Oi, well today we went to the Zoo!!! I know what you are thinking, and yes they do have a zoo here in Maputo... It is by far the worst zoo I’ve ever been too, but it was still cool. You pull up, and no one takes care of this place, and so it is super overgrown with vegetation and what not, and it looks like the Jumangii House or Jurassic Park. It costs 1 metical which is equivalent to:

4 CENTS!!!!  So ya, it’s a bargain, however, you get what you pay for. They have monkeys and a hippo and some crocodiles and a cobra... That’s it. The monkeys were fun, they would do back flips for food. The cobra was nuts, it was one of those that the snake charmers have in Aladdin (one of the ones that flair out their heads...). Then the Hippo was huge!!! I never really realized how big a Hippo was. You could get right next to it and touch it, if you wanted. Then the Crocodiles were cool. There was this one who was huge! Super fat. One of the elders bought a live chicken and fed it to the Croc... pretty cool, ate the thing whole… impressive. You could hear the chicken bones crunching as it got chomped by the croc. And so that was our day. We ended it by eating at a place called Rodizios... Super good grill like Tucanos in Provo. They have one here in Maputo. Way expensive, but worth it every once in a while. We ate so much meat. Wow.  I am stuffed, like seriously stuffed.
Beira was nice. I had a lot of fun up there. I got to see the old zone and stuff. It was really nice. The conference went well and everybody learned something so that was good. We had a senior couple hear, the Wells. They are the mental health specialist in the area and so they were over here doing a visit and doing interviews. The Maputo Zone Conference was good; The Beira ZL’s did a great job at their zone conference. But ya it was fun to see everyone and it made me miss it up there a ton! Amazing how much you can miss a place. I would return in a heartbeat.
So seeing that Elder Brown is now down here, we started lifting together on the bench press in our apartment. Well, I, being the ´´old man´´ apparently still have a little bit, because I was able to out bench Elder Brown by a little ways. I’m still no where near where I was but I’m getting better. I did 135 ten times then I did 145 ten times, then I finished with 170 eight times, with a little help on the eighth rep... So ya, little by little, I’m getting there. The only other thing I need to work on now is running. We went and played soccer today... holy cow. I litterly died on the field. I wasn’t even running that hard, it’s just that I haven’t done that in so long, that it kills. I plan on doing a little running with Fiallo this week though... but as for right now, I’m hurting pretty bad. I can’t wait to go to bed tonight... also, Elder Abraham left the office a long time ago and so now I live with Elder Fiallo, Elder Brown, Elder Harris (my first junior companion in Munhava.. working in the office now..) and Elder Udall who was in my district in Beira 1 and 2, so a familiar set of guys. Good group! I really like our house right now.
Happy B-day to Will. Sounds like fun. It sounds like you are having a fun week and getting ready to go to Beaver Creek, be sure and tell everyone I say hello. It ought to be a fun little vacation with all of the cousins. It seems like yesterday you were at the Hotel Del writing me from there... Well, hope you are all doing well. Thanks for the letter and have a fun week with the cousins!!!

Elder Okazaki