Oi!
Turns out that Tete does have internet... So the drive up here was amazing! The entire drive was really dry. In the rainy season I'm sure things are a little greener, but at this time of year, everything was pretty dry. The entire way the landscape was dotted with all these little huts made of wood with those thatched roofs. It’s amazing how some of these people live. I honestly don't know what they do for food or money or anything. It’s insane. We left Beira and headed west until we hit a town called Chimoio, where we turned to the North a little bit and headed toward Tete. Once you start getting close to Tete, things start getting a little more "mountainous" It felt a little like the Pioneer trek in Wyoming. The actual landscape was like that. The vegetation was a little different with a long grass and some more trees. As you approach Tete, you start seeing these huge trees. Like huge, they are called Embondeiro tree's... I think that’s a Portuguese word and I don't know the English word, but they are honestly the biggest things I've ever seen. The trunk is about the size of a truck, enormous. Huge! So ya. It was cool to see all of that. Tete is way different than Beira. Smaller but a lot cleaner. We had about 35 members at the conference. It’s amazing how little but strong the
branch is. A lot of them walk an hour or more to get to church. They're a good bunch of people. Hopefully the church will be able to continue to grow and do well here. The ride up with President was fun. A long drive but pretty fun. Took us about 8 or 9 hours. The road was full of pot holes. There were some pretty bad stretches with some huge holes. The conference went well. There are some good people who will get baptized up here this time, so that will be good. Zone Conference went great. Our presentation was put together in a bit of a rush but it went off well enough. Hopefully we learned some things. The AP's did a really good job on their presentation and it was fun being with them. They did a division with us the night before the conference and so that was fun. I walked with Elder Duhadway who was the ZL here when I turned senior. He also trained Elder Abraham. It went well. It was a lot of fun to walk with him. Pioneer day went well. It was a ton of fun. We watched Legacy to start out with, and then we all just kind of hung out and played board games and did a stick pull thing and then we ate dinner prepared by the Sisters. It was super good and we finally ended the night watching a movie called Ratatouille... or something like that. It was way good. All the guys liked it. It’s about some rat that cooks. It was good. The next morning (Friday) we had to get up at 5:00 so we could be at the house where the Marrameao guys were staying to pick them up at 5:15. From there, we went out to Dondo (about an hour outside the city) to drop them off so that they could take a bus back out to Marrameao. The worst part about it was that the night
before, we had a flat, and it took us forever to change the tire because the spare tire happened to be flat... so we didn't get home till about 11:00 or 11:30...a little annoying but everything ended up fine in the end. The conference went great. The drive out to Tete was fantastic and so far we love it our here in Tete. We found a pretty good little restaurant that cooks pizza. Still not Pizza from America, but it’s the closest thing we've found yet. The city of Tete is set on a hill that goes down and ends in the Zambezi river and so it’s a way cool little place. There's one large suspension bridge that crosses the river there. It’s the only place to cross for a very long time so all the traffic comes through there. They only let 1 truck cross the bridge at a time so there's honestly a mile long line of trucks on either side of the bridge waiting their turn to cross. Apparently they do this,
because a little while ago they drove two Soviet tanks across that bridge and it weakened the foundation and they still haven’t repaired it yet, and so they don't want to push their luck... ya. That’s pretty much how things are done around here. "If it still works, there's no need to replace it..." I fit in great over here... Well, Tete is great I love it here. Sounds like you guys had a fun week and will continue to have one this weekend with all the back packing and what not. Well, have a good day and a good week.

Elder Okazaki