the old missionaries and brought in the new ones. It turned out nice. Tuesday we got all of the old missionaries together and sent them off. We had a nice dinner at the Packard’s with the old guys and then a little testimony meeting at the end. It was a little strange for me because this was the oldest groups that I was really friends with. I served with a lot of them. When I was a ZL Elder Steffensen was an AP, so I worked with him and in that same time Elder Horton was a DL in the Beira zone and so we worked really closely with him. When I was DL in Beira 1, Elder Connell was senior comp in my district and then the DL of that district when I went to ZL. So I have worked with most of them pretty closely and now they're going home. It was kind of sad. It really was like they're dying. You said goodbye to them for the last time. It was sad but then you remember that you'll end someday too, and there is life after the mission, and most likely you'll see all of them afterwards. So I guess it’s not that bad but still sad to see them go home. It was a good reminder of how short time really is. As I saw them go home, it really kind of hit me that I too would be leaving soon and it’s weird to think about. I'm not going to lie, I'm excited for that day but at the same time I know I'll be way sad when that day finally comes. So that was Tuesday.

Wednesday we went and picked up the greenies from the airport. We got there at 10 am expecting to pick up the 4 Americans and 1 Brazilian. We got there, but only the Brazilian was there, apparently the Americans were delayed in London with mechanical problems on the airplane, so that messed up their connection in Johannesburg. It didn't turn out to be anything super big, we just had to return a little later and pick them up from the afternoon flight from Johannesburg. It was fun to see them get off the plane and remember how it was to walk off for the first time. I was thinking, oh man, these kids have no idea what they're getting themselves into... It was fun to think about their future and to think that here in a couple of months; they'd be doing stuff they'd never dreamed of doing before. After we picked them up from the airport we went back to President Packard’s and started on orientation, half way through, Elder Fiallo showed up, he had just gotten in from Tete and so he got back just in time for dinner, so a little bit of a bummer for Elder Cunha who left right before dinner, but that’s just the way things go sometimes. We took the new kids over to the Karl Marx house and had them sleep there for the night, that was actually the house where I slept for my first night too. The next morning we were back at Presidents house for breakfast and more orientation and then later that afternoon we went on divisions with Elder Depew and Elder Puga, two of the new kids... I went with Elder Depew who is from Canada and who was going up to Beira to fill Elder Featherstone’s place as a junior companion under Elder Johnson. It was way funny to realize how little he really knew, and remeber when I was like that. He's a good kid though and will do well. Elder Puga is from Brazil and will be going to Nampula.

Thanks for all of your help with all this housing stuff for next fall. 

Elder Okazaki