Well, sounds like you all had a very full and exciting week. Ours was pretty good too. New Years was this week and so that was nice. We worked only until about 7:00pm and then came home. Our house is on the third floor of a building right next to the church and in the same building, there is another house of missionaries and so we had them over that night and we just hung out and ate some food. I (like Andrew..) made a Congo Bar cake and I took one bite out of it, turned around, then turned around again to grab another piece, and the entire thing was gone.. It was incredible. The missionaries really like that cake of moms. Anyway, New Years Day was a blast; we had the whole day off. We got together and in the morning we went out and played a game of soccer. It was actually a lot of fun. My team stuck me on defense... go figure, right? So that was fun. Afterwards we went back to the church and we all ate a good dinner of beans and rice and then we watched "The Other Side of Heaven" it was a good movie but I had to translate about half of it, but it was good anyways. After that Pres. went home and we were just left to play board games and things like that. I ended up going out back and throwing the Frisbee around with Elder Roylance, it was fun. It made me grateful for the simple pleasures of life. As missionaries we don't get time to do simple things like that so to just take an hour in the afternoon to go out and throw a Frisbee around, was nice. It is going to be weird to be home and have nothing to do... So anyways, that made it a good New Years Day. The rest of the days were pretty normal, however, Sat. we did go and Visit Elder and Sister Paradise. They're one of the couples up in Beira; a few days ago he had a heart attack and so is now down here receiving treatment. He ought to be fine, but we'll see what happens. He'll be going out to South Africa for a few days to get some tests done that can't be done here, and then hopefully he'll be returning...

So far being assistant is good. It is very demanding working with Pres. Packard. He asks us our opinions on some pretty difficult stuff. The elder that I trained will be coming to work in the office. The office elders have been overwhelmed with things to do and so they've been asking for another elder to help them out and Elder Brown will be a perfect kid to put there. He'll be coming down tomorrow to enter the office. It'll be fun because we work a lot with the office guys and we actually live in the same house as the office elders... So it ought to be fun. 

Happy B-day to Will. I completely forgot that Andrew and Will are both turning a year older now. That’s insane. I don't believe Will is 14 and Andrew will be 17. Man, super weird. Well, good luck skiing, it sounds pretty intense. When I get home, Dad will have another old man to hang out with... Well, thanks for the e-mail, glad you’re all doing well!!

Elder Okazaki