Well, this week was good. We had a special visit from Pres. Packard. He called us at the beginning of the week, saying that he would be in Nampula on Sat. and Sunday. We picked him up on Saturday and we were translating all day.  I think I did a block of 4 hours that day, translating interviews and other business that he had up here. It all went well. Sunday Meetings went really well. They didn't have tithing here because we didn’t have a bank account to put the money in... So we found a way around that, and instituted tithing. We spent most of the time talking about tithing yesterday in our meetings, and I think it went over well. I gave a small 5 min talk on tithing to begin with (2nd week in a row that I've spoken in Sacrament Meeting...), we had a testimony by a lady in the branch on Tithing and then the Branch President ended with an excellent talk on tithing. It was great. Then President Packard gave a lesson on commandments (with a strong emphasis on tithing) as a joint Priesthood/Relief Society meeting. I didn't get to hear it though, because Elder Featherstone and I were tending the primary children, so the ladies would have a chance to go to the class. So... all in all, things went well. We had a strong week, getting a lot of stuff done. We taught a lot of good lessons and things went really well. The weather here has been pretty rainy and so it has been nice. Cloudy and cool. We got soaked a couple of nights ago. It just started pouring one night. Rain is weird here. It'll open up and just dump for five minutes and then just close back up again, it’s super strange. The rains have been good. Luckily Nampula is up on a hill, so the water drains pretty well, and it doesn't get swamped like Beira does.

We had some problems with our pump this week. I think there was about a 3 day stretch where I didn't shower because of water problems. The pump wasn't pumping water up to us and so almost everyday this week I had to go down and fiddle with it. We had to replace the bladder and so that was a little bit of a hassle. But for right now, it has been working, so hopefully it'll keep it up.

I'm still blown away with Andrew and his friends and that Annie is going to Harvard! That is super nuts. I had a good chuckle at Nina Ahbe's letter. We'll see if I can keep that reputation up after being in Africa for two years. Yes, the package that just arrived was the one you had sent in Oct... Ha! It took a little while (about 5 months) but it got here, so thanks. I now have enough Kool-Aid to last me through the millennium. Well, thanks for the letter and all the support. I hope things are going well!!

Elder Okazaki